I don't understand how North American companies can get away with such terrible prices and terrible service.
It takes quite a while for companies to get hammered for collusion or price-fixing. Sometimes it never happens, but it's hard to imagine that some form of collusion is not the root cause of all major carriers increasing their prices by the same amount on a service that costs them almost nothing to operate.
Yes, the trend is that people kill by other means in those countries. What you're missing is that all crime is derived from societal forces, without regard to the tools available to the criminal.
This statement is incorrect. There are two purposes to firearms. The first is to deter. The second is to kill. The first is used far more often by private citizens than the latter.
The problem with subscription-based radio is that there are so many easy alternatives that provide the user with much more control over their listening environment. I could potentially see people subscribing who live on the road, but for your average driver the plethora of options presented by standard radio, in-dash units that play digital audio files, regular CDs, iPods, and other external digital music players makes the subscription model much less compelling.
I've only known one person who had a satellite radio subscription, and that was relatively short-lived. It just doesn't seem to make much sense to most people.
What we have here is a lack of mod points. This is one of the most insightful posts here. Too few people seem to understand (or will not admit to) the difference between "need" and "want".
US society especially so completely revolves around instant gratification that people dig themselves into debt spending not only all their spare earnings, but also money they don't even actually have (easy credit). There are very few financial situations that can't be improved by better decision-making.
Most of the wealth in this country (and indeed most of the world) is concentrated with men who are over the age of 50-60 years. When they die, that wealth is then redistributed.
I take it you're not familiar with trusts. Why do you think it is that extraordinarily wealthy families continue to be extraordinarily wealthy? It's not because each subsequent generation remakes the fortune.
A relatively small percentage of wealth is redistributed as a result of being taxed for dying.
That said, it remains true that a procedure to delay or eliminate death would likely be the exclusive province of the wealthy.
Though, to be fair, if they want one that works like their old one, and their old one ran XP, moving to Linux isn't much different from moving to Vista.
This was my first thought on reading the summary. That you can make a molecule invisible by shielding detection is like saying you can make the sun invisible by putting a box over your head.
You seem to be stuck on the idea that any of this is about punishment. It's a theme that pops up in several of your posts here, while the people replying to you don't even mention punishment.
Punishment has nothing to do with blame and vice versa, rendering all your arguments about who should be punished completely moot. It doesn't matter who should be punished, since that has absolutely nothing to do with what people (other than you) are talking about in this thread.
I agree that in general, vicims of crime should not be blamed. However, there are exceptions to everything. Comparing this crime to something like rape, murder, robbery, burglary, etc is being intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
In a lot of ways, this shouldn't even be considered a crime. Group A told an utterly illogical lie to person B. Person B gave group A money. Persons C, D, and E told person B she was an idiot and should stop. Rinse and repeat until the money's gone.
She has nobody to blame but herself.
There is no moral high ground to claim. This isn't a moral issue. It's an issue of someone acting through blind greed, who repeatedly and stubbornly resisted all attempts to get her to think rationally.
If I could wave a magic wand and make all drugs disappear (we'll assume medically useful drugs no longer have effects that are prone to abuse as well) I'm pretty sure I would.
If I could do the same for small arms I would in a heartbeat. I'm not anti-gun by any means, quite the contrary, but the only way I could see removing small arms from civilian hands as a good thing is if ALL small arms disappeared from ALL hands. I wouldn't consider it abandoning the right to self defense, which would both still exist and still be necessary. It would simply remove a broad class of items used both in offense and defense.
I've pretty much gotten used to people holding self-contradicting and/or directly conflicting beliefs in regards to political policy. Most people don't seem to be able or willing to see parallels in the arguments they use to support or attack to the arguments someone diametrically opposed to them uses.
I have to thank you for being much more (at least from my perspective) civil in this reply. I know I was a bit less tactful than usual last night, which I'm sure didn't help matters.
In general I tend to agree with most of what you just wrote.
Well, the current situation did not amplify drug use. In fact, the current situation is pretty good as there is a social stigma related to this kind of substance and sale isn't widespread. The price is high, considering that industrial production could make cocaine doses cost something like US$ 0,20 instead of several dollars.
