Just watch people as they come down the concourse and try to pass the Cinnabon store... you get exactly the same glazed-eye, vectored walking behavior, and no headset, other than the ubiquitous iPod. Of course, the Japanese approach is carb-free.
first class fliers who would have been willing to pay for internet access in the first place.
Don't you get it? These are first class passengers. They already have paid for it, and every thing else that the airline chooses to do for them in order to keep them as paying customers. This is not a "free" service. It's part of what you get for paying a fortune to fly in bigger seats and get bigger drinks on your way to wherever you're going.
I'd like to think that you are a clever satirist, making sublime fun of those witless anarchists. But no, it's slashdot, so you probably actualy believe what you said.
Are you enjoying your use of a gigantic network of networks that wouldn't exist without the capital investment that has funded its evolution into the thing you're reading, right now? Are you enjoying the fact that you didn't die as a child because of modern, commercially propogated medicine? Or would you prefer one of those highly regarded Anarchist Doctors that do such great work when you get leukemia, a brain tumor, or perhaps a case of some delightful social disease from another anarchist who refuses to use corporately manufactured plumbing fixtures and thus never showers?
the evil capitalist system that uses money to pit brother against brother
You've got it backwards. It's not brother against brother, it's brothers (and everyone else) only working, spending, building, and buying as they see fit. The alternative (communist-flavored nonsense) make slaves of those that produce, and have bureaucrats dictating what you can (or must) create, trade, and do. Capitalism lets you create the value of your life, and communism asserts that you have no value except as a tool of everyone else.
Anarchists have a better moral compass? Their creed is that there is no objective moral compass. Of course, they work on those concepts while sitting in restaurants built and run by business people, having driven in cars or traveled on "public" transportation that the public has purchased from the capitalized companies that have designed and built the vehicles, powered by fuel that private companies extract, refine, and deliver. Curious that anarachists would prefer the opposite: a big government doing all of those things instead? Or, would they rather just live in mud huts? Good anarchist! Here's your prize: no iPod. An no refrigeration for your beer either. Actually, no beer, as far as that goes.
I can see why people want to ban it in indoor settings, but there should be no law against smoking whatever it is you want in the outdoors.
I generally agree... although with cigars in particular, being down-wind while you're eating your breakfast on the sidewalk outside a cafe or something can still be pretty obnoxious.
But the real issue is that if you start smoking when you're 16, sometime during your life the odds are very good that you'll be looking at medical treatment (shortlived, since it will be for a while, while you're dying of lung cancer, or maybe longer because of the inevitable cardio problems like hypertension - but will cost more than all of the healthcare you get during the rest of your entire life) that you personally will not be able to entirely pay for (because it usually runs into the many tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes $100k+). And guess who gets stuck with the bill? Me. Me and everyone else on your insurance plan, and everyone else that the hospital charges for services when it can't recoup everything it spends on you, and everyone else that pays taxes because of the subsidies that the hospital burns up, and so on. Never mind if you make it long enough to get on Medicare... then you're TOTALLY socking it to the healthier taxpayers.
So, find a way to sign some piece of paper, as you buy those cigars... something that says everyone else is just as free of your costs as you are free to smoke. That would be equitable. And yes, in case you ask, I feel the same way about people who weigh 300 pounds and rack up $50,000 dollars at the hospital because of their multiple coronary events, go bankrupt because they can't pay for the consequences, and then stick the rest of the world with their bills. Or, people who drive drunk and cause huge financial damage with their behavior when they kill the breadwinner of some family on his way home from work. You get the idea. We can't have it both ways: if people want socialized medicine or want to spread the financial risks among larger groups of people, then those groups should be able to have a say in things like this. But that really chafes me, so I'd opt to get the country out of the business of socialized medicine, and back into personal accountability. Then I truly, truly wouldn't care! And you wouldn't have to care that I like fine wine and climb in and out of trees with razor blades on sticks in the dark, because that would be my problem, not yours.
I'm not sure what the problem is here. It's up to the person in question whether or not they want deposits of nasty tars in their lungs, not their neighbor.
I guess I feel about this just like I do about motorcycle helmets. The libertarian in me says: "do your worst! I don't care!" However, the guy in me that pays all the taxes I pay gets pissed when untold billions every year go from taxpayer wallets into hideously expensive care for people with lung cancer they got while smoking. Or life-long treatment for brain injuries they got when they hit the asphalt with their head. Or got heart disease while living entirely off of cheeseburgers.
My point: I don't seem to have any choice but to pay for the health care of people who smoke, at least a lot of them. Even if they're not on medicare/aid, the drain on the overall healthcare system is substantial, and the increases it puts on all of our insurance rates is that much higher.
Or at least it would be, in a truly free country.
OK, but in a truly free country, I'd be free to decline to pay for a smoker's health care. I don't have that freedom, and us non-smokers get hit with billions of dollars in health care and insurance costs. Likewise for people that do other dumb things. But that's now the expectation set in this entitlement-rich environment, so people are disconnected between cause and effect. If only their own families had to bear the entire cost of their smoking habit, I guarantee there wouldn't be as much of it. Again, though: I really don't care who smokes - but I'd love not to see the bill, too.
Lemme guess, it makes you kill your friends, gives you brain damage, and is incredibly addictive, right?
Wouldn't it be easier just to stick with what I actually said? My point is simply that a rational, modest consumption of a really tasty glass of wine, or particularly refreshing glass of beer (or a G&T, of course) is pretty damn benign, unless you've got a glass liver. But smoking anything deposits nasty tarred up hydrocarbons in your lungs, just for starters. That's all I'm talking about: smoking anything, including the fantastic smelling stuff that comes off of my Webber while I'm grilling a piece of venison, isn't good for you.
As for the number of "places" that find it rewarding to argue the pro-marijuana perspective... well, I associate those efforts with lots of other resonant political and (counter-) cultural yammerings that seem to have an agenda beyond the somewhat amusing proclaiming of marijuana as the cure for all that ails the world. You know, sort of like saying that hemp is the best fiber for everything, including fiber optics
I'm confident that there would be similar studies for marijuana
Similar studies, maybe, but not similar results. Inhaling burning organic material is simply never going to be good for you. That particular material is also full of all sorts of bad-for-your-neurons compounds, of course, so it's not like you're sitting around a smoky campfire - it's intended to impact your nervous system, which it does.
So does alcohol. Moderation on that front, though, is a good thing. Moderation in how much smoke you inhale is just, well, less smoke.
Gee, I remember something called the Apple II doing this long before microsoft was the force it was
Now, be reasonable. The Apple II never saw the penetration into (especially small) businesses that even the earliest, crudest PCs immediately had. The PC, running DOS even, was hugely successful. When Windows hit, it made word processor users out of millions of people that had never even heard of the Apple II or had any inclination to spend Mac sort of money.
