You honestly believe that a) this will perfectly eliminate all forms of phishing and won't just create an arms race, and b) people who currently fall for these (usually blatantly obvious) phishing scams won't fall for some other trick that will become the new trend when phishing is perfectly eliminated?
Because average users have issues with it and they are people this proposal are trying to protect.
If any security is going to happen for average user, it must be forced upon them. Otherwise, "it's too hard"
All of this just to ensure that a fool and his money are not parted. What a waste.
If you're going to get "big players" involved in anything, how about user education? It's pretty damned hard to fall for a phishing attack when you have a clue about how the protocols work and can look for red flags. Any other solution? It will be an arms race.
Humans naturally want to learn. It's innate in our being and yet, we get to school and hate it - at least 90% of us do. (The other 10% are the A students. )
When we're left to our own devices and learning something that we're interested in, do we learn like we do in school? I don't. It's all one big discovery. And the wonderful thing about the internet, it makes following curiosities even easier - until you tired and head over to Fark.
This is easily the most insightful yet commonsense comment in the entire discussion. Modern schooling sucks the life and soul out of learning and produces factory-style people who have forgotten what curiosity and the joy of discovery is all about.
I believe that's by design. It results in people who can't or won't educate themselves, who were raised to believe that education is something another person must give to you. They're simply easier to rule, especially when propaganda (particularly framing) and soundbites are your major tools.
I think that it has everything to do with the fact that most people will whore out their privacy and dignity in exchange for attention.
... which they wouldn't desperately need if they were honest about who they are and cultivated meaningful, healthy relationships with people they truly care about.
Instead, the general model is to be phony, to say things and do things and adopt mannerisms as part of putting on a show in order to impress people, win their approval, present a front of conformity to be counted as "one of them" ("them" being whatever sub-culture they subscribe to), and most of all to say things they say because they are inoffensive and expected, not because they are true. This leads to shallow relationships where you take turns exploiting each other to feel better about your lives and feel likable or fulfilled, and count your willingness to be used by the other person as "love" or "graciousness" while demanding they do the same.
While it may feel real, any "caring" there is completely phony because it's a means to an end. Just like most people who say they're sorry aren't sorry they did something wrong; they're sorry they got caught. It's all a matter of responding to the strongest or the most steady social pressure. There is no self-hood in it. It's pressure acting hand-in-glove through the self in lieu of real self-realization.
After a while, this is accepted as normal and, lacking much basis for comparison (plus having no real desire to seek them out), people forget how phony and type-cast they are.
Facebook is just like cheerleading in that otherwise intelligent women will proudly and gratuitously display their underarms and crotches to legions of horny boys and pervert papas.
Of course. For women with no real spiritual life, inner joy, or self-respect, titillating and being a sex object is the only way they know how to be celebrated or to feel appreciated. In fact most of them are addicted to the feeling of power they get from the attention they can command. That's why most women hate sluts because sluts give away for free what could be parcelled out in exchange for power.
Understanding how this works is not a function of the intellect. It's more within the realm of EQ or so-called emotional intelligence, what old timers would call plain old wisdom and maturity (back when everyone was expected to have those by adulthood). They could have IQs of 250 and still fail to understand this because it's not a matter of reasoning or figuring something out. It's a matter of insight and discernment. I assure you, no college teaches those because they cannot be taught as a series of memorized steps the same way you'd learn how to operate a machine.
The government's only role in the equation should be to ensure that the drugs sold are in fact what they say they are.
I'd go so far as to say they don't have any business with this, either. If the government's hands were completely out of it, we could rely on branding and trade marks to let us know which products to trust.
The problem with relying solely on reputation is that it raises the barriers to entry for an upstart. It's also unreasonable to expect someone to risk their health and/or their life in order to find out whether what they ingested is what it claims to be. I think that makes this somewhat special, and not like a new car that breaks down the day you buy it where you're alive and well enough to seek recourse against the dealer.
I don't personally want anarcho-capitalism. I want a strictly limited government that only establishes a minimal standard for doing business. Specifically, that standard is that force, threat of force, and fraud have no place in a legitimate market.
Someone sells pills filled with rat poison and advertises it as aspirin? Yes, I have no problem prosecuting that guy. The intent to cause harm to adults who did NOT consent to be harmed is there. That's what makes it a crime.
Someone sells pills advertised as oxycodone that are, in fact, oxycodone and somebody buys them and overdoses? Let the buyer beware. Don't prosecute the seller. He was honest about the product. The user should have done his homework and understood what he was dealing with. The user made a choice not to inform himself and he reaped the consequences of that choice. He is a consenting adult who had a choice and chose to harm himself. There is no crime there.
Yep. I'm still deciding if I want to delete my twitter account or not.
The "tell" is when a company springs up overnight and is suddenly what EVERYONE MUST HAVE and instantly becomes some kind of HUGE FUCKING TREND. Those tend to be a waste of my time. What everyone "must" have tends to change rather suddenly. "Everyone else is doing it!" wasn't a good enough reason for me back in elementary school and it's not a good enough reason for me now. This includes things like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Besides which, neither Facebook nor Twitter are doing anything novel or technically interesting. They did not invent the ability to submit an HTTP form and have the result appear on an HTML page.
No matter what anyone says. Today Twitter looks far more evil than Google.
Not for those who don't use it.
If I decided that Twitter, what Twitter does, or the content users of Twitter publish were important and indispensible to my life and my well-being, then yes, I could possibly be tempted to view things like this as an immense evil inflicted on my being. I could also snap out of that kind of thinking and realize Twitter has no power over me except what I elected it to have, and that in such a case I should have chosen more carefully.