I wasn't clear on what I meant was being amplified. I wasn't referring to usage itself, which would obviously increase (to what extent nobody has any realistic idea) with legalization. I was actually referring to all of the myriad problems that arise as a result of the illegality: overcrowded prisons, random checkpoints in certain states, mandatory minimum sentences (exacerbating problem #1), increased crime from addicts as a result of artificially increased prices, crime from the people who make, import, and distribute the drugs, increased tensions between many communities and law enforcement personnel, corruption within narcotics units, unnecessary felony convictions that prevent people from obtaining schooling or decent employment, etc. The list goes on and on regarding things in society, especially specific (typically poor) segments of society, that are directly or indirectly harmed as a result of the current situation.
The blame should be squarely set on the fact that lots of "recreational users" are rich and/or connected to politicians / important people from the police. That's why those kinds of illegal business are thriving: because we are not arresting everyone who is buying drugs. It's hard to tell cops and judges to put all those users in jail when your family is part of the user base.
Plus the cops and judges themselves. Even more evidence that the current approach works just as well as Prohibition didn't. It's also not the rich or well-connected driving the market. The people who are not rich or connected vastly outnumber those who are, and most of them lead normal lives without ever coming under police scrutiny. I'd hazard to guess they support a much, much larger portion of the marijuana industry than the rich.
So I guess that, considering that you are a consistent person, having GWB ignoring the constitution is just like having yuppies buying their special cigs from the nearest mugger-murderer-dealer: pretty much justifiable. I mean, "expecting otherwise is foolish".
I agree that expecting higher standards from GWB is as foolish as the expectation that making drugs illegal will make the problem go away rather than amplify it. Unless you can erase the history of Prohibition with its before and after, there will always be incontrovertible proof that you are wrong, and that current policy does far more harm than the alternative. There aren't that many ways to say it: You are wrong and history provides more than enough evidence to bury your argument. Unfortunately, there are too many people like you who are not willing to look at history and see the parallels and what was done to fix the problem the last time around.
"He MUST be a druggie to hold those opinions!" As for your statement that I probably have a thing for coke or pot, you couldn't be further from the truth. I don't like drugs, I don't like to be around people who are using drugs. That includes alcohol. Guess your Spidey-sense for those nasty law-breakers isn't so attuned after all.
There can always be a case made for breaking certain laws. Has happened throughout US history, and upon reflection people today tend to agree that certain laws were dead wrong and deserved to be ignored. Current and future events will be no different.
Since our current system is "how it works", it sounds like you're saying you will follow any law that is enacted, regardless of the consequences. After all, it's what "society" decided. Right? Any answer other than a resounding "yes" makes your whole argument seem, well, just a tad less convincing.
The reason why criminal enterprises are making a lot of money is this whole "recreational use" bullshit.
I'll single this out to reply to, since the rest of your comment is an interesting conglomeration of insight and blind ignorance that is not worth the time to parse and respond to.
The reason criminal enterprises make a lot of money is because there is high demand for an illegal substance. Period. If it was not illegal, the price would drop through the floor, and criminal enterprises would move on to other businesses that were more profitable. Just. Like. Prohibition.
What made rum-running extraordinarily lucrative and helped build criminal syndicates during Prohibition? The fact that alcohol was illegal. You can blame demand ("recreational use") all you want, but that's just pissing into the wind. The blame should be squarely set on the legislature and every single person who supports the law as it stands.
If water was banned, people would go to the criminal enterprises to get it because there is demand. The demand for drugs might fluctuate, but it will never go away, just like the demand for water. Expecting otherwise is foolish, so common sense dictates that the problems created by the current supply system be solved some other way than a ban. Then again, common sense isn't very common.
Slashdot Mirror
How would their motivation for cracking down on SSL forgeries be any different?
You can't transport someone into a country with a fake SSL cert.
I don't understand how North American companies can get away with such terrible prices and terrible service.
It takes quite a while for companies to get hammered for collusion or price-fixing. Sometimes it never happens, but it's hard to imagine that some form of collusion is not the root cause of all major carriers increasing their prices by the same amount on a service that costs them almost nothing to operate.
I bet he would be ecstatic if his autistic childrens' tantrums evolved into such a civilized response as his. What a gross display of ignorance.
In any case, maybe you should try to spend some time learning about an issue instead and show some intellectual discipline.