Otherwise nobody would have known the FBI was harvesting log files
Not known? Since when is it news that when the FBI is presented with a reason to think they have a crime to investigate, and evidence related to that crime is likely buried in some data on a computer, that they'll get a court order to investigate the evidence? If it was your kid kidnapped, or your business extorted, or your favorite [choose thing] vandalized by some nut job who then bragged about the crime on a logged web server - wouldn't you want the law enforcement people involved to be able to investigate the evidence? If the evidence is web server log files, then a copy of the hard drive is probably the most sensible way to get it, and that's what they went and asked a judge for, and he/she issued a court order saying just that. And Rackspace just coughed up the drives rather than making a copy - you'll have to ask them why. But you deliberately use the word "harvest" as if they were out on their daily mission to collect logs files from every ISP for the fun of it - that's BS.
faced with sneaky orders like this
There wasn't anything sneaky about it! They did exactly what they always do when needing to collect evidence for a criminal investigation. Doesn't matter if it's web log files, paper records from a money-laundering faux pizza business, or shipping documents hidden by a company bringing in fake Rolexes from China. It's evidence, and you have to go get it if you're going to pursue the case. Sneaky? The only reason to "sneak" is if you have to work on the case without tipping off the suspect (say, because they're continuing to commit the crime in question and you want to catch them in the act, or get info on their associates so you can make a more effective arrest - just like they do with the kiddie pr0n jackasses).
But of course, you're not even aware of the particulars in this case. The ITALIANS requested the evidence. The hosting was in the UK. The issue was the publication of photos and names of undercover law enforcement people in Switzerland (completely against the law). The hosting was overseas, but was being done by a US-based company, so by treaty, the FBI was asked to make arrangements for the evidence collection. There was no "harvesting" going on, there was a European request for evidence related to crimes being committed in Europe, with evidence that just happened to be piled up in the facilities of a company that happens to be based in the US.
Regardless, the damage has been done
Right - to the reputation of the company that did more than it was asked to when pulling log files.
it's really too bad about the victims of this witchhunt
By which you're referring to the undercover officers who have had their faces and names published by anti-globalization crazies? If not, that's what you should be talking about. If the indymedia people didn't encourage that sort of use of their systems, they wouldn't have to care about their log files, either.
For starters, skin cells will not, under any circumstances, grow into a human child
Careful. You're not reading the news. There's a very frisky Afghan hound bouncing around in Asia right now, born from the DNA taken from a skin cell. There's really not much at all different between that and a primate like us, at least not in terms of conceptual difficulty. And before you say that it takes special acts by people to reproduce life that way, remember that no baby gets born with acts on our part. And without the use of science (antibiotics and all sorts of other modern tools) way, way more babies and moms would never make it through pregnancy. Getting pregnant used to be a worse than 1-in-20 death sentence for women. And most babies - the kinds that really are viable little humans - that used to die in childbirth are now saved. By science, as used by people making choices.
No human alive, including the woman carrying the child, has the right to say when that child is or isn't alive, is or isn't human, will or won't survive.
Then why do we bother feeding babies? Why do we bother with the emotional, financial, and temporal investment of care for someone who is just going to die eventually anyway? Because we make the judgement that the child or ailing person is worth keeping alive. They certainly won't survive on their own. There is no "right" involved in concluding that - it's just a simple fact. No, it's the judgement, choice, and actions of people (typically adults) that result in the survival of a fetus and its transition into being a baby. Likewise for the life of a child well into the years it can fend for itself, and well into the years when it can no longer do so. Choices. Decisions. Value judgements. Made by people.
That several-weeks-along fetus sure doesn't have enough neurons to carry anything resembling consciousness. Should people casually disregard the truly great capacity we have to reproduce? No, that robs something of our integrity. But should we pretend that there's a person in a fetus that doesn't even have a frontal lobe with which to be a person? No... that requires a committment to superstition, magical thinking, and a willingness to close one's eyes to the actual facts in front of them. And, of course, from there springs all of the woes that supernatural belief has created in the world (most recently, terrorism a la Al Queda).
the US isn't spending money on basic science or useful space programs that most of the population wants and desires.
The US actually spends a fortune on basic science. But a lot of that spending is done by the private sector, as opposed to the higher ratio of tax-funded science in other countries (or tax-funded corporate espionage from other countries). But it doesn't matter: it's not like research and basic science spending is mutually exclusive with defense spending. To the contrary: defense spending is the source of some of the most fundamental R&D we do in this country (including bio sciences, physics, information systems, aerospace - the works).
won't change the fact that to get out of this hole we need to invest in education, not fear.
And what exactly is it that you think we're doing in the middle easat right now? The whole point of steering those countries towards open markets, freedom of speech, and an elected, representational government is exactly so that a more rational, educated way of life can set in. That beats the hell out of a mysoginistic, backwards, medeival thuggo-theocracy sitting on top of huge oil reserves that allow them to fund brutal dictatorships and oppressive regimes. Reduce that constant source of friction in the world, and the exporting of extremist jihadd-minded BS (as is happening rapidly into Africa, right now), and you'll improve life for everyone - here and there.
"invest... fear" ? We're not investing in fear, we're investing in shutting down the clowns that think they'll make their point by instilling fear. You don't blow up train cars thinking you're really going to damage the population of the country. You do it specifically to instill fear. Terror. Hence "terrorists." They're real, and they've got themselves convinced that it works. After all, it got US troops to pull out of Somolia (and leave the place to the warlords), and it got Spain to pull out of peacekeeping in Iraq.
the Saudis aren't dealing with it, as even the CIA admits, they're expanding
There's "Saudis" and there's the Saudis. Extremist wahabis that happen to have their family fortunes there (people like bin Laden) hate the Saudi authorities as much as they hate the Egyptians, the Israelis, the moderate Jordanians, and of course, the western world. No question that the jerks driving cars full of explosives into crowds of Iraqi children are mostly Saudis, Syrians, and Iranians. But (and way later than they should have, obviously), the family of Saud is realizing they have their own personal nest of vipers, and they've started clamping down. The Egyptians are helping, and also recognizing the new Iraqi transitional government... which is why the Egyptians just lost a big chunk of their economy to terrorists a week or so ago.