Twitter is nothing like the governments themselves in that sense. I am under no obligation to have any interaction with Twitter. I can't simply ignore my government in the same manner because they have people for that.
Because free speech is a natural right that all human beings are born with. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with "western values" (whatever the hell those are). The fact is that all human beings have the ability to engage in free speech
I like what you say and in fact, I know the truth of it myself. But what you're doing there isn't going to work on that sort of person. What you're doing is speaking to them like they are reasonable adults. Maybe you believe they will rise to the occasion given the opportunity. What they believe is not reasonable. That's why it can't work, no matter how true and reasonable it is. The only way to change anything is to recognize you are dealing with a phony system and invalidate it.
The fact is, the recognition and respect of natural rights like free speech plays out in a certain predictable way. It ends up being better for everyone and the only things it "costs you" are things you're better off without, such as unnecessary coercion. This is a fact that is true because you are human and have a pulse. The problem is, the people who sympathize with tyranny and hide its vices behind a veil of relativism think that's only my opinion.
They couldn't imagine this set of initial conditions always producing the same result each time it's faithfully tried. They think that's my "Western values of individualism" even though real individuality is hard to find in most "Western" nations these days. The fact that all people are better off when treated with a certain respect that honors their rights and their dignity is more than an opinion.
The one thing I never understood is this lack of awareness of interconnectedness. That's why I never could fully grasp how a man could want to create and live in a total totalitarian state with all the misery it creates so long as he is in charge of it. Living in such a state is bad enough, let alone the personal responsibility for helping to create it. You'd truly have to believe that each man is a perfectly isolated island for any such desire to make a shred of sense.
It doesn't have to because of a scam, it could just be an exotic allergy someone has and the pills could work great for the other 99% of the population.
The last candy bar I bought disclosed its potential allergens. "May have been processed on equipment used to handle peanuts and/or tree nuts" or something to that effect. A pharmacy can't handle what a candy company does daily? It couldn't be a requirement for them while retaining everyone else's freedoms? Sure it could.
Besides, I don't understand your logic. I really, really don't. You want to keep the abusive, bought-and-paid-for pharmaceutical monopoly and deny natural rights (to do with your body what you will) to consenting adults because of weird, exotic personal problems a tiny minority may or may not ever experience? That... that blows my mind. Please tell me you're not going to pull a "greater good" type of justification for that.
When there's no verification that what's in the box actually corresponds to what's claimed on the box people will get killed.
That's called fraud. I have no problem with prosecuting fraud. Fraud is fraud, whether somebody rolls back the odometer on their car or whether someone sells aspirin and claims it is an antibiotic. Fraud is not special just because the fradulent item is ingestible. If intentional fraud leads to a death, I have no problem with it becoming a murder or manslaughter case. Again, there's nothing special about it just because drugs, those taboo objects moral busybodies can't be comfortable with, happen to be involved.
When people can just decide for themselves how to dose or rely an inexpert advice instead of that of a doctor or pharmacist people will get killed.
If I could walk down the street and legally purchase ANY substance I wanted, including drugs that are currently illegal, with no questions asked, nothing to fear from the police, and I had a serious illness... do you know what I would do? I would go visit a doctor, not to get access (a prescription) to a restricted drug, but to get access to his knowledge of medicine. I would still consult with a professional expert about what unrestricted, freely-available substance I should take to treat my serious illness and how much I should take. I have no sympathy whatsoever for some idiot who is too careless and irresponsible to do the same. Such a person deserves whatever they get. It's not my job to tell them how to live. It's not yours either.
You mention government tyranny? Tyranny always needs a justification, however flimsy. You know what ultimately causes every kind of tyranny? The belief that people should never be expected to have personal responsibility or exercise some good sense, that they should always be threatened with some kind of punishment to make sure they look after their own interests. It's a fucking abomination wrapped in feel-good language that spreads among the naive like a virus.
You don't think people only buy drugs for themselves, do you?
It's called chlorine in the gene pool. Hate it all you want, throw as many emotional reactions to it as you like. Climb up on your high horse and decry how terribly evil it is that people who do stupid things might harm themselves (harming yourself = no victim = no injustice). I don't care. If you think that's bad, the only thing worse is the alternative.
The government's only role in the equation should be to ensure that the drugs sold are in fact what they say they are. But that's only because it would be an instance of fraud if they weren't. Fraud is plain old fraud, there is nothing special about it merely because the fradulent item happens to be an ingestible substance. Prosecuting fraud is well within the legitimate law enforcement powers of government.
So long as no fraud is taking place, I fully agree with GP - let them advertise what they want and let people purchase what they like. Otherwise if you want to go on a moral crusade to protect adults from their own stupid decision-making, online pharmacies would be near the bottom of your list. You could start with banning all automobiles -- stupid people hurt themselves with cars quite a bit more often, you know. Oh and don't forget swimming pools! I'd hazard a guess more people drown in swimming pools each year than die from buying prescriptions online. There will be no death on this planet!
I doubt you want to admit it but electing yourself the protector of other adults, against their will, is effectively a claim that you are a better human being than they are, they are not your equal, and you should therefore rightfully be their personal dictator in charge of running their lives. There is no way around it. All "you must be protected from yourself!" sentiments boil down to this and have their basis in it, though usually there is a great deal of denial hidden behind feel-good "I'm a good guy who means well, really!" type of intentions.