Wow. You should spend some time learning about autism.
Lowest common denominator, amirite?
Despite what you may have heard, some Americans are not as unsophisticated as you might think. Even those of us that are Conservatives.
There, fixed that for you. :)
Yes, the trend is that people kill by other means in those countries. What you're missing is that all crime is derived from societal forces, without regard to the tools available to the criminal.
The sole purpose of a gun is to kill.
This statement is incorrect. There are two purposes to firearms. The first is to deter. The second is to kill. The first is used far more often by private citizens than the latter.
I'm pretty sure the gift cards they sell aren't worth anything until they are activated when you purchase them.
I'm pretty sure that was the point. Gift cards require point-of-sale activation. Game cards from boxes don't, hence the problems with theft.
The alternatives to cable/satellite pay TV are hardly comparable to the alternatives to pay radio.
The problem with subscription-based radio is that there are so many easy alternatives that provide the user with much more control over their listening environment. I could potentially see people subscribing who live on the road, but for your average driver the plethora of options presented by standard radio, in-dash units that play digital audio files, regular CDs, iPods, and other external digital music players makes the subscription model much less compelling.
I've only known one person who had a satellite radio subscription, and that was relatively short-lived. It just doesn't seem to make much sense to most people.
What we have here is a lack of mod points. This is one of the most insightful posts here. Too few people seem to understand (or will not admit to) the difference between "need" and "want".
US society especially so completely revolves around instant gratification that people dig themselves into debt spending not only all their spare earnings, but also money they don't even actually have (easy credit). There are very few financial situations that can't be improved by better decision-making.
Most of the wealth in this country (and indeed most of the world) is concentrated with men who are over the age of 50-60 years. When they die, that wealth is then redistributed.
I take it you're not familiar with trusts. Why do you think it is that extraordinarily wealthy families continue to be extraordinarily wealthy? It's not because each subsequent generation remakes the fortune.
A relatively small percentage of wealth is redistributed as a result of being taxed for dying.
That said, it remains true that a procedure to delay or eliminate death would likely be the exclusive province of the wealthy.
Though, to be fair, if they want one that works like their old one, and their old one ran XP, moving to Linux isn't much different from moving to Vista.
Note, I'm only half serious with this one.
This was my first thought on reading the summary. That you can make a molecule invisible by shielding detection is like saying you can make the sun invisible by putting a box over your head.
Questioning the methodology behind an assertion isn't necessarily being defensive about the issue.
They certainly act like they do.
You seem to be stuck on the idea that any of this is about punishment. It's a theme that pops up in several of your posts here, while the people replying to you don't even mention punishment.
Punishment has nothing to do with blame and vice versa, rendering all your arguments about who should be punished completely moot. It doesn't matter who should be punished, since that has absolutely nothing to do with what people (other than you) are talking about in this thread.
I agree that in general, vicims of crime should not be blamed. However, there are exceptions to everything. Comparing this crime to something like rape, murder, robbery, burglary, etc is being intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
In a lot of ways, this shouldn't even be considered a crime. Group A told an utterly illogical lie to person B. Person B gave group A money. Persons C, D, and E told person B she was an idiot and should stop. Rinse and repeat until the money's gone.
She has nobody to blame but herself.
There is no moral high ground to claim. This isn't a moral issue. It's an issue of someone acting through blind greed, who repeatedly and stubbornly resisted all attempts to get her to think rationally.
It's nice to see someone like NYCL take such an in-your-face position against the RIAA's actions and come out on top.
Because this is Slashdot, and Idle no less?
That pretty closely mirrors how I look at it.
If I could wave a magic wand and make all drugs disappear (we'll assume medically useful drugs no longer have effects that are prone to abuse as well) I'm pretty sure I would.
If I could do the same for small arms I would in a heartbeat. I'm not anti-gun by any means, quite the contrary, but the only way I could see removing small arms from civilian hands as a good thing is if ALL small arms disappeared from ALL hands. I wouldn't consider it abandoning the right to self defense, which would both still exist and still be necessary. It would simply remove a broad class of items used both in offense and defense.
I've pretty much gotten used to people holding self-contradicting and/or directly conflicting beliefs in regards to political policy. Most people don't seem to be able or willing to see parallels in the arguments they use to support or attack to the arguments someone diametrically opposed to them uses.
