Since they simply link to the website, and aren't (that I'm aware of) providing any kind of support or resources to that group, they should be fine to keep the link up.
I'm no expert on the First Amendment (IANAEOTFA?), nor have I read and understood the entire text of the USA PATRIOT act, but if the act prohibits providing support or resources to terrorists, then:
1. It seems to me that you are right that they are not providing support by having that link.
2. It seems that you have ignored "resources" -- maintaining that link facilitates the terrorists' efforts to spread their message, making the web page with the link in it a "resource" working for them.
>There's always terrific pressure from Marketing to make the product RIGHT NOW, if not sooner!
Yep. After all, they make money on the bugfixes disguised as upgrades.
That's a bit cynical (I should know -- I'm a cynic), but it probably actually *does* happen some portion of the time.
>Okay, that's fast and good. It isn't going to be cheap.
Only, much Open Source Software, Linux is a good example, tend to break this assumption; much to the disgult of Big Bill.
Good point! However, if there were a company someplace paying for the development of Linux (just the kernel) and they had to pay typical hourly rates for the time that all of the people involve have dedicated to the project, I'd bet that the cost (of making it) would be far larger than anyone would expect.
I haven't actually tried to do the math, but I suspect that if a company were paying to develop the Linux kernel, they could not sell it. The price they'd have to charge in order to just *break even* would probably be huge.
And that's not even considering all the work that's been done outside the kernel as open source and/or under the GPL.
Getting Linux free for the downloading is a *terrific* deal. Trying to balance the "value for money" or "bang for the buck" equation doesn't work because of divide-by-zero problems.
Yes, this makes up a significant part of the cost of making software.
2) Paying for management's perks (think: Bill Gate's massive house, and the Oracle guy's Americas' Cup challenge.
Absolutely. This one is also part of the answer to other questions:
Why are companies so expensive to run?
Why is there *too much* management in some companies?
Why do good developers ever even *want* to go into management?
What methods do companies use to try to attract good managers? (ignoring the question of whether this *works* and whether the managers who are attracted are actually *good*)
Answer to question #1: good, cheap, fast...pick two.
Answer to question #2: a company that's interested primarily in making a profit will spend some effort finding out how high a price the market will bear, and then charge that price. It'll be uncomfortably high, but not *too* uncomfortable for their target market. People will buy it at that price.
Well that makes it ok then, we'll just have that happen once a week shall we? It'll give the pilots more practice.
That's a strange thing to suggest. The pilots already get adequate practice in simulators without placing actual aircraft at risk.
To be honest, when I'm at 30k feet "very unlikely" isn't good enough.
When you are travelling over 400 miles per hour at 30,000 feet, you are already betting on "very unlikely" -- the number of things that can go fatally wrong in that situation is huge, and by getting in the aircraft, you have accepted the risk.
Just put away your gun-toting wild-west thoughts for a second [...]
Sorry, but the "gun-toting wild-west thoughts" seem to be yours. Law-abiding citizens who choose to carry firearms are among the safest people to be with. Cop bars never get robbed. There are virtually *no* violent assaults at gun shows. The number of concealed-carry permit holders who are arrested for violent crimes is infinitesimal compared to the general population. The hysterical yelling about "shoot-outs" and the "wild west" almost always comes from people who have little or no experience with weapons and no real knowledge of the social and political issues involved in their own civil liberties. For the most part, they have no basis for their opinions other than what they've seen on TV and in the movies (hardly a non-biased source of information).
[...] and consider this simple question
No, I don't think I will. The problem before us is NOT simple. Like most human affairs, it is fearsomely complex if you look at it more closely than just listening to the 30-second soundbytes on the nightly news.
This problem involves making important decisions about our civil liberties, about who is responsible for protecting whom, about acceptance of risk and willingness to take action. It's about who is in in charge of your life and mine. It is about who is going to protect your family when the chips are down.
Posing simplistic either/or questions is not particularly helpful.