I don't care how sweet and kind your intentions are; that is an evil far worse than consenting adults putting substances into their bodies.
And why would you want to buy them without a prescription? That seems pretty silly, really.
That question is not relevant. The relevant question is, "if consenting adults want to do this with their own bodies and their own finances, why would you want to send men with guns after them to stop them by force or threat of force?" That's what needs justification.
The reason DVDs in Africa are so cheap is that Africans can't afford to pay a month's salary for a DVD. The reason DVDs in the US are so much more expensive is that the movie companies need to have somebody pay for the making of the movies.
"You see, the exploitation is for your own good, really!" Not buying it.
The reason drugs in Canada are so cheap is that Canada has a single-payer system (the government) and they refuse to pay very much to get drugs. Since drug companies still want to get some money from Canada, they sell to Canada above cost but well below what it would take to recoup the R&D costs on the drugs. The reason drugs are so expensive in the US is that drug companies need to have somebody pay for R&D.
US pharmaceutical companies spend a LOT more on advertising than they spend on R&D. Which makes no damned sense whatsoever, considering you are supposed to go to a medical professional who selects and prescribes a drug to you based on its proven medical effectiveness. Advertising to the public should have no place here, only merit and fitness for purpose.
The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.
You see, when they say "globalism" and "global economy" what they mean is that corporations can off-shore to get the cheapest prices available for human labor.
When humans want to do things the other way around by making an "off-shore" international purchase to get the cheapest prices available for goods, that's a crime and suddenly the government wants to enforce a brand of protectionism.
NOTE: I am not comparing copyright infringement to murder. I am simply comparing choosing to disobey one set of laws to another.
Why do this? Why bother trying to accommodate the knee-jerk crowd who have problems with reading comprehension? Let them get their panties in a wad. They need it. The humiliation they store up for themselves is good for them. They don't deserve to be comfortable and neither does anyone else who is reactive, impulsive or tries to put words in your mouth (and proceeds to blame you for those words as if they didn't just put them there).
Besides, Slashdot has taught me one thing: even if you had ten lines of disclaimer for each line of your actual post, it won't stop them. They refuse to notice what you didn't say in addition to what you said, or that there might be a reason for it. They won't notice either if you explicitly tell them that you did not, in fact, say something. They'll just act like lawyers and find the one little loophole your disclaimer didn't cover. That's what they do. Just like lawyers, they don't actually produce anything useful or interesting. There's no point in catering to their tastes. It's power they don't deserve and don't actually have.
and people think Ron Paul is the crazy one for wanting America's fingers out of other country's pies.
Only because they maintain the illusion that, as average citizens, the US Government somehow represents them. So long as they believe that and believe the system is not broken, they think "America's fingers" are "their own fingers". And hey, since it's your own, it must be good according to you, right? Clearly anyone who objects to that is mistaken, ignorant, un-educated, etc...
This sort of thing is going to spark widespread international hatred for the United States. No, not the general dislike that many countries have for us now, but honest-to-god hatred. Look what good things came out of that situation in the mideast.
Don't worry. If they get so desperate and psychotic that they do something drastic about that, we'll be reassured that they merely hate us because of our great freedoms. Since we are currently reducing those, they should love us soon enough. In the meantime, it will provide a wonderful justification for more military action which means more pointless wars which means more pointless spending and bloodshed which means more defense spending which may help our economy. That's what matters. If you don't think so, you're against us.
If someone has the right to freedom of expression to offend against my personal beliefs, surely I have the right to freedom of expression to express my sense of offence/outrage or whatever? It's not like saying that you can't offend me, merely that you can't offend me without expecting some sort of response.
Sure, but remember that many times a response is exactly what they want from you. As an analogy, how much trolling do you suppose would happen today if no one ever, EVER, under any circumstances, fed the trolls? Then there's the question of how secure you are about your beliefs. If you reject a mainstream point of view in favor of a better one, you might catch some flak for it. Do you have the strength to accept that or do you need the approval of random strangers?
When you predictably receive some flak for challenging a worldview, are you surprised and offended and shocked by that? If not, then where's the outrage and offense? Is it that not everyone agrees with you? There are over 6.5 billion people in the world. At any given time, at least some of them will disagree with you or decide they don't like you. There's nothing you can do about that. Are you then going to be offended and upset 24/7? Or at some point do you have to find your own peace and your own security? If you have that, you'll be surprised at just how difficult it is for anyone to offend you. The nastier they get with you, the more they are telling the world about themselves and not about you.
Unlike some people on slashdot, my definition of freedom of speech is not "I can say what I like without any possibility of repurcussions". You can annoy someone with your speech so much that they will kill you for it, it's always a good idea to remember that.
Sure, and in gang-infested cities there are people who would menace or even shoot somebody just for making eye contact. Obviously that doesn't make it right. So we make an effort to maintain law and civility. It's not a perfect effort and crimes do happen. But what you're describing there is a crime for a legitimate reason. What you're describing there gives the target the right to defend himself for a legitimate reason. This isn't some bullshit copyright law or victimless crime.
The reason I think law-abiding citizens should have guns is because of the truth in that saying: when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. But then, I digress.
their freedom of expression trumps my personal likes and dislikes.
So racism is ok...?
It's more of a "two wrongs don't make a right" situation.
No, racism is not ok; it is wrong. But does a racist have the right to free speech just as you and I have the right to free speech? Yes. What's your alternative? The wrong of censorship by force (or threat of force, i.e. law) is even worse than a racist you don't have to listen to. It would be like curing the disease by killing the patient.