You forgot another:
8. When the voter registrations of your fraudulent names are not validated, go to prison for election fraud.
I have to thank you for being much more (at least from my perspective) civil in this reply. I know I was a bit less tactful than usual last night, which I'm sure didn't help matters.
In general I tend to agree with most of what you just wrote.
Well, the current situation did not amplify drug use. In fact, the current situation is pretty good as there is a social stigma related to this kind of substance and sale isn't widespread. The price is high, considering that industrial production could make cocaine doses cost something like US$ 0,20 instead of several dollars.
I wasn't clear on what I meant was being amplified. I wasn't referring to usage itself, which would obviously increase (to what extent nobody has any realistic idea) with legalization. I was actually referring to all of the myriad problems that arise as a result of the illegality: overcrowded prisons, random checkpoints in certain states, mandatory minimum sentences (exacerbating problem #1), increased crime from addicts as a result of artificially increased prices, crime from the people who make, import, and distribute the drugs, increased tensions between many communities and law enforcement personnel, corruption within narcotics units, unnecessary felony convictions that prevent people from obtaining schooling or decent employment, etc. The list goes on and on regarding things in society, especially specific (typically poor) segments of society, that are directly or indirectly harmed as a result of the current situation.
The blame should be squarely set on the fact that lots of "recreational users" are rich and/or connected to politicians / important people from the police. That's why those kinds of illegal business are thriving: because we are not arresting everyone who is buying drugs. It's hard to tell cops and judges to put all those users in jail when your family is part of the user base.
Plus the cops and judges themselves. Even more evidence that the current approach works just as well as Prohibition didn't. It's also not the rich or well-connected driving the market. The people who are not rich or connected vastly outnumber those who are, and most of them lead normal lives without ever coming under police scrutiny. I'd hazard to guess they support a much, much larger portion of the marijuana industry than the rich.
So I guess that, considering that you are a consistent person, having GWB ignoring the constitution is just like having yuppies buying their special cigs from the nearest mugger-murderer-dealer: pretty much justifiable. I mean, "expecting otherwise is foolish".
I agree that expecting higher standards from GWB is as foolish as the expectation that making drugs illegal will make the problem go away rather than amplify it. Unless you can erase the history of Prohibition with its before and after, there will always be incontrovertible proof that you are wrong, and that current policy does far more harm than the alternative. There aren't that many ways to say it: You are wrong and history provides more than enough evidence to bury your argument. Unfortunately, there are too many people like you who are not willing to look at history and see the parallels and what was done to fix the problem the last time around.
"He MUST be a druggie to hold those opinions!"
As for your statement that I probably have a thing for coke or pot, you couldn't be further from the truth. I don't like drugs, I don't like to be around people who are using drugs. That includes alcohol. Guess your Spidey-sense for those nasty law-breakers isn't so attuned after all.
There can always be a case made for breaking certain laws. Has happened throughout US history, and upon reflection people today tend to agree that certain laws were dead wrong and deserved to be ignored. Current and future events will be no different.
Since our current system is "how it works", it sounds like you're saying you will follow any law that is enacted, regardless of the consequences. After all, it's what "society" decided. Right? Any answer other than a resounding "yes" makes your whole argument seem, well, just a tad less convincing.
The reason why criminal enterprises are making a lot of money is this whole "recreational use" bullshit.
I'll single this out to reply to, since the rest of your comment is an interesting conglomeration of insight and blind ignorance that is not worth the time to parse and respond to.
The reason criminal enterprises make a lot of money is because there is high demand for an illegal substance. Period. If it was not illegal, the price would drop through the floor, and criminal enterprises would move on to other businesses that were more profitable. Just. Like. Prohibition.
What made rum-running extraordinarily lucrative and helped build criminal syndicates during Prohibition? The fact that alcohol was illegal. You can blame demand ("recreational use") all you want, but that's just pissing into the wind. The blame should be squarely set on the legislature and every single person who supports the law as it stands.
If water was banned, people would go to the criminal enterprises to get it because there is demand. The demand for drugs might fluctuate, but it will never go away, just like the demand for water. Expecting otherwise is foolish, so common sense dictates that the problems created by the current supply system be solved some other way than a ban. Then again, common sense isn't very common.