Fear the wrong guys? I'd say that people who actually act to kill you, and those that fund and support such people, are not the "wrong" guys. They're not the only guys, but they're past the point of making nice with - they want to kill you. It's the 5-year-old kids bobbing their heads in a fundamentalist school in Pakistan, or Iran, or Syria that we have to reach, before they get the same twisted view of the world. And that's not going to happen just by shipping money over there. There has to be an accountable, rational government in place in order for these little hatred factories to be shut down. And letting the people in Iraq and Afghanistan show the pleasure they've obviously taken in forming dictator-free, bi-cameral parlimentary systems is a great first start. The fact that there are other Muslims that want those Muslims to die for doing so is exactly what we're now trying to stop. And when that's less true, there will be even more of the momentum that just saw reforms take place in Lebannon, Lybia, and even in parts of Saudi Arabia. This is going to take time.
In the meantime, actual people with actual explosives are looking for
What failures? Getting attacked? Well, that was a failure, certainly. Once the Soviets were gone we pretty much gutted our intelligence community, and internal political squabbles kept everyone from talking enough to prevent that from happening. But failing to stop it isn't the "source" of it. The source of it is the same fine bunch of fellows who just today reminded us that they are the source of the attacks and that they want to do more, and much bigger than before.
Why? Because they can't stand the idea of such western notions as democracy getting in the way of a handful of extremist religious crazies running that part of the world. That's why they attack in Turkey, that's why they attack in Egypt, and that's why even the Saudis are dealing now with terrorists in their own borders.
There is a boogyman, and he's the kid with the backpack full of explosives getting on the train, convinced he's headed towards 70 virgins. He's the guy that thinks it's appropriate, just like the Taliban did, to kill women who try to hold jobs, or cut off people's hands for secretly playing music. You know: the nice people who banned kids from flying kites because Allah disapproves of such things. There's your "source" for you. And when people like that organize into large enough groups, hold enough weapons, and actually tell you that their purpose is to kill you... well, I'm glad the military is giving it everything they've got to stop it. You get the benefit too, even though you're obviously not afraid of getting blown up. Probably the hundreds hurt in London weren't afraid either, until the person sitting next to them got their head ripped off. You just keep enjoying the right to complain, though! Because if you lived under Saddam, or under the Taliban, you'd be dead meat for doing so, along with your family.
just to finance silly foreign adventures that don't help their economy...
By which you presumably mean dealing with the Taliban, and with Saddam. I'd say that 9/11 had a pretty huge impact on our economy, wouldn't you? And the Taliban regimein Afghanistan was playing delighted host to the people who planned and carried out that bit of nastiness. Turning places like towards democracy and away from corrupt theocracy is so, so in our economic interests that to say otherwise suggests a total head-in-the-sand lack of world view.
As for the Europeans and Japanese... well, aren't they lucky at how little they've had to spend on defense in the last 30, 40 years. The US has done pretty much all of the heavy lifting, allowing them to fiddle around with whatever floats their collective boats (um, "collective" being the key word in most of Europe, certainly). The Chinese are jumping ahead quickly by using other people's intellectual work, and by keeping their government in a position to manipulate their labor and import/export/currency in ways that can't be sustained, but which for now, play well for them in the news. Clock's ticking on that front.
I don't know how practical they are from a materials point of view
Well, when you think about it... you'd be wanting to haul what, dozens of tons (at least!) up to the edge of the atmosphere? Whatever payload, and then whatever additional engine/hardware/guidance and fuel you'd need to actually push into orbit and get around once you get there. Not to mention life support, if that's an issue.
Anything with a large enough envelope to handle that would be pretty well squooshed at lower altitudes unless it was quite (very!) rigid, and I can't imagine what material would have the needed multiple acres of surface area and, being rigid enough, not sink like a battleship. Maybe some super-duper resin/nanotubish sort of thing... but my bets on more conventional mechanisms for quite a while. Space elevators seem more likely to me than colossal balloons, and that's saying a lot (the elevators strike me as being the single most irresistable terrorist target, ever).
for Yahoo to launch so they can steal ideas, then develop their own
So, when MS does it, it's stealing. But when Yahoo does it (following Google), it's innovation? Or, when Google did it after Overture and Go2 and everyone else that had been in the game for years... what, they were just de-Eviling it? And, Google maps... was not one bit of it, conceptually or otherwise, derivative in any way from earlier offerings from MapQuest, and Yahoo?
I guarantee that Yahoo won't be advertising this new service as being "just like Google did it!" even though they're obviously going after similar niches, using something that will manifest itself in a similar way. Of course, this is slashdot, so everything's fine unless MS happens to also do it.
The best evidence is B. Rattan and his X Prize effort. All he did was take the proved existing 1950's era tech and build it up with any modern available stuff. It works!
If by "works" you mean, "went straight up, and came straight down without any orbital velocities involved" then, sure. But you don't seem to mean that, even though that's what happened.
I told them to use the balloon launch like that to get the material above the atmosphere and then rockets above. They said it was "Impossible."
You're not really complaining just because they know the laws of physics, are you? You can't use a balloon of any type to get above the atmosphere. The ballon material itself, and the helium involved, are still at some point going to be more dense than the surrounding atmosphere, and then you're stalled out.
They need fired
If you're wondering why perhaps "NASA leadership" isn't listening to your ideas, perhaps it's because you forget important words like "to be" in your sentences. The "rocket needs launched" or "the car needs washed" are similarly idiotic phrases, and the people that use them are, unfortunately (no matter how natively bright) practically shouting that they are unsophisticated, poor communicators. That tends to rob most of their communication of any real credibility. The system of the English language is a pretty easy one to master, so it's understandable if someone who, raised in the U.S. as you were, doesn't use it effectively, may not inspire a lot of confidence in their take on vastly more complex issues (like space flight) that require ultra-precise communication and conveyence of concepts.
But like very bureaucracy if you order mass firings of these idiots, only the working shlepps down at the bottom will get shed, not the morons at the top.
Which ones (the morons at the top, or the "working" people) would do a better job of understanding what "like very bureaucracy" actually means? My point: you'll come across a lot more meaningfully if you take a deep breath and read over your own comments to see if they sound, well... a little bit shrill, and not particularly solid. Grammar counts, because it indicates mature, critical thinking skills. It counts even more when you're trying to persuade people to listen to your notions of how complicated, expensive things involving thousands of people should be carried out.
Anyone else find it ironic that they're looking to set up this anonymous communication system and yet they require registration to read their site?
Why would that be ironic? They have nothing to do with each other. The NYT is willing to let you read the content that they very expensively produce, and they've got some strings attached to that free (as in beer) service. Don't like it? Put $0.50 in one of those newspaper vending machines and get the dead tree version. Newspapers are not public services, they're private sector companies producing a product which they sell (well, to products, actually: advertising space, and subscriptions/o-t-c sales).
I'm continually amazed that people think it's somehow... mean? evil? "corporate?"... for a company that's not charging you anything to have a say in how you access the stuff for which they're not charging you. It's not like the NYT is some crazy little backwoods UFO newsletter that's desparate for one more reader (so they can double their audience). It's a business. There wouldn't be so many links to major newspaper sites if they didn't have something useful to offer. All of those inane bloggers would get all the traffic if they had anything like the reporting and analytical resources that a professional news company has. So, no, it's not ironic.