If you allow a few racists to destroy free speech, you have given them more power than they ever dreamed of. I like the way it currently works: if you are a racist or other kind of bigot, people will quickly stop listening to you and you become essentially invisible. This isn't broken and doesn't need fixing.
Because, as we all know, the world is run by well meaning left-wing intellectuals, who are busily suppressing the poor downtrodden immensely wealthy establishment right wing capitalists and politicians.
I think the world is run by people who might conceivably have occasional meetings and get-togethers. If you were nearby during those meetings, you might overhear phrases like:
"HAHAHAHA man, they STILL think that whole left-right spectrum thing is valid and provides any real answers to anything. Oh man, that's a good one! When we came up with that I was skeptical to say the least but it really took hold. It might even keep them in the dark, squabbling with each other over meaningless trivialities, for another century! Just in the nick of time too since they finally rejected feudalism and centralized religious rule. Long as we can divide them we can keep conquering them, just like in the old days of bread-and-circus. Genius!"
Two points and a line defines one dimension. One-dimensional thinking is properly understood as a weakness, a tragic and artificial limitation of the possibilities of human thought and perception. I dearly hope it won't take a Fourth Reich for the mainstream to figure that out...
I never understood why people refuse to believe something could ever be the case because its labeled as a stereotype, lets take the goldigger example. Women have a biological imperative to find a mate capable of supporting her offspring, we see this behavior in just about every species out there, so why do we think the human female would be ANY different in this regard?
I remember once an AC answered a post like yours. It was an AC or else I'd give a proper attribution.
The response was "you're using reason to counter an emotional argument. Sadly, this will not work, because those who will be swayed by emotional arguments are not mature enough to be reasoned with in an adult manner."
I don't see anything sexist in simply acknowledging we are different.
Academic careers have been ruined simply for suggesting that the female brain is "wired" differently from the male brain. I wish I were making this up. No amount of incontrovertible physical evidence will stop this kind of hyper-emotional over-reaction. What you're dealing with is like a religion and anyone who does not adhere to it is a heretic. I know many would like to believe we abandoned this type of approach after the Dark Ages but the reality is that it simply changed form.
Narrow-minded types always tend to believe things like "equality implies same-ness", causing them to feel threatened by any valid claim of differences (which incidentally is why weak-minded people worship conformity). As far as they're concerned, any difference you point out is the same as saying one is inferior to the other. That's the doctrine of this religion.
It's hard not to sound a little preachy when you're dealing with such emotionally-driven unreasonable people who think they're so justified. Try it yourself sometime; I'd be interested in whether you remain as calm and centered. While I understand your complaint, it goes with that territory. You may as well complain about the strong breeze every time you go skydiving.
To answer the question you posed... my better example is that I don't pretend to be "hurt" by the words of another person so I can guilt-trip or shame them into modifying their behavior to suit my personal tastes. Not even when I really, really don't like what they said and why they said it. That's mine to get over because their freedom of expression trumps my personal likes and dislikes.
Unless someone tries to use force or fraud to cause me material harm, I have absolutely no reason to look for ways to make them do anything. "I'm offended!" is how cowards aspire to be bullies.
Saying something is a stereotype is not the same as saying it's never true. People often forget that.
People tend to conveniently "forget" anything that gives them an excuse to be offended.
For a certain kind of person who has little or no power elsewhere, being "offended" is extremely gratifying. It gives them an excuse to demand that someone else change their behavior. Your post practically served it to this type on a silver platter. It usually takes less temptation than you gave for their control motive to manifest.
Personally I thought your post was humorous but then I'm not looking to tell other people how they should live, what they should think, what they should say, how they should feel, etc. If I really had a problem with something you said, I would ignore you and move on to someone I prefer. Life is not politically correct, the world is not fair, and other people have this habit of not often doing what you wish they would do. I made my peace with that a long time ago.
If I want to provide a contrast, I do it by setting a better example. Otherwise I live and let live. So for me it's easy to see the bullshit behind "I'm offended" and its variants. The only time "I'm offended" is valid is when someone is forcing you to listen, and in that case, the problem is that they are forcing you to listen.
You have to hand it to the actual controllers of things. They operate with a level of mastery that would be beautiful if it weren't so goddamned terrible and dehumanizing.
"Terrible" and "Terrorist" (and "Terror") share a root. I wonder if that's cogent here, especially considering the actor(s).
I can tell you I feel much more threatened by my government than I do by anybody on the other side of the world. That's not a matter of opinion -- I don't consider the reverse proposal to be rational at all.
All social media sites are now just playgrounds for marketing teams. There are multi billion dollar indusries built around promoting products/slandering competitors while pretending to be part of the onine community. Most of the big tech companies use sockpuppet accounts to "manage discussion" on Slashdot already.
Why would you care if the government joins them?
I'll stop caring once I have a proven, valid, and honest answer from the Government as to why they are wasting tax dollars data mining "playgrounds for marketing teams". If it's so "innocent", then why do they care enough to waste a few billion jumping in these discussions? Perhaps that is the more prudent question to ask and focus on.
No shit. "Well it's all public data anyway, no expectation of privacy, so neener!" Yeah, that does explain how they can easily do it. It does not explain why they care to and what they hope to accomplish. The former is not an effective dismissal of the latter no matter how hard you try.
Slashdot Mirror
seems like a fairly simple choice to me.
You honestly believe that a) this will perfectly eliminate all forms of phishing and won't just create an arms race, and b) people who currently fall for these (usually blatantly obvious) phishing scams won't fall for some other trick that will become the new trend when phishing is perfectly eliminated?
You really must enjoy games of whack-a-mole.
Because average users have issues with it and they are people this proposal are trying to protect.
If any security is going to happen for average user, it must be forced upon them. Otherwise, "it's too hard"
All of this just to ensure that a fool and his money are not parted. What a waste.
If you're going to get "big players" involved in anything, how about user education? It's pretty damned hard to fall for a phishing attack when you have a clue about how the protocols work and can look for red flags. Any other solution? It will be an arms race.
Thanks to the old system, it was easy.
Not to me.
Endless rote memorization: writing, flash cards, drills, ugh!
Humans naturally want to learn. It's innate in our being and yet, we get to school and hate it - at least 90% of us do. (The other 10% are the A students. )
When we're left to our own devices and learning something that we're interested in, do we learn like we do in school? I don't. It's all one big discovery. And the wonderful thing about the internet, it makes following curiosities even easier - until you tired and head over to Fark.
This is easily the most insightful yet commonsense comment in the entire discussion. Modern schooling sucks the life and soul out of learning and produces factory-style people who have forgotten what curiosity and the joy of discovery is all about.
I believe that's by design. It results in people who can't or won't educate themselves, who were raised to believe that education is something another person must give to you. They're simply easier to rule, especially when propaganda (particularly framing) and soundbites are your major tools.
I think that it has everything to do with the fact that most people will whore out their privacy and dignity in exchange for attention.
... which they wouldn't desperately need if they were honest about who they are and cultivated meaningful, healthy relationships with people they truly care about.
Instead, the general model is to be phony, to say things and do things and adopt mannerisms as part of putting on a show in order to impress people, win their approval, present a front of conformity to be counted as "one of them" ("them" being whatever sub-culture they subscribe to), and most of all to say things they say because they are inoffensive and expected, not because they are true. This leads to shallow relationships where you take turns exploiting each other to feel better about your lives and feel likable or fulfilled, and count your willingness to be used by the other person as "love" or "graciousness" while demanding they do the same.
While it may feel real, any "caring" there is completely phony because it's a means to an end. Just like most people who say they're sorry aren't sorry they did something wrong; they're sorry they got caught. It's all a matter of responding to the strongest or the most steady social pressure. There is no self-hood in it. It's pressure acting hand-in-glove through the self in lieu of real self-realization.
After a while, this is accepted as normal and, lacking much basis for comparison (plus having no real desire to seek them out), people forget how phony and type-cast they are.
Facebook is just like cheerleading in that otherwise intelligent women will proudly and gratuitously display their underarms and crotches to legions of horny boys and pervert papas.
Of course. For women with no real spiritual life, inner joy, or self-respect, titillating and being a sex object is the only way they know how to be celebrated or to feel appreciated. In fact most of them are addicted to the feeling of power they get from the attention they can command. That's why most women hate sluts because sluts give away for free what could be parcelled out in exchange for power.
Understanding how this works is not a function of the intellect. It's more within the realm of EQ or so-called emotional intelligence, what old timers would call plain old wisdom and maturity (back when everyone was expected to have those by adulthood). They could have IQs of 250 and still fail to understand this because it's not a matter of reasoning or figuring something out. It's a matter of insight and discernment. I assure you, no college teaches those because they cannot be taught as a series of memorized steps the same way you'd learn how to operate a machine.
Good argument.
The government's only role in the equation should be to ensure that the drugs sold are in fact what they say they are.
I'd go so far as to say they don't have any business with this, either. If the government's hands were completely out of it, we could rely on branding and trade marks to let us know which products to trust.
The problem with relying solely on reputation is that it raises the barriers to entry for an upstart. It's also unreasonable to expect someone to risk their health and/or their life in order to find out whether what they ingested is what it claims to be. I think that makes this somewhat special, and not like a new car that breaks down the day you buy it where you're alive and well enough to seek recourse against the dealer.
I don't personally want anarcho-capitalism. I want a strictly limited government that only establishes a minimal standard for doing business. Specifically, that standard is that force, threat of force, and fraud have no place in a legitimate market.
Someone sells pills filled with rat poison and advertises it as aspirin? Yes, I have no problem prosecuting that guy. The intent to cause harm to adults who did NOT consent to be harmed is there. That's what makes it a crime.
Someone sells pills advertised as oxycodone that are, in fact, oxycodone and somebody buys them and overdoses? Let the buyer beware. Don't prosecute the seller. He was honest about the product. The user should have done his homework and understood what he was dealing with. The user made a choice not to inform himself and he reaped the consequences of that choice. He is a consenting adult who had a choice and chose to harm himself. There is no crime there.
Yep. I'm still deciding if I want to delete my twitter account or not.
The "tell" is when a company springs up overnight and is suddenly what EVERYONE MUST HAVE and instantly becomes some kind of HUGE FUCKING TREND. Those tend to be a waste of my time. What everyone "must" have tends to change rather suddenly. "Everyone else is doing it!" wasn't a good enough reason for me back in elementary school and it's not a good enough reason for me now. This includes things like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Besides which, neither Facebook nor Twitter are doing anything novel or technically interesting. They did not invent the ability to submit an HTTP form and have the result appear on an HTML page.
Agreed.
No matter what anyone says. Today Twitter looks far more evil than Google.
Not for those who don't use it.
If I decided that Twitter, what Twitter does, or the content users of Twitter publish were important and indispensible to my life and my well-being, then yes, I could possibly be tempted to view things like this as an immense evil inflicted on my being. I could also snap out of that kind of thinking and realize Twitter has no power over me except what I elected it to have, and that in such a case I should have chosen more carefully.
Twitter is nothing like the governments themselves in that sense. I am under no obligation to have any interaction with Twitter. I can't simply ignore my government in the same manner because they have people for that.
Because free speech is a natural right that all human beings are born with. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with "western values" (whatever the hell those are). The fact is that all human beings have the ability to engage in free speech
I like what you say and in fact, I know the truth of it myself. But what you're doing there isn't going to work on that sort of person. What you're doing is speaking to them like they are reasonable adults. Maybe you believe they will rise to the occasion given the opportunity. What they believe is not reasonable. That's why it can't work, no matter how true and reasonable it is. The only way to change anything is to recognize you are dealing with a phony system and invalidate it.
The fact is, the recognition and respect of natural rights like free speech plays out in a certain predictable way. It ends up being better for everyone and the only things it "costs you" are things you're better off without, such as unnecessary coercion. This is a fact that is true because you are human and have a pulse. The problem is, the people who sympathize with tyranny and hide its vices behind a veil of relativism think that's only my opinion.
They couldn't imagine this set of initial conditions always producing the same result each time it's faithfully tried. They think that's my "Western values of individualism" even though real individuality is hard to find in most "Western" nations these days. The fact that all people are better off when treated with a certain respect that honors their rights and their dignity is more than an opinion.
The one thing I never understood is this lack of awareness of interconnectedness. That's why I never could fully grasp how a man could want to create and live in a total totalitarian state with all the misery it creates so long as he is in charge of it. Living in such a state is bad enough, let alone the personal responsibility for helping to create it. You'd truly have to believe that each man is a perfectly isolated island for any such desire to make a shred of sense.
It doesn't have to because of a scam, it could just be an exotic allergy someone has and the pills could work great for the other 99% of the population.
The last candy bar I bought disclosed its potential allergens. "May have been processed on equipment used to handle peanuts and/or tree nuts" or something to that effect. A pharmacy can't handle what a candy company does daily? It couldn't be a requirement for them while retaining everyone else's freedoms? Sure it could.
... that blows my mind. Please tell me you're not going to pull a "greater good" type of justification for that.
Besides, I don't understand your logic. I really, really don't. You want to keep the abusive, bought-and-paid-for pharmaceutical monopoly and deny natural rights (to do with your body what you will) to consenting adults because of weird, exotic personal problems a tiny minority may or may not ever experience? That
When there's no verification that what's in the box actually corresponds to what's claimed on the box people will get killed.
That's called fraud. I have no problem with prosecuting fraud. Fraud is fraud, whether somebody rolls back the odometer on their car or whether someone sells aspirin and claims it is an antibiotic. Fraud is not special just because the fradulent item is ingestible. If intentional fraud leads to a death, I have no problem with it becoming a murder or manslaughter case. Again, there's nothing special about it just because drugs, those taboo objects moral busybodies can't be comfortable with, happen to be involved.
When people can just decide for themselves how to dose or rely an inexpert advice instead of that of a doctor or pharmacist people will get killed.
If I could walk down the street and legally purchase ANY substance I wanted, including drugs that are currently illegal, with no questions asked, nothing to fear from the police, and I had a serious illness ... do you know what I would do? I would go visit a doctor, not to get access (a prescription) to a restricted drug, but to get access to his knowledge of medicine. I would still consult with a professional expert about what unrestricted, freely-available substance I should take to treat my serious illness and how much I should take. I have no sympathy whatsoever for some idiot who is too careless and irresponsible to do the same. Such a person deserves whatever they get. It's not my job to tell them how to live. It's not yours either.
You mention government tyranny? Tyranny always needs a justification, however flimsy. You know what ultimately causes every kind of tyranny? The belief that people should never be expected to have personal responsibility or exercise some good sense, that they should always be threatened with some kind of punishment to make sure they look after their own interests. It's a fucking abomination wrapped in feel-good language that spreads among the naive like a virus.
Yeah, that's a great way to get people to die.
You don't think people only buy drugs for themselves, do you?
It's called chlorine in the gene pool. Hate it all you want, throw as many emotional reactions to it as you like. Climb up on your high horse and decry how terribly evil it is that people who do stupid things might harm themselves (harming yourself = no victim = no injustice). I don't care. If you think that's bad, the only thing worse is the alternative.
The government's only role in the equation should be to ensure that the drugs sold are in fact what they say they are. But that's only because it would be an instance of fraud if they weren't. Fraud is plain old fraud, there is nothing special about it merely because the fradulent item happens to be an ingestible substance. Prosecuting fraud is well within the legitimate law enforcement powers of government.
So long as no fraud is taking place, I fully agree with GP - let them advertise what they want and let people purchase what they like. Otherwise if you want to go on a moral crusade to protect adults from their own stupid decision-making, online pharmacies would be near the bottom of your list. You could start with banning all automobiles -- stupid people hurt themselves with cars quite a bit more often, you know. Oh and don't forget swimming pools! I'd hazard a guess more people drown in swimming pools each year than die from buying prescriptions online. There will be no death on this planet!
I doubt you want to admit it but electing yourself the protector of other adults, against their will, is effectively a claim that you are a better human being than they are, they are not your equal, and you should therefore rightfully be their personal dictator in charge of running their lives. There is no way around it. All "you must be protected from yourself!" sentiments boil down to this and have their basis in it, though usually there is a great deal of denial hidden behind feel-good "I'm a good guy who means well, really!" type of intentions.
I don't care how sweet and kind your intentions are; that is an evil far worse than consenting adults putting substances into their bodies.
And why would you want to buy them without a prescription? That seems pretty silly, really.
That question is not relevant. The relevant question is, "if consenting adults want to do this with their own bodies and their own finances, why would you want to send men with guns after them to stop them by force or threat of force?" That's what needs justification.
The reason DVDs in Africa are so cheap is that Africans can't afford to pay a month's salary for a DVD. The reason DVDs in the US are so much more expensive is that the movie companies need to have somebody pay for the making of the movies.
"You see, the exploitation is for your own good, really!" Not buying it.
The reason drugs in Canada are so cheap is that Canada has a single-payer system (the government) and they refuse to pay very much to get drugs. Since drug companies still want to get some money from Canada, they sell to Canada above cost but well below what it would take to recoup the R&D costs on the drugs. The reason drugs are so expensive in the US is that drug companies need to have somebody pay for R&D.
US pharmaceutical companies spend a LOT more on advertising than they spend on R&D. Which makes no damned sense whatsoever, considering you are supposed to go to a medical professional who selects and prescribes a drug to you based on its proven medical effectiveness. Advertising to the public should have no place here, only merit and fitness for purpose.
The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.
You see, when they say "globalism" and "global economy" what they mean is that corporations can off-shore to get the cheapest prices available for human labor.
When humans want to do things the other way around by making an "off-shore" international purchase to get the cheapest prices available for goods, that's a crime and suddenly the government wants to enforce a brand of protectionism.
It's standard hypocrisy.
Yeah I read the summary. What is wrong with you?
NOTE: I am not comparing copyright infringement to murder. I am simply comparing choosing to disobey one set of laws to another.
Why do this? Why bother trying to accommodate the knee-jerk crowd who have problems with reading comprehension? Let them get their panties in a wad. They need it. The humiliation they store up for themselves is good for them. They don't deserve to be comfortable and neither does anyone else who is reactive, impulsive or tries to put words in your mouth (and proceeds to blame you for those words as if they didn't just put them there).
Besides, Slashdot has taught me one thing: even if you had ten lines of disclaimer for each line of your actual post, it won't stop them. They refuse to notice what you didn't say in addition to what you said, or that there might be a reason for it. They won't notice either if you explicitly tell them that you did not, in fact, say something. They'll just act like lawyers and find the one little loophole your disclaimer didn't cover. That's what they do. Just like lawyers, they don't actually produce anything useful or interesting. There's no point in catering to their tastes. It's power they don't deserve and don't actually have.
and people think Ron Paul is the crazy one for wanting America's fingers out of other country's pies.
Only because they maintain the illusion that, as average citizens, the US Government somehow represents them. So long as they believe that and believe the system is not broken, they think "America's fingers" are "their own fingers". And hey, since it's your own, it must be good according to you, right? Clearly anyone who objects to that is mistaken, ignorant, un-educated, etc...
This sort of thing is going to spark widespread international hatred for the United States. No, not the general dislike that many countries have for us now, but honest-to-god hatred. Look what good things came out of that situation in the mideast.
Don't worry. If they get so desperate and psychotic that they do something drastic about that, we'll be reassured that they merely hate us because of our great freedoms. Since we are currently reducing those, they should love us soon enough. In the meantime, it will provide a wonderful justification for more military action which means more pointless wars which means more pointless spending and bloodshed which means more defense spending which may help our economy. That's what matters. If you don't think so, you're against us.
I'm offering you my middle finger. Am I a generous and good guy now?
That depends: do I get to keep it?
If someone has the right to freedom of expression to offend against my personal beliefs, surely I have the right to freedom of expression to express my sense of offence/outrage or whatever? It's not like saying that you can't offend me, merely that you can't offend me without expecting some sort of response.
Sure, but remember that many times a response is exactly what they want from you. As an analogy, how much trolling do you suppose would happen today if no one ever, EVER, under any circumstances, fed the trolls? Then there's the question of how secure you are about your beliefs. If you reject a mainstream point of view in favor of a better one, you might catch some flak for it. Do you have the strength to accept that or do you need the approval of random strangers?
When you predictably receive some flak for challenging a worldview, are you surprised and offended and shocked by that? If not, then where's the outrage and offense? Is it that not everyone agrees with you? There are over 6.5 billion people in the world. At any given time, at least some of them will disagree with you or decide they don't like you. There's nothing you can do about that. Are you then going to be offended and upset 24/7? Or at some point do you have to find your own peace and your own security? If you have that, you'll be surprised at just how difficult it is for anyone to offend you. The nastier they get with you, the more they are telling the world about themselves and not about you.
Unlike some people on slashdot, my definition of freedom of speech is not "I can say what I like without any possibility of repurcussions". You can annoy someone with your speech so much that they will kill you for it, it's always a good idea to remember that.
Sure, and in gang-infested cities there are people who would menace or even shoot somebody just for making eye contact. Obviously that doesn't make it right. So we make an effort to maintain law and civility. It's not a perfect effort and crimes do happen. But what you're describing there is a crime for a legitimate reason. What you're describing there gives the target the right to defend himself for a legitimate reason. This isn't some bullshit copyright law or victimless crime.
The reason I think law-abiding citizens should have guns is because of the truth in that saying: when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. But then, I digress.
their freedom of expression trumps my personal likes and dislikes.
So racism is ok...?
It's more of a "two wrongs don't make a right" situation.
No, racism is not ok; it is wrong. But does a racist have the right to free speech just as you and I have the right to free speech? Yes. What's your alternative? The wrong of censorship by force (or threat of force, i.e. law) is even worse than a racist you don't have to listen to. It would be like curing the disease by killing the patient.
If you allow a few racists to destroy free speech, you have given them more power than they ever dreamed of. I like the way it currently works: if you are a racist or other kind of bigot, people will quickly stop listening to you and you become essentially invisible. This isn't broken and doesn't need fixing.
Because, as we all know, the world is run by well meaning left-wing intellectuals, who are busily suppressing the poor downtrodden immensely wealthy establishment right wing capitalists and politicians.
I think the world is run by people who might conceivably have occasional meetings and get-togethers. If you were nearby during those meetings, you might overhear phrases like:
"HAHAHAHA man, they STILL think that whole left-right spectrum thing is valid and provides any real answers to anything. Oh man, that's a good one! When we came up with that I was skeptical to say the least but it really took hold. It might even keep them in the dark, squabbling with each other over meaningless trivialities, for another century! Just in the nick of time too since they finally rejected feudalism and centralized religious rule. Long as we can divide them we can keep conquering them, just like in the old days of bread-and-circus. Genius!"
Two points and a line defines one dimension. One-dimensional thinking is properly understood as a weakness, a tragic and artificial limitation of the possibilities of human thought and perception. I dearly hope it won't take a Fourth Reich for the mainstream to figure that out...
I never understood why people refuse to believe something could ever be the case because its labeled as a stereotype, lets take the goldigger example. Women have a biological imperative to find a mate capable of supporting her offspring, we see this behavior in just about every species out there, so why do we think the human female would be ANY different in this regard?
I remember once an AC answered a post like yours. It was an AC or else I'd give a proper attribution.
The response was "you're using reason to counter an emotional argument. Sadly, this will not work, because those who will be swayed by emotional arguments are not mature enough to be reasoned with in an adult manner."
I don't see anything sexist in simply acknowledging we are different.
Academic careers have been ruined simply for suggesting that the female brain is "wired" differently from the male brain. I wish I were making this up. No amount of incontrovertible physical evidence will stop this kind of hyper-emotional over-reaction. What you're dealing with is like a religion and anyone who does not adhere to it is a heretic. I know many would like to believe we abandoned this type of approach after the Dark Ages but the reality is that it simply changed form.
Narrow-minded types always tend to believe things like "equality implies same-ness", causing them to feel threatened by any valid claim of differences (which incidentally is why weak-minded people worship conformity). As far as they're concerned, any difference you point out is the same as saying one is inferior to the other. That's the doctrine of this religion.
Maybe try another.
It's hard not to sound a little preachy when you're dealing with such emotionally-driven unreasonable people who think they're so justified. Try it yourself sometime; I'd be interested in whether you remain as calm and centered. While I understand your complaint, it goes with that territory. You may as well complain about the strong breeze every time you go skydiving.
... my better example is that I don't pretend to be "hurt" by the words of another person so I can guilt-trip or shame them into modifying their behavior to suit my personal tastes. Not even when I really, really don't like what they said and why they said it. That's mine to get over because their freedom of expression trumps my personal likes and dislikes.
To answer the question you posed
Unless someone tries to use force or fraud to cause me material harm, I have absolutely no reason to look for ways to make them do anything. "I'm offended!" is how cowards aspire to be bullies.
Saying something is a stereotype is not the same as saying it's never true. People often forget that.
People tend to conveniently "forget" anything that gives them an excuse to be offended.
For a certain kind of person who has little or no power elsewhere, being "offended" is extremely gratifying. It gives them an excuse to demand that someone else change their behavior. Your post practically served it to this type on a silver platter. It usually takes less temptation than you gave for their control motive to manifest.
Personally I thought your post was humorous but then I'm not looking to tell other people how they should live, what they should think, what they should say, how they should feel, etc. If I really had a problem with something you said, I would ignore you and move on to someone I prefer. Life is not politically correct, the world is not fair, and other people have this habit of not often doing what you wish they would do. I made my peace with that a long time ago.
If I want to provide a contrast, I do it by setting a better example. Otherwise I live and let live. So for me it's easy to see the bullshit behind "I'm offended" and its variants. The only time "I'm offended" is valid is when someone is forcing you to listen, and in that case, the problem is that they are forcing you to listen.
You have to hand it to the actual controllers of things. They operate with a level of mastery that would be beautiful if it weren't so goddamned terrible and dehumanizing.
"Terrible" and "Terrorist" (and "Terror") share a root. I wonder if that's cogent here, especially considering the actor(s).
I can tell you I feel much more threatened by my government than I do by anybody on the other side of the world. That's not a matter of opinion -- I don't consider the reverse proposal to be rational at all.
Why complain about the government?
All social media sites are now just playgrounds for marketing teams. There are multi billion dollar indusries built around promoting products/slandering competitors while pretending to be part of the onine community. Most of the big tech companies use sockpuppet accounts to "manage discussion" on Slashdot already.
Why would you care if the government joins them?
I'll stop caring once I have a proven, valid, and honest answer from the Government as to why they are wasting tax dollars data mining "playgrounds for marketing teams". If it's so "innocent", then why do they care enough to waste a few billion jumping in these discussions? Perhaps that is the more prudent question to ask and focus on.
No shit. "Well it's all public data anyway, no expectation of privacy, so neener!" Yeah, that does explain how they can easily do it. It does not explain why they care to and what they hope to accomplish. The former is not an effective dismissal of the latter no matter how hard you try.