Anyhow, you've asked the wrong question. You should have asked: would the terrorists prefer to face an aircraft full of unarmed people or an aircraft where as many as 40-50 anonymous passengers have arms equal to any that the terrorists managed to smuggle aboard? Which aircraft would *you* rather be on, when this situation arises? If your answer is that you'd rather be on the plane where the passengers are unarmed because you are so afraid of *the other passengers* then you are afraid of the wrong things.
So, thats why the concord didn't explode after being hit by a peice of an exploding tire a few months ago, right?
Thank you for your interest.
You are right. The Concord did not explode as a result of the damage from the failed tire. Rather, it crashed after the crew could no longer control the aircraft.
The Concord's lower wing and engine nacelle were perforated by numerous pieces of debris. The leaking fuel caught fire. The fire destroyed the controls and other aircraft components in the wing. Despite the efforts of the crew, they were unable to keep control of the aircraft. The aircraft departed controlled flight, rolled inverted and basically flew into the ground.
This tragedy resulted from (probably) fist-sized chunks of debris which are in no way comparable to bullets. Modern aircraft are designed to sustain lots of different kinds of problems, but this, sadly, isn't one of them. Because of what is probably a maintenance failure (ground crew did not detect and replace the deteriorating tire), many people lost their lives.
It does not help anyone to confuse the issue here. The Concord crash had nothing to do with guns.
Allowing guns onto planes would be simply insane, as has been pointed out one shot could take down the plane. You've just made killing 400 people trivially easy - what on earth would make you think that's a good idea?
You appear to be assuming that firing a single shot aboard a passenger jet would cause the plane to crash.
If you are referring to the problems of decompression, explosion of the fuel tanks or structural failure of the airframe due to gunfire piercing the skin, I feel obliged to point out that these dangers are heavily overplayed in movies and are not nearly the risk that many people appear to assume they are.
Horrible decompression: aircraft pressurization systems are engineered to handle lots of leaks, and even a failure of several entire window panels would not cause immediate decompression of a modern aircraft. There would be a lot of noise, and if enough panels are blown out, then the aircraft *would* decompress, but there would be plenty of time to for the pilot to descend to a safe altitude. They *practice* for this kind of thing.
Exploding fuel tanks: aircraft fuel tanks are punctured by birdstrikes with some regularity. Jet fuel leaks out and the wing & tank require repair. The planes don't explode from this. They're designed to tolerate this kind of thing -- the choice of fuel and the construction of the tanks makes explosion very unlikely.
Aircraft structural failure due to gunfire: due to a gunshot? Get real. A couple of years ago, a passenger jet lost a lot of it's outer skin due to the failure of *many* of the rivets that normally hold the skin in place. In spite of the loss of much of the upper skin, the aircraft flew on (with the passenger compartment wide open) and landed (approximately) normally. Now this was a terrible thing and several people did lose their lives but the point to remember is that lots of skin fasterners failed and still there was no structure failure despite the violent loss of many skin panels. Gunfire inside the passenger cabin isn't going to create a situation even approaching this.
Sit in the right seat, shoot the gastank in the wing. say good by to 300 people.
No, you don't say goodbye to 300 people.
You say "slow leak in wing tank until landing." Jet fuel is not dynamite, nor is it even gasoline. Aircraft fuel tanks are punctured all the time by birdstrikes, which damage the tanks and drive bits of metal into the fuel supply at hundreds of miles per hour. The planes don't explode from this. In order to ignite jet fuel, you have to have the right mixture of air and dispersed fuel. That doesn't happen when you just pierce the tank. Even with a bullet.
You also say "severe beating administered by passengers in adjacent rows of seats."
If you're being chased by a big snarling dog [...deletia...] I'd just be happy with a few intelligent daemons to watch my back
RIGHT! Only I want the sales department's laptop docking stations in the staff-meeting room to be equipped with the voice-decoding circuitry and the clue-by-four attachment (big wooden mallet)!
First time the lead sales weasel brings up a fundamental change to the project requirement late in acceptance testing...POW!