Now, ironic is the concept of journalists looking for a way to keep anonymous sources so anonymous that, essentially, there's no way to make a distinction between a real source and an NYT reporter just BSing (which has certainly happened).
The efforts of several sex-phobic senators notwithstanding, the US government has--for the past 15 years or more--been far more concerned with attempting to levy pornography than to level it
That's right. And this particular Democrat doesn't want porn to go away, he wants it to thrive so that he can take a piece of the revenue. Just like they don't really want smokers to quit - they want them to keep on puffing so that they can fund all sorts of other uses of the substantial tax revenue.
Funny, isn't it, that the Democrat politician proposing this can't seem to muster up specific distaste for the people who consume the legal material, but prefers to see them as a cash cow. Just like smokers. His approach to governing people means keeping them doing the things he doesn't like (smoking, viewing porn, being poor, etc) so that his little corner of the bureaucratic world has a reason to exist (and an opportunity for more tax revenue). How much do you want to bet that even if he could get such a measure passed, that the dollars pulled in would more or less never go straight to the law enforcement teams that actually do hunt down a bust the kidddie porn creeps. Nope, it's just more money in the pot to spend on pork.
It is better to have a working system now, with the occasional bug, than a spectacular IT crisis/fiasco in 500 year's time
Just stop for a second (bada-bing!) and think about what 500 years' worth of evolution in IT is going to represent. It's not even worth talking about what IT will be having to deal with then because it will be so completely unrecognizeable as to make the discussion meaningless. Sure, it's passing the buck... but we're talking about passing the buck to a generation that will find our 20-years-past-paper-punchcards baby IT issues to be quaint. Like the people who only a little over 100 years ago were sure you'd die if you went faster than 35 MPH.
So, it's okay to play with daylight savings time but this leap second is a pain and needs to go?
Right. Two very different problems. The DST issue just involved aribtrary labeling of what time it is. The elapsed time in seconds doesn't change. But when the number of ticks in a minute does have to change, a lot of stuff breaks.
Sometimes a highly visable arrest is enough to deter people from an activity
Some. Not terrorists, typically. For that, you have to just plain remove them, their backers/resources, and try to deal with the underlying culture clash that fuels them. People who are too cheap to pay for movies, on the other hand, already know all of the ground rules, and are just assuming that they won't get caught. It's not like they don't know they're no better than a standard shoplifter, they just figure that since there are millions of them they have a shot at continuing to enjoy the work of their favorite band without actually paying what the band asks. The people who facilitate that on a large scale are truly low hanging fruit for law enforcement, though - they can't really get the stuff they pirate into a lot of their buddies' hands without, by definition, exposing what they're doing. That little bit of deliberate, very public nose-thumbing is pretty much asking for it.
much money as organized groups like the RIAA, so members of congress won't listen to me
So why are you not forming the National Pirate's Association? Groups of teachers, gun owners, auto workers, environmentalists... they all form large groups and leverage that so that they can make a bunch of noise and fund campaigns. What do you think MoveOn.org is? It's rich people backing Democrats with millions and millions of dollars. Poor people can throw in a dollar, too, and say they think the same thing. Do you really think that the trial lawyer associations, the NEA, and other extremely well funded left-of-center groups don't have every bit of an audience in political circles as a particular trade association in the entertainment biz? Spend a little more time on K Street in DC - the noise from the well funded left is very, very loud. The problem is that it doesn't resonate with most voters because all it ever is is against things, and not constructive. That's getting pretty old.
Perhaps terrorists are not a high priority because the politicians in power have been able to take advantage of the attacks.
Not a high priority? How do you figure? We've got an unprecedented number of people working on the intel, interdiction, and counter-terrorism side of things. We're in the middle of re-building a seriously gutted intel capacity that suffered for years under enormous budget cuts. It takes time to hire, train, and embed the sort of people needed to head this stuff off at the source. Until then, we're treating the symptom, not the problem. But that doesn't mean that other crime should just be ignored.
Gas prices soar.
Because no one will tolerate the building of domestic refining capacity. We haven't added refineries since the 1970's, even as the population using the fuel has grown hugely. But that's only part of the picture - the main component is demand pressure because of hugely growing markets in China and India. There are simply more people trying to buy the same gallons of gas. So, if your personal favorite politicians were in office, how would you reduce the competition for oil? Would you drill for more? Build new refineries (in which state/city - have fun getting approval!)? Subsidize fuel with tax dollars? The point is, you toss gas prices into the conversation as if your distaste for the FBI busting flagrant copyright violators is all part of giant tinfoil hat conspiracy that also includes somehow fooling the Chinese into using more oil so that we have to bid up our purchases from suppliers.
I would also add the uber rich are not scared of terrorism because when was the last time a suicide bomber blew himself up in Beverly Hills?
Who do you think had their offices in the top floors of the World Trade Center, a bunch of living-on-Velveeta 20-year-olds starting up a lost cause web site? No, it was bankers, traders, law firms, accounting firms - "rich" people. Who do you think lost a fortune when those attacks clobbered the econom
Remember, the "outrageous" ones you hear about are the rare exceptions, newsworthy precisely because they are rare exceptions.
But just gearing up to defend against such a suit is enough to ruin a mid-sized business (say, one that makes speciality target pistols, or one that makes custom kitchen knives). We're not talking about maintaining the right to sue a company for being neglectful or deceitful in the way they're doing business. We're talking specifically about heading off lawsuits from the vicitims of crimes against the manufacturers of the tools that the criminal illegally used. I think that distinction is crystal clear, and any judge that even sees such a suit should consider charges against the plaintiff.
This issue is espcially galling when it's the government pressing the suit (like a city council, etc., looking for a windfall like the tobacco settlements so they don't have to raise taxes that year).
However the main purpose of an automoble is to transport people from A to B. The main purpose of a (hand)gun is to kill people. Therefore the manufacturers do have some responsibilty
Why? I own a handgun for the sole purpose of self defense. It cannot hurt anyone unless I pick it up and use it. The guy who makes the gun has absolutely no influence over the events that would cause me to use (or not use) their product. GM makes products that hurl 2000 pounds of metal down the road at 60+mph. They also have no influence over whether or not you jerk the wheel to the right and run down a kid on the sidewalk.
And what about knives? They exist to cut things. To separate material into two pieces. The maker of the knife has no control over whether you use it to chop carrots, or cut someone's throat. Should they get dragged into court when someone does? It's ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
Just watch people as they come down the concourse and try to pass the Cinnabon store... you get exactly the same glazed-eye, vectored walking behavior, and no headset, other than the ubiquitous iPod. Of course, the Japanese approach is carb-free.
first class fliers who would have been willing to pay for internet access in the first place.
Don't you get it? These are first class passengers. They already have paid for it, and every thing else that the airline chooses to do for them in order to keep them as paying customers. This is not a "free" service. It's part of what you get for paying a fortune to fly in bigger seats and get bigger drinks on your way to wherever you're going.
I'd like to think that you are a clever satirist, making sublime fun of those witless anarchists. But no, it's slashdot, so you probably actualy believe what you said.
Are you enjoying your use of a gigantic network of networks that wouldn't exist without the capital investment that has funded its evolution into the thing you're reading, right now? Are you enjoying the fact that you didn't die as a child because of modern, commercially propogated medicine? Or would you prefer one of those highly regarded Anarchist Doctors that do such great work when you get leukemia, a brain tumor, or perhaps a case of some delightful social disease from another anarchist who refuses to use corporately manufactured plumbing fixtures and thus never showers?
the evil capitalist system that uses money to pit brother against brother
You've got it backwards. It's not brother against brother, it's brothers (and everyone else) only working, spending, building, and buying as they see fit. The alternative (communist-flavored nonsense) make slaves of those that produce, and have bureaucrats dictating what you can (or must) create, trade, and do. Capitalism lets you create the value of your life, and communism asserts that you have no value except as a tool of everyone else.
Anarchists have a better moral compass? Their creed is that there is no objective moral compass. Of course, they work on those concepts while sitting in restaurants built and run by business people, having driven in cars or traveled on "public" transportation that the public has purchased from the capitalized companies that have designed and built the vehicles, powered by fuel that private companies extract, refine, and deliver. Curious that anarachists would prefer the opposite: a big government doing all of those things instead? Or, would they rather just live in mud huts? Good anarchist! Here's your prize: no iPod. An no refrigeration for your beer either. Actually, no beer, as far as that goes.
I can see why people want to ban it in indoor settings, but there should be no law against smoking whatever it is you want in the outdoors.
... then you're TOTALLY socking it to the healthier taxpayers.
I generally agree... although with cigars in particular, being down-wind while you're eating your breakfast on the sidewalk outside a cafe or something can still be pretty obnoxious.
But the real issue is that if you start smoking when you're 16, sometime during your life the odds are very good that you'll be looking at medical treatment (shortlived, since it will be for a while, while you're dying of lung cancer, or maybe longer because of the inevitable cardio problems like hypertension - but will cost more than all of the healthcare you get during the rest of your entire life) that you personally will not be able to entirely pay for (because it usually runs into the many tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes $100k+). And guess who gets stuck with the bill? Me. Me and everyone else on your insurance plan, and everyone else that the hospital charges for services when it can't recoup everything it spends on you, and everyone else that pays taxes because of the subsidies that the hospital burns up, and so on. Never mind if you make it long enough to get on Medicare
So, find a way to sign some piece of paper, as you buy those cigars... something that says everyone else is just as free of your costs as you are free to smoke. That would be equitable. And yes, in case you ask, I feel the same way about people who weigh 300 pounds and rack up $50,000 dollars at the hospital because of their multiple coronary events, go bankrupt because they can't pay for the consequences, and then stick the rest of the world with their bills. Or, people who drive drunk and cause huge financial damage with their behavior when they kill the breadwinner of some family on his way home from work. You get the idea. We can't have it both ways: if people want socialized medicine or want to spread the financial risks among larger groups of people, then those groups should be able to have a say in things like this. But that really chafes me, so I'd opt to get the country out of the business of socialized medicine, and back into personal accountability. Then I truly, truly wouldn't care! And you wouldn't have to care that I like fine wine and climb in and out of trees with razor blades on sticks in the dark, because that would be my problem, not yours.
I'm not sure what the problem is here. It's up to the person in question whether or not they want deposits of nasty tars in their lungs, not their neighbor.
I guess I feel about this just like I do about motorcycle helmets. The libertarian in me says: "do your worst! I don't care!" However, the guy in me that pays all the taxes I pay gets pissed when untold billions every year go from taxpayer wallets into hideously expensive care for people with lung cancer they got while smoking. Or life-long treatment for brain injuries they got when they hit the asphalt with their head. Or got heart disease while living entirely off of cheeseburgers.
My point: I don't seem to have any choice but to pay for the health care of people who smoke, at least a lot of them. Even if they're not on medicare/aid, the drain on the overall healthcare system is substantial, and the increases it puts on all of our insurance rates is that much higher.
Or at least it would be, in a truly free country.
OK, but in a truly free country, I'd be free to decline to pay for a smoker's health care. I don't have that freedom, and us non-smokers get hit with billions of dollars in health care and insurance costs. Likewise for people that do other dumb things. But that's now the expectation set in this entitlement-rich environment, so people are disconnected between cause and effect. If only their own families had to bear the entire cost of their smoking habit, I guarantee there wouldn't be as much of it. Again, though: I really don't care who smokes - but I'd love not to see the bill, too.
Lemme guess, it makes you kill your friends, gives you brain damage, and is incredibly addictive, right?
Wouldn't it be easier just to stick with what I actually said? My point is simply that a rational, modest consumption of a really tasty glass of wine, or particularly refreshing glass of beer (or a G&T, of course) is pretty damn benign, unless you've got a glass liver. But smoking anything deposits nasty tarred up hydrocarbons in your lungs, just for starters. That's all I'm talking about: smoking anything, including the fantastic smelling stuff that comes off of my Webber while I'm grilling a piece of venison, isn't good for you.
As for the number of "places" that find it rewarding to argue the pro-marijuana perspective... well, I associate those efforts with lots of other resonant political and (counter-) cultural yammerings that seem to have an agenda beyond the somewhat amusing proclaiming of marijuana as the cure for all that ails the world. You know, sort of like saying that hemp is the best fiber for everything, including fiber optics
I'm confident that there would be similar studies for marijuana
Similar studies, maybe, but not similar results. Inhaling burning organic material is simply never going to be good for you. That particular material is also full of all sorts of bad-for-your-neurons compounds, of course, so it's not like you're sitting around a smoky campfire - it's intended to impact your nervous system, which it does.
So does alcohol. Moderation on that front, though, is a good thing. Moderation in how much smoke you inhale is just, well, less smoke.
But then I'm probably not your average Slashdot reader
Right you are, there! Because you made a considered, rational, non-dogmatic comment. What were you thinking man!
Gee, I remember something called the Apple II doing this long before microsoft was the force it was
Now, be reasonable. The Apple II never saw the penetration into (especially small) businesses that even the earliest, crudest PCs immediately had. The PC, running DOS even, was hugely successful. When Windows hit, it made word processor users out of millions of people that had never even heard of the Apple II or had any inclination to spend Mac sort of money.
Otherwise nobody would have known the FBI was harvesting log files
Not known? Since when is it news that when the FBI is presented with a reason to think they have a crime to investigate, and evidence related to that crime is likely buried in some data on a computer, that they'll get a court order to investigate the evidence? If it was your kid kidnapped, or your business extorted, or your favorite [choose thing] vandalized by some nut job who then bragged about the crime on a logged web server - wouldn't you want the law enforcement people involved to be able to investigate the evidence? If the evidence is web server log files, then a copy of the hard drive is probably the most sensible way to get it, and that's what they went and asked a judge for, and he/she issued a court order saying just that. And Rackspace just coughed up the drives rather than making a copy - you'll have to ask them why. But you deliberately use the word "harvest" as if they were out on their daily mission to collect logs files from every ISP for the fun of it - that's BS.
faced with sneaky orders like this
There wasn't anything sneaky about it! They did exactly what they always do when needing to collect evidence for a criminal investigation. Doesn't matter if it's web log files, paper records from a money-laundering faux pizza business, or shipping documents hidden by a company bringing in fake Rolexes from China. It's evidence, and you have to go get it if you're going to pursue the case. Sneaky? The only reason to "sneak" is if you have to work on the case without tipping off the suspect (say, because they're continuing to commit the crime in question and you want to catch them in the act, or get info on their associates so you can make a more effective arrest - just like they do with the kiddie pr0n jackasses).
But of course, you're not even aware of the particulars in this case. The ITALIANS requested the evidence. The hosting was in the UK. The issue was the publication of photos and names of undercover law enforcement people in Switzerland (completely against the law). The hosting was overseas, but was being done by a US-based company, so by treaty, the FBI was asked to make arrangements for the evidence collection. There was no "harvesting" going on, there was a European request for evidence related to crimes being committed in Europe, with evidence that just happened to be piled up in the facilities of a company that happens to be based in the US.
Regardless, the damage has been done
Right - to the reputation of the company that did more than it was asked to when pulling log files.
it's really too bad about the victims of this witchhunt
By which you're referring to the undercover officers who have had their faces and names published by anti-globalization crazies? If not, that's what you should be talking about. If the indymedia people didn't encourage that sort of use of their systems, they wouldn't have to care about their log files, either.
For starters, skin cells will not, under any circumstances, grow into a human child
Careful. You're not reading the news. There's a very frisky Afghan hound bouncing around in Asia right now, born from the DNA taken from a skin cell. There's really not much at all different between that and a primate like us, at least not in terms of conceptual difficulty. And before you say that it takes special acts by people to reproduce life that way, remember that no baby gets born with acts on our part. And without the use of science (antibiotics and all sorts of other modern tools) way, way more babies and moms would never make it through pregnancy. Getting pregnant used to be a worse than 1-in-20 death sentence for women. And most babies - the kinds that really are viable little humans - that used to die in childbirth are now saved. By science, as used by people making choices.
No human alive, including the woman carrying the child, has the right to say when that child is or isn't alive, is or isn't human, will or won't survive.
Then why do we bother feeding babies? Why do we bother with the emotional, financial, and temporal investment of care for someone who is just going to die eventually anyway? Because we make the judgement that the child or ailing person is worth keeping alive. They certainly won't survive on their own. There is no "right" involved in concluding that - it's just a simple fact. No, it's the judgement, choice, and actions of people (typically adults) that result in the survival of a fetus and its transition into being a baby. Likewise for the life of a child well into the years it can fend for itself, and well into the years when it can no longer do so. Choices. Decisions. Value judgements. Made by people.
That several-weeks-along fetus sure doesn't have enough neurons to carry anything resembling consciousness. Should people casually disregard the truly great capacity we have to reproduce? No, that robs something of our integrity. But should we pretend that there's a person in a fetus that doesn't even have a frontal lobe with which to be a person? No... that requires a committment to superstition, magical thinking, and a willingness to close one's eyes to the actual facts in front of them. And, of course, from there springs all of the woes that supernatural belief has created in the world (most recently, terrorism a la Al Queda).
the US isn't spending money on basic science or useful space programs that most of the population wants and desires.
... fear" ? We're not investing in fear, we're investing in shutting down the clowns that think they'll make their point by instilling fear. You don't blow up train cars thinking you're really going to damage the population of the country. You do it specifically to instill fear. Terror. Hence "terrorists." They're real, and they've got themselves convinced that it works. After all, it got US troops to pull out of Somolia (and leave the place to the warlords), and it got Spain to pull out of peacekeeping in Iraq.
The US actually spends a fortune on basic science. But a lot of that spending is done by the private sector, as opposed to the higher ratio of tax-funded science in other countries (or tax-funded corporate espionage from other countries). But it doesn't matter: it's not like research and basic science spending is mutually exclusive with defense spending. To the contrary: defense spending is the source of some of the most fundamental R&D we do in this country (including bio sciences, physics, information systems, aerospace - the works).
won't change the fact that to get out of this hole we need to invest in education, not fear.
And what exactly is it that you think we're doing in the middle easat right now? The whole point of steering those countries towards open markets, freedom of speech, and an elected, representational government is exactly so that a more rational, educated way of life can set in. That beats the hell out of a mysoginistic, backwards, medeival thuggo-theocracy sitting on top of huge oil reserves that allow them to fund brutal dictatorships and oppressive regimes. Reduce that constant source of friction in the world, and the exporting of extremist jihadd-minded BS (as is happening rapidly into Africa, right now), and you'll improve life for everyone - here and there.
"invest
the Saudis aren't dealing with it, as even the CIA admits, they're expanding
There's "Saudis" and there's the Saudis. Extremist wahabis that happen to have their family fortunes there (people like bin Laden) hate the Saudi authorities as much as they hate the Egyptians, the Israelis, the moderate Jordanians, and of course, the western world. No question that the jerks driving cars full of explosives into crowds of Iraqi children are mostly Saudis, Syrians, and Iranians. But (and way later than they should have, obviously), the family of Saud is realizing they have their own personal nest of vipers, and they've started clamping down. The Egyptians are helping, and also recognizing the new Iraqi transitional government... which is why the Egyptians just lost a big chunk of their economy to terrorists a week or so ago.
Fear the wrong guys? I'd say that people who actually act to kill you, and those that fund and support such people, are not the "wrong" guys. They're not the only guys, but they're past the point of making nice with - they want to kill you. It's the 5-year-old kids bobbing their heads in a fundamentalist school in Pakistan, or Iran, or Syria that we have to reach, before they get the same twisted view of the world. And that's not going to happen just by shipping money over there. There has to be an accountable, rational government in place in order for these little hatred factories to be shut down. And letting the people in Iraq and Afghanistan show the pleasure they've obviously taken in forming dictator-free, bi-cameral parlimentary systems is a great first start. The fact that there are other Muslims that want those Muslims to die for doing so is exactly what we're now trying to stop. And when that's less true, there will be even more of the momentum that just saw reforms take place in Lebannon, Lybia, and even in parts of Saudi Arabia. This is going to take time.
In the meantime, actual people with actual explosives are looking for
don't blame me for your failures
What failures? Getting attacked? Well, that was a failure, certainly. Once the Soviets were gone we pretty much gutted our intelligence community, and internal political squabbles kept everyone from talking enough to prevent that from happening. But failing to stop it isn't the "source" of it. The source of it is the same fine bunch of fellows who just today reminded us that they are the source of the attacks and that they want to do more, and much bigger than before.
Why? Because they can't stand the idea of such western notions as democracy getting in the way of a handful of extremist religious crazies running that part of the world. That's why they attack in Turkey, that's why they attack in Egypt, and that's why even the Saudis are dealing now with terrorists in their own borders.
There is a boogyman, and he's the kid with the backpack full of explosives getting on the train, convinced he's headed towards 70 virgins. He's the guy that thinks it's appropriate, just like the Taliban did, to kill women who try to hold jobs, or cut off people's hands for secretly playing music. You know: the nice people who banned kids from flying kites because Allah disapproves of such things. There's your "source" for you. And when people like that organize into large enough groups, hold enough weapons, and actually tell you that their purpose is to kill you... well, I'm glad the military is giving it everything they've got to stop it. You get the benefit too, even though you're obviously not afraid of getting blown up. Probably the hundreds hurt in London weren't afraid either, until the person sitting next to them got their head ripped off. You just keep enjoying the right to complain, though! Because if you lived under Saddam, or under the Taliban, you'd be dead meat for doing so, along with your family.
just to finance silly foreign adventures that don't help their economy ...
By which you presumably mean dealing with the Taliban, and with Saddam. I'd say that 9/11 had a pretty huge impact on our economy, wouldn't you? And the Taliban regimein Afghanistan was playing delighted host to the people who planned and carried out that bit of nastiness. Turning places like towards democracy and away from corrupt theocracy is so, so in our economic interests that to say otherwise suggests a total head-in-the-sand lack of world view.
As for the Europeans and Japanese... well, aren't they lucky at how little they've had to spend on defense in the last 30, 40 years. The US has done pretty much all of the heavy lifting, allowing them to fiddle around with whatever floats their collective boats (um, "collective" being the key word in most of Europe, certainly). The Chinese are jumping ahead quickly by using other people's intellectual work, and by keeping their government in a position to manipulate their labor and import/export/currency in ways that can't be sustained, but which for now, play well for them in the news. Clock's ticking on that front.
I don't know how practical they are from a materials point of view
Well, when you think about it... you'd be wanting to haul what, dozens of tons (at least!) up to the edge of the atmosphere? Whatever payload, and then whatever additional engine/hardware/guidance and fuel you'd need to actually push into orbit and get around once you get there. Not to mention life support, if that's an issue.
Anything with a large enough envelope to handle that would be pretty well squooshed at lower altitudes unless it was quite (very!) rigid, and I can't imagine what material would have the needed multiple acres of surface area and, being rigid enough, not sink like a battleship. Maybe some super-duper resin/nanotubish sort of thing... but my bets on more conventional mechanisms for quite a while. Space elevators seem more likely to me than colossal balloons, and that's saying a lot (the elevators strike me as being the single most irresistable terrorist target, ever).
for Yahoo to launch so they can steal ideas, then develop their own
So, when MS does it, it's stealing. But when Yahoo does it (following Google), it's innovation? Or, when Google did it after Overture and Go2 and everyone else that had been in the game for years... what, they were just de-Eviling it? And, Google maps... was not one bit of it, conceptually or otherwise, derivative in any way from earlier offerings from MapQuest, and Yahoo?
I guarantee that Yahoo won't be advertising this new service as being "just like Google did it!" even though they're obviously going after similar niches, using something that will manifest itself in a similar way. Of course, this is slashdot, so everything's fine unless MS happens to also do it.
The best evidence is B. Rattan and his X Prize effort. All he did was take the proved existing 1950's era tech and build it up with any modern available stuff. It works!
If by "works" you mean, "went straight up, and came straight down without any orbital velocities involved" then, sure. But you don't seem to mean that, even though that's what happened.
I told them to use the balloon launch like that to get the material above the atmosphere and then rockets above. They said it was "Impossible."
You're not really complaining just because they know the laws of physics, are you? You can't use a balloon of any type to get above the atmosphere. The ballon material itself, and the helium involved, are still at some point going to be more dense than the surrounding atmosphere, and then you're stalled out.
They need fired
If you're wondering why perhaps "NASA leadership" isn't listening to your ideas, perhaps it's because you forget important words like "to be" in your sentences. The "rocket needs launched" or "the car needs washed" are similarly idiotic phrases, and the people that use them are, unfortunately (no matter how natively bright) practically shouting that they are unsophisticated, poor communicators. That tends to rob most of their communication of any real credibility. The system of the English language is a pretty easy one to master, so it's understandable if someone who, raised in the U.S. as you were, doesn't use it effectively, may not inspire a lot of confidence in their take on vastly more complex issues (like space flight) that require ultra-precise communication and conveyence of concepts.
But like very bureaucracy if you order mass firings of these idiots, only the working shlepps down at the bottom will get shed, not the morons at the top.
Which ones (the morons at the top, or the "working" people) would do a better job of understanding what "like very bureaucracy" actually means? My point: you'll come across a lot more meaningfully if you take a deep breath and read over your own comments to see if they sound, well... a little bit shrill, and not particularly solid. Grammar counts, because it indicates mature, critical thinking skills. It counts even more when you're trying to persuade people to listen to your notions of how complicated, expensive things involving thousands of people should be carried out.
Anyone else find it ironic that they're looking to set up this anonymous communication system and yet they require registration to read their site?
... mean? evil? "corporate?" ... for a company that's not charging you anything to have a say in how you access the stuff for which they're not charging you. It's not like the NYT is some crazy little backwoods UFO newsletter that's desparate for one more reader (so they can double their audience). It's a business. There wouldn't be so many links to major newspaper sites if they didn't have something useful to offer. All of those inane bloggers would get all the traffic if they had anything like the reporting and analytical resources that a professional news company has. So, no, it's not ironic.
Why would that be ironic? They have nothing to do with each other. The NYT is willing to let you read the content that they very expensively produce, and they've got some strings attached to that free (as in beer) service. Don't like it? Put $0.50 in one of those newspaper vending machines and get the dead tree version. Newspapers are not public services, they're private sector companies producing a product which they sell (well, to products, actually: advertising space, and subscriptions/o-t-c sales).
I'm continually amazed that people think it's somehow
Now, ironic is the concept of journalists looking for a way to keep anonymous sources so anonymous that, essentially, there's no way to make a distinction between a real source and an NYT reporter just BSing (which has certainly happened).
The efforts of several sex-phobic senators notwithstanding, the US government has--for the past 15 years or more--been far more concerned with attempting to levy pornography than to level it
That's right. And this particular Democrat doesn't want porn to go away, he wants it to thrive so that he can take a piece of the revenue. Just like they don't really want smokers to quit - they want them to keep on puffing so that they can fund all sorts of other uses of the substantial tax revenue.
Funny, isn't it, that the Democrat politician proposing this can't seem to muster up specific distaste for the people who consume the legal material, but prefers to see them as a cash cow. Just like smokers. His approach to governing people means keeping them doing the things he doesn't like (smoking, viewing porn, being poor, etc) so that his little corner of the bureaucratic world has a reason to exist (and an opportunity for more tax revenue). How much do you want to bet that even if he could get such a measure passed, that the dollars pulled in would more or less never go straight to the law enforcement teams that actually do hunt down a bust the kidddie porn creeps. Nope, it's just more money in the pot to spend on pork.
It is better to have a working system now, with the occasional bug, than a spectacular IT crisis/fiasco in 500 year's time
Just stop for a second (bada-bing!) and think about what 500 years' worth of evolution in IT is going to represent. It's not even worth talking about what IT will be having to deal with then because it will be so completely unrecognizeable as to make the discussion meaningless. Sure, it's passing the buck... but we're talking about passing the buck to a generation that will find our 20-years-past-paper-punchcards baby IT issues to be quaint. Like the people who only a little over 100 years ago were sure you'd die if you went faster than 35 MPH.
So, it's okay to play with daylight savings time but this leap second is a pain and needs to go?
Right. Two very different problems. The DST issue just involved aribtrary labeling of what time it is. The elapsed time in seconds doesn't change. But when the number of ticks in a minute does have to change, a lot of stuff breaks.
Sometimes a highly visable arrest is enough to deter people from an activity
Some. Not terrorists, typically. For that, you have to just plain remove them, their backers/resources, and try to deal with the underlying culture clash that fuels them. People who are too cheap to pay for movies, on the other hand, already know all of the ground rules, and are just assuming that they won't get caught. It's not like they don't know they're no better than a standard shoplifter, they just figure that since there are millions of them they have a shot at continuing to enjoy the work of their favorite band without actually paying what the band asks. The people who facilitate that on a large scale are truly low hanging fruit for law enforcement, though - they can't really get the stuff they pirate into a lot of their buddies' hands without, by definition, exposing what they're doing. That little bit of deliberate, very public nose-thumbing is pretty much asking for it.
much money as organized groups like the RIAA, so members of congress won't listen to me
So why are you not forming the National Pirate's Association? Groups of teachers, gun owners, auto workers, environmentalists... they all form large groups and leverage that so that they can make a bunch of noise and fund campaigns. What do you think MoveOn.org is? It's rich people backing Democrats with millions and millions of dollars. Poor people can throw in a dollar, too, and say they think the same thing. Do you really think that the trial lawyer associations, the NEA, and other extremely well funded left-of-center groups don't have every bit of an audience in political circles as a particular trade association in the entertainment biz? Spend a little more time on K Street in DC - the noise from the well funded left is very, very loud. The problem is that it doesn't resonate with most voters because all it ever is is against things, and not constructive. That's getting pretty old.
Perhaps terrorists are not a high priority because the politicians in power have been able to take advantage of the attacks.
Not a high priority? How do you figure? We've got an unprecedented number of people working on the intel, interdiction, and counter-terrorism side of things. We're in the middle of re-building a seriously gutted intel capacity that suffered for years under enormous budget cuts. It takes time to hire, train, and embed the sort of people needed to head this stuff off at the source. Until then, we're treating the symptom, not the problem. But that doesn't mean that other crime should just be ignored.
Gas prices soar.
Because no one will tolerate the building of domestic refining capacity. We haven't added refineries since the 1970's, even as the population using the fuel has grown hugely. But that's only part of the picture - the main component is demand pressure because of hugely growing markets in China and India. There are simply more people trying to buy the same gallons of gas. So, if your personal favorite politicians were in office, how would you reduce the competition for oil? Would you drill for more? Build new refineries (in which state/city - have fun getting approval!)? Subsidize fuel with tax dollars? The point is, you toss gas prices into the conversation as if your distaste for the FBI busting flagrant copyright violators is all part of giant tinfoil hat conspiracy that also includes somehow fooling the Chinese into using more oil so that we have to bid up our purchases from suppliers.
I would also add the uber rich are not scared of terrorism because when was the last time a suicide bomber blew himself up in Beverly Hills?
Who do you think had their offices in the top floors of the World Trade Center, a bunch of living-on-Velveeta 20-year-olds starting up a lost cause web site? No, it was bankers, traders, law firms, accounting firms - "rich" people. Who do you think lost a fortune when those attacks clobbered the econom
Remember, the "outrageous" ones you hear about are the rare exceptions, newsworthy precisely because they are rare exceptions.
But just gearing up to defend against such a suit is enough to ruin a mid-sized business (say, one that makes speciality target pistols, or one that makes custom kitchen knives). We're not talking about maintaining the right to sue a company for being neglectful or deceitful in the way they're doing business. We're talking specifically about heading off lawsuits from the vicitims of crimes against the manufacturers of the tools that the criminal illegally used. I think that distinction is crystal clear, and any judge that even sees such a suit should consider charges against the plaintiff.
This issue is espcially galling when it's the government pressing the suit (like a city council, etc., looking for a windfall like the tobacco settlements so they don't have to raise taxes that year).
However the main purpose of an automoble is to transport people from A to B. The main purpose of a (hand)gun is to kill people. Therefore the manufacturers do have some responsibilty
Why? I own a handgun for the sole purpose of self defense. It cannot hurt anyone unless I pick it up and use it. The guy who makes the gun has absolutely no influence over the events that would cause me to use (or not use) their product. GM makes products that hurl 2000 pounds of metal down the road at 60+mph. They also have no influence over whether or not you jerk the wheel to the right and run down a kid on the sidewalk.
And what about knives? They exist to cut things. To separate material into two pieces. The maker of the knife has no control over whether you use it to chop carrots, or cut someone's throat. Should they get dragged into court when someone does? It's ridiculous.