The rub is that people really are genetically different. While understanding differences is important to understanding how and why people respond differently to different medications, etc., it's just a little bitty hop to start deciding one person is "better" than another based on genetics.
Genetics is truly a double-edged sword. Just deciding that some gene needs to be "fixed" brings a value judgement with it. And that same little hop to deciding one person is better than another.
Hopefully it only gets as extreme as wanting to help fix other people's genes instead of exterminate them. Where do you people jump to the conclusion that they want to exterminate people?
So you are saying if the gay gene, or the gene for black skin is discovered, that the evil scientists will want to exterminate them?
Ridiculous. If these people want to exterminate the bad genes, they'll do it with race based medicine, and I don't see enough people being concerned about that or the potential for genocide, because the majority of people probably secretly support genocide of some other group as long as it's not their group of genes.
Either genocide is always wrong or it's always right, which is it?
First off, I'm a chemist and don't have access to $500k worth of equipment at home, so I couldn't telecommute if I wanted to, but even if I could, why?
I don't want to be at home all the time. I like to leave the house and I'm generally not productive when at home. I go to work to be at work and I go home to be at home. I would rather never mix the two. Why do you need downtime from work? Why don't you just live your job?
Take a sleeping bag with you to work, sleep at work and then you don't have to pay for a home you probably never spend much time in anyway.
In that case you have an unusual personality from the typical slashdot computer geek.
Myself, I don't like gossip, I don't care what my coworkers had for dinner or whats going on in their lives. I don't want to have to drink coffee.
What if some of us want to just wake up and work from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep and then repeat that for weeks or months at a time, taking breaks only for food, sex, and showering/shaving etc.
What if we want to live like a hermit and focus on nothing but our work, the beautiful code that we produce might be more interesting to us than the words which come out of coworkers mouths.
Then they should work retail or some public service job where they have to be dressed up all the time.
I prefer it when my work feels like play. I don't want to get all worky and dress worky to feel like I'm working. And a lot of people like me really would rather work long hours and perhaps never stop working than to go through rituals every day, including the ritual of being late for work, or needing a cup of coffee in the morning, or putting on the tie and all the bullshit that has nothing to do with the actual work.
Hate to burst your bubble, but no woman I would describe as "good" is more attracted to a guy with money than, say, a guy who's likeable and isn't a douche. At least I give you credit for observing the warped nature of our social values, though I'm perplexed by your apparent embrace of it and exhortations to participate in a clearly unfair system.
To each his own, I suppose. No woman wants to raise kids with a bum. A woman wants a man who can make her feel safe, because the world is a scary and dangerous place. Women also want a shoulder to cry on when times are tough, so ideally women want BOTH likeable and rich.
However when women have to choose between the rich/powerful/strong asshole, and the weak/bum/jobless asshole, which asshole is she going to choose?
Most of us are either very likeable and very poor (myself included), or rich jerks. The majority of women still go for the rich jerks over the likeable poor fellow which proves that despite what you say, women DO have needs and DO want providers.
And I see nothing wrong with the system, it's a man's job to provide for and protect his family. And a woman should choose the man who is best able to protect her and her kids, because that's the rational choice, and it's natural.
The only reason it can be a problem is when the rich guy also happens to be a complete asshole who treats women like shit, but he's so rich and so powerful that he still manages to keep a good woman.
So in essence, good women are attracted to power, and in my opinion, a good woman deserves to be with a man who is both srong AND good, rather than a man who is weak and good. It's just the rational decision.
But when you have a wife and kids, then you'll have to pay for private school, and college, and whatever the kids need to be as successful as you are, and the wife will expect that because it's a mans job to provide for his family.
I don't mean that in a negative way - there's nothing wrong with a small penis. But you seem very concerned about finding a woman who will have you, and you seem to feel that cash is the only way to "score" a good woman.