As long as you have faith in the justice system, there isn't any problem here. I myself don't have much faith in the American justice system, but that is only my personal feeling.
I'm with you on that one.
We don't really *have* a "justice system" in this country, in spite of what it's called. What we actually have is a "legal system" -- operated and overseen at all levels by lawyers whose primary concern is not with "justice" but with "legality."
Quite often the outcome of a court case is not just -- it's only legal.
So there's evidence that talking on a cell phone, with or without a hands-free set, tends to reduce drivers' ability to drive well.
Hmmm.
I wonder if they tested to see whether being engaged in conversation with another occupant of the vehicle also caused that effect? Could it be that the problem is with drivers being distracted by trying to carry on a conversation, and not with the cell phone aspect of it?
I bet there's a similar correlation with those drivers of vehicles that have the bass cannons booming out a beat that's audible *outside* the car for several blocks in all directions? Could those drivers be distracted by the noise they're making? I bet the drivers of the cars *around* them are similarly distracted.
"Conclusion: drivers with cranked-up bass cannons were twice as likely to miss the sound of an ambulance or fire truck trying to pass them, and six times more likely to be rammed by the angry drivers around them. Interestingly, they were also substantially more likely to be surrounded at stop signs in residential areas by irate homeowners, pulled from their vehicles and beaten to within an inch of their lives."
So, what you're saying is if we give the AI constructs a long enough bar brawl, they should be able to work everything out?
Depends on how accurate the AI reproduces the human condition. In the real world, the bar brawl never ends with everyone "working everything out" in any fashion. It ends in one of three conditions:
1. The bouncers throw everyone out into the parking lot, or
2. The police arrive and everyone who can't convincingly blame someone else gets arrested for being drunk & disorderly, or
3. The really, really big guy who is for no known reason always named "Tiny" finishes all the fights (one at a time or in bunches) and is the last man standing.
And for the most part, at the end of it all, none of them are particularly more impressed by any of the others. Except that no one messes with Tiny.
So for best results, there need to be AI bouncers, AI cops, or an AI "Tiny" construct.
For those of you who have been paying attention, I'll say it again: laugh, it's funny
But with this sort of thing, and incidents like the Houston PD stormtrooperaid on kids at a K-Mart http://66.70.240.173/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1598 (discussed on my site, several news articles linked to there), I don't trust them...
Aw, fer Pete's sake. They really did that, didn't they? Aw jeez.
Okay, kids, let's all remember, now -- and repeat it often where others can here you -- "The Police Are Not On Your Side!"
Let's don't make 'em out to always be the enemy, but keep in mind that they have an awful job to do, they deal with the dregs of society, and you should *NOT* assume that they are on your side in a given situation. They're interests are not yours and we all need to keep that in mind during any encounter with the xxPD.
While we're at it, everybody go to the ACLU's website and download the Bust Card, print it and keep one in your wallet.
<RANT>
The "War on Drugs" is a sham -- it's been going on for years and years and there's no end in sight. There isn't even *progress* in sight, claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
Saying "Look at the big pile of drugs we've confiscated" while standing in front of X-gazillion dollars worth of white powder about to be incinerated does not actually indicate progress in this "war" -- to measure progress, you would have to determine that the availability of drugs on the street has decreased, and to my knowledge (and I'm no expert) this has not happened. No one has yet claimed that there are now "NO DRUGS AVAILABLE ON THE STREETS OF CHICAGO!" or anywhere else.
You mention legalizing and regulating (and taxing) drugs as a possible solution -- and I agree. The only way to win this "war" is to get the criminal element to give up. And the only way that'll ever happen is if we take the money out of it. And the only way *that* will ever happen is if we make drugs *cheaper* to the point that the cost of importing the stuff the way the crooks do ends up exceeding the cost of growing the stuff here on our own territory, refining it in Winston-Salem's plants and distributing it to state-licensed stores just like we do with liquor.
Will that ever happen? I don't know. I'm not optimistic, though, because this approach is not only opposed by lots of upstanding citizens who can't get past their upbringing, but it's also opposed by the *very* wealthy crooks and their lawyers and etc.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that *HUGE* contributions are being made to the campaigns of those politicians who are most rabidly anti-legalization by front people and/or organizations for the crooks who stand to lose the most money if we were ever to actually decide to win the "War on Drugs."
</RANT>
We already know who the crooks are, in many cases. I wish I could remember the exact citation, but I can't, so I'm going to just fake it, so bear with me, okay?
Here goes:
Rougly 85% of the violent crimes in this country are perpetrated by 5% of the criminals, and those 5% already have criminal records. So we already know who they are, but they are not locked up because of clever lawyers, lenient judges, over-filled jails, or for other reasons (good or otherwise).
My geeky chick (less geeky than many, but she's getting better) might be typical in this: she isn't so much interested in CPU speeds, but she does like to play with my hard drive.
Not that I mind, either -- I actually consider myself quite lucky!
No you're not. In almost every case, you will:
1) The one that defines product attributes you most desire and,
2) In that category, the one that has been around the longest or second-longest.
If you're looking for pop, you're looking for either a clear soda, or a cola. [deletia]
I think we can relax about the billions, trillions, milliards (isn't that a duck?), and billiards.
They don't have trillions. They don't have billions. They may have millions, but they won't after they pay their attorneys.
The tens of thousands of people who've been inconvenienced (and in some cases harmed) by fax-spam won't get anything meaningful out of this except, just maybe, the activity will stop.
The perpetrators will have to shut down the company, but unless there's jail time, they'll walk away free to start up another nuisance company -- after all, it's all they know how to do. They'll probably go into email spam selling bulk fax software...
One could reasonably assert that since I got my fax line and fax machine to facilitate the conduct of *my* business, and the fax spammer is making use of it for the conduct of *his* business without my permission, then he is stealing my resources (taking them for his purposes without permission). He is tying up my fax line, expending my thermal paper or plain paper and toner, and forcing my staff to expend time (== money) to determine that his faxes have nothing to do with any of my clients or vendors.
And when he sends out fax-spam by the millions, he's stealing a *lot* from the national economy by taking a little bit from each of a large number of companies.
It's theft, pure and simple, and should be punished as such. Jail time might not be inappropriate at all.
Same thing can be said for email spam, telemarketing and a large portion of the direct mail out there.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no expert on the First Amendment (IANAEOTFA?), nor have I read and understood the entire text of the USA PATRIOT act, but if the act prohibits providing support or resources to terrorists, then:
1. It seems to me that you are right that they are not providing support by having that link.
2. It seems that you have ignored "resources" -- maintaining that link facilitates the terrorists' efforts to spread their message, making the web page with the link in it a "resource" working for them.
Does that seem like a stretch?
Yep. After all, they make money on the bugfixes disguised as upgrades.
That's a bit cynical (I should know -- I'm a cynic), but it probably actually *does* happen some portion of the time.
>Okay, that's fast and good. It isn't going to be cheap.
Only, much Open Source Software, Linux is a good example, tend to break this assumption; much to the disgult of Big Bill.
Good point! However, if there were a company someplace paying for the development of Linux (just the kernel) and they had to pay typical hourly rates for the time that all of the people involve have dedicated to the project, I'd bet that the cost (of making it) would be far larger than anyone would expect.
I haven't actually tried to do the math, but I suspect that if a company were paying to develop the Linux kernel, they could not sell it. The price they'd have to charge in order to just *break even* would probably be huge.
And that's not even considering all the work that's been done outside the kernel as open source and/or under the GPL.
Getting Linux free for the downloading is a *terrific* deal. Trying to balance the "value for money" or "bang for the buck" equation doesn't work because of divide-by-zero problems.
Yes, this makes up a significant part of the cost of making software.
2) Paying for management's perks (think: Bill Gate's massive house, and the Oracle guy's Americas' Cup challenge.
Absolutely. This one is also part of the answer to other questions:
Why are companies so expensive to run?
Why is there *too much* management in some companies?
Why do good developers ever even *want* to go into management?
What methods do companies use to try to attract good managers? (ignoring the question of whether this *works* and whether the managers who are attracted are actually *good*)
Why software costs so much (to make).
Many of us are responding to the question
Why software costs so much (to buy).
My opinion (FWIW):
Answer to question #1: good, cheap, fast...pick two.
Answer to question #2: a company that's interested primarily in making a profit will spend some effort finding out how high a price the market will bear, and then charge that price. It'll be uncomfortably high, but not *too* uncomfortable for their target market. People will buy it at that price.
Good, cheap, fast. Pick *two*.
There's always terrific pressure from Marketing to make the product RIGHT NOW, if not sooner!
Someone always insists that it has to actually *work*, too.
Okay, that's fast and good. It isn't going to be cheap.
That's a strange thing to suggest. The pilots already get adequate practice in simulators without placing actual aircraft at risk.
To be honest, when I'm at 30k feet "very unlikely" isn't good enough.
When you are travelling over 400 miles per hour at 30,000 feet, you are already betting on "very unlikely" -- the number of things that can go fatally wrong in that situation is huge, and by getting in the aircraft, you have accepted the risk.
Just put away your gun-toting wild-west thoughts for a second [...]
Sorry, but the "gun-toting wild-west thoughts" seem to be yours. Law-abiding citizens who choose to carry firearms are among the safest people to be with. Cop bars never get robbed. There are virtually *no* violent assaults at gun shows. The number of concealed-carry permit holders who are arrested for violent crimes is infinitesimal compared to the general population. The hysterical yelling about "shoot-outs" and the "wild west" almost always comes from people who have little or no experience with weapons and no real knowledge of the social and political issues involved in their own civil liberties. For the most part, they have no basis for their opinions other than what they've seen on TV and in the movies (hardly a non-biased source of information).
[...] and consider this simple question
No, I don't think I will. The problem before us is NOT simple. Like most human affairs, it is fearsomely complex if you look at it more closely than just listening to the 30-second soundbytes on the nightly news.
This problem involves making important decisions about our civil liberties, about who is responsible for protecting whom, about acceptance of risk and willingness to take action. It's about who is in in charge of your life and mine. It is about who is going to protect your family when the chips are down.
Posing simplistic either/or questions is not particularly helpful.
Anyhow, you've asked the wrong question. You should have asked: would the terrorists prefer to face an aircraft full of unarmed people or an aircraft where as many as 40-50 anonymous passengers have arms equal to any that the terrorists managed to smuggle aboard? Which aircraft would *you* rather be on, when this situation arises? If your answer is that you'd rather be on the plane where the passengers are unarmed because you are so afraid of *the other passengers* then you are afraid of the wrong things.
Regards,
Thank you for your interest.
You are right. The Concord did not explode as a result of the damage from the failed tire. Rather, it crashed after the crew could no longer control the aircraft.
The Concord's lower wing and engine nacelle were perforated by numerous pieces of debris. The leaking fuel caught fire. The fire destroyed the controls and other aircraft components in the wing. Despite the efforts of the crew, they were unable to keep control of the aircraft. The aircraft departed controlled flight, rolled inverted and basically flew into the ground.
This tragedy resulted from (probably) fist-sized chunks of debris which are in no way comparable to bullets. Modern aircraft are designed to sustain lots of different kinds of problems, but this, sadly, isn't one of them. Because of what is probably a maintenance failure (ground crew did not detect and replace the deteriorating tire), many people lost their lives.
It does not help anyone to confuse the issue here. The Concord crash had nothing to do with guns.
You appear to be assuming that firing a single shot aboard a passenger jet would cause the plane to crash.
If you are referring to the problems of decompression, explosion of the fuel tanks or structural failure of the airframe due to gunfire piercing the skin, I feel obliged to point out that these dangers are heavily overplayed in movies and are not nearly the risk that many people appear to assume they are.
Horrible decompression: aircraft pressurization systems are engineered to handle lots of leaks, and even a failure of several entire window panels would not cause immediate decompression of a modern aircraft. There would be a lot of noise, and if enough panels are blown out, then the aircraft *would* decompress, but there would be plenty of time to for the pilot to descend to a safe altitude. They *practice* for this kind of thing.
Exploding fuel tanks: aircraft fuel tanks are punctured by birdstrikes with some regularity. Jet fuel leaks out and the wing & tank require repair. The planes don't explode from this. They're designed to tolerate this kind of thing -- the choice of fuel and the construction of the tanks makes explosion very unlikely.
Aircraft structural failure due to gunfire: due to a gunshot? Get real. A couple of years ago, a passenger jet lost a lot of it's outer skin due to the failure of *many* of the rivets that normally hold the skin in place. In spite of the loss of much of the upper skin, the aircraft flew on (with the passenger compartment wide open) and landed (approximately) normally. Now this was a terrible thing and several people did lose their lives but the point to remember is that lots of skin fasterners failed and still there was no structure failure despite the violent loss of many skin panels. Gunfire inside the passenger cabin isn't going to create a situation even approaching this.
Sit in the right seat, shoot the gastank in the wing. say good by to 300 people.
No, you don't say goodbye to 300 people.
You say "slow leak in wing tank until landing." Jet fuel is not dynamite, nor is it even gasoline. Aircraft fuel tanks are punctured all the time by birdstrikes, which damage the tanks and drive bits of metal into the fuel supply at hundreds of miles per hour. The planes don't explode from this. In order to ignite jet fuel, you have to have the right mixture of air and dispersed fuel. That doesn't happen when you just pierce the tank. Even with a bullet.
You also say "severe beating administered by passengers in adjacent rows of seats."
Meant to say:
The article didn't go far enough!
If you're being chased by a big snarling dog [...deletia...] I'd just be happy with a few intelligent daemons to watch my back
RIGHT! Only I want the sales department's laptop docking stations in the staff-meeting room to be equipped with the voice-decoding circuitry and the clue-by-four attachment (big wooden mallet)!
First time the lead sales weasel brings up a fundamental change to the project requirement late in acceptance testing...POW!
Muah-hahahahahahahah!!!
Well, hey, I can dream, can't I?
The article didn't go far enough.
I'm with you on that one.
We don't really *have* a "justice system" in this country, in spite of what it's called. What we actually have is a "legal system" -- operated and overseen at all levels by lawyers whose primary concern is not with "justice" but with "legality."
Quite often the outcome of a court case is not just -- it's only legal.
Hmmm.
I wonder if they tested to see whether being engaged in conversation with another occupant of the vehicle also caused that effect? Could it be that the problem is with drivers being distracted by trying to carry on a conversation, and not with the cell phone aspect of it?
I bet there's a similar correlation with those drivers of vehicles that have the bass cannons booming out a beat that's audible *outside* the car for several blocks in all directions? Could those drivers be distracted by the noise they're making? I bet the drivers of the cars *around* them are similarly distracted.
"Conclusion: drivers with cranked-up bass cannons were twice as likely to miss the sound of an ambulance or fire truck trying to pass them, and six times more likely to be rammed by the angry drivers around them. Interestingly, they were also substantially more likely to be surrounded at stop signs in residential areas by irate homeowners, pulled from their vehicles and beaten to within an inch of their lives."
We are Drunk of Borg. Resilience is floor tile. Wan'be sim'lated?
Depends on how accurate the AI reproduces the human condition. In the real world, the bar brawl never ends with everyone "working everything out" in any fashion. It ends in one of three conditions:
1. The bouncers throw everyone out into the parking lot, or
2. The police arrive and everyone who can't convincingly blame someone else gets arrested for being drunk & disorderly, or
3. The really, really big guy who is for no known reason always named "Tiny" finishes all the fights (one at a time or in bunches) and is the last man standing.
And for the most part, at the end of it all, none of them are particularly more impressed by any of the others. Except that no one messes with Tiny.
So for best results, there need to be AI bouncers, AI cops, or an AI "Tiny" construct.
For those of you who have been paying attention, I'll say it again: laugh, it's funny
Yep -- the potential for humor here is endless.
The one that will herald the end of music?
Didn't this all get started back in the 80's when they transplanted the first genuine horse's ass onto management!
But with this sort of thing, and incidents like the Houston PD stormtrooperaid on kids at a K-Mart http://66.70.240.173/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1598 (discussed on my site, several news articles linked to there), I don't trust them...
Aw, fer Pete's sake. They really did that, didn't they? Aw jeez.
Okay, kids, let's all remember, now -- and repeat it often where others can here you -- "The Police Are Not On Your Side!"
Let's don't make 'em out to always be the enemy, but keep in mind that they have an awful job to do, they deal with the dregs of society, and you should *NOT* assume that they are on your side in a given situation. They're interests are not yours and we all need to keep that in mind during any encounter with the xxPD.
While we're at it, everybody go to the ACLU's website and download the Bust Card, print it and keep one in your wallet.
Hell, print two and give one to a friend.
<RANT>
The "War on Drugs" is a sham -- it's been going on for years and years and there's no end in sight. There isn't even *progress* in sight, claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
Saying "Look at the big pile of drugs we've confiscated" while standing in front of X-gazillion dollars worth of white powder about to be incinerated does not actually indicate progress in this "war" -- to measure progress, you would have to determine that the availability of drugs on the street has decreased, and to my knowledge (and I'm no expert) this has not happened. No one has yet claimed that there are now "NO DRUGS AVAILABLE ON THE STREETS OF CHICAGO!" or anywhere else.
You mention legalizing and regulating (and taxing) drugs as a possible solution -- and I agree. The only way to win this "war" is to get the criminal element to give up. And the only way that'll ever happen is if we take the money out of it. And the only way *that* will ever happen is if we make drugs *cheaper* to the point that the cost of importing the stuff the way the crooks do ends up exceeding the cost of growing the stuff here on our own territory, refining it in Winston-Salem's plants and distributing it to state-licensed stores just like we do with liquor.
Will that ever happen? I don't know. I'm not optimistic, though, because this approach is not only opposed by lots of upstanding citizens who can't get past their upbringing, but it's also opposed by the *very* wealthy crooks and their lawyers and etc.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that *HUGE* contributions are being made to the campaigns of those politicians who are most rabidly anti-legalization by front people and/or organizations for the crooks who stand to lose the most money if we were ever to actually decide to win the "War on Drugs."
</RANT>
Sorry. Sore subject for me.
Here goes:
Rougly 85% of the violent crimes in this country are perpetrated by 5% of the criminals, and those 5% already have criminal records. So we already know who they are, but they are not locked up because of clever lawyers, lenient judges, over-filled jails, or for other reasons (good or otherwise).
Disgusting, ain't it?
Not that I mind, either -- I actually consider myself quite lucky!
1) The one that defines product attributes you most desire and,
2) In that category, the one that has been around the longest or second-longest.
If you're looking for pop, you're looking for either a clear soda, or a cola. [deletia]
Your Jedi mind tricks will not help you here!
They don't have trillions. They don't have billions. They may have millions, but they won't after they pay their attorneys.
The tens of thousands of people who've been inconvenienced (and in some cases harmed) by fax-spam won't get anything meaningful out of this except, just maybe, the activity will stop.
The perpetrators will have to shut down the company, but unless there's jail time, they'll walk away free to start up another nuisance company -- after all, it's all they know how to do. They'll probably go into email spam selling bulk fax software...
And then, of course, when the money never comes in they'll have to restate the government's revenue for this year...
Can you say "WorldCom?" I knew you could!
And when he sends out fax-spam by the millions, he's stealing a *lot* from the national economy by taking a little bit from each of a large number of companies.
It's theft, pure and simple, and should be punished as such. Jail time might not be inappropriate at all.
Same thing can be said for email spam, telemarketing and a large portion of the direct mail out there.