And you don't need to move to Bumfuck, Idaho. Find a city with 50k-200k people and you'll have a pretty good selection, but still be where you can afford to live on a 5 figure salary. The outskirts of Charlotte or Greensboro, NC come to mind, or even larger like some of the 'burbs around Raleigh. Even better, and closer to my 50-200k number, find a town with a major college. Blacksburg and Charlottesville, VA, or Amhearst, MA, or Ithaca, NY. All small towns with great primary and secondary schools, affordable housing, and lots of hot chicks. It's not penis size that counts, it's wallet size. Women by nature are more attracted to powerful men.
And it's a fact that there aren't a lot of good women on earth, so if you go to a small city you'll just have less of a selection of a scarce commodity.
Would you go to the desert in search of water? No of course not. College towns are a good option, but college towns are near big cities, and most people don't stay in them beyond 4 years.
If you are a blogger, set your hours. Sure, you'll violate them once in a while (I'm posting from work on a Sunday...I'm in a crunch time in my business - it happens). But seriously, if you don't post for 14 hours a day, the world will not stop. Provided that you have people to do the shifts to keep the information flowing, people will not abandon the blog forever. Taco doesn't spend 20 hours a day posting dupes - he's hired people to do that.
This isn't really about blogging, it's about small business. Small, one man shops really are a drain on your life. You fear that if you close too early or open too late you'll miss that one big customer. Until you get big enough to spread the load, that will be the case.
A note for bloggers - you might want to move. There were two in that story - one in SF, one (I believe) in NY. Note: you're bloggers, nobody cares where you live and you can source from anywhere in the (US/NA/World). Based on the "all day and night at the keyboard" comments, these folks aren't getting their inside scoops from wandering the streets of the big technology cities. Might I suggest somewhere inexpensive, somewhere relaxing from which to blog. Make it within 100 miles of an airline hub if you do a lot of conferences. Office space in small towns is often $8/SF (per year) or less, and really good housing is actually affordable on 40k-50k/yr. If they move out of San Francisco and out of New York, then there will be less women to choose from, from which to marry. What if they like the women in San Fran and New York?
I'm sure most bloggers wont be marrying professional women but if you actually WANT to, then the big city is the place to find these women and this could be the main reason some of them live in these places.
I don't rule out the possibility that the guy living in San Francisco could be gay, but once again, you completely ignore the fact that there's a very large concentration of physically attractive single women in these areas that probably wont be found in the less densely populated places like North Dakota, Idaho, or Montana.
The problem with living in small towns is, it's hard as hell to find a mate in a small town. Thats the main reason most people leave the small town for the big city in the first place.
Your post wasn't completely wrong, you are right on it being more efficient to live and work in a small town. And if these guys have wives, maybe they can do that for a few years. But most people aren't going to want to find a wife in Idaho, and most people aren't going to want to raise kids in Idaho either.
Learn to live on less than a million dollars a year. That would free up some of that income to capitalize the infrastructure. The global economy is never going to be fair or become more efficient. The strong(rich) always exploit the weak (poor), and the only thing you can do is make sure you aren't the weak(poor) by trying to make as much money as you can make in your lifetime.
I don't know about you, but I want my time to be worth the absolute maximum amount of money possible. I value my time, and I love my life, and I don't want to waste my time and my life making somebody else rich. I want to make myself rich.
And women prefer powerful men. If you want a "good" woman, assuming you don't have one already, having money and power helps, unless you plan on being a fireman, cop, or work for a non profit and then perhaps you get women through status. But the simple fact is, the more money you make, the better able you are to protect your wife and kids.
Proof? Look at Africa, no money, and as a result no security. Look at this country, look in the ghettos and trailer parks, no money = no security. The more money you have, the more security you have, because society decides our worth by our salary.
Assuming a risk-free rate of 5% that's $50,000 per year. That used to be a starting California programmer's salary in the late 90's. I don't know about anyone else but I didn't feel rich. You definitely cannot support a family on that supposing he has one. You most certainly can, as long as you own your own home (no rent or mortgage to pay) and you live in the 99.9% of the world that isn't Manhattan or SF:) Heck, my family's expenses are far less than that and we pay a mortgage and live well.
The greed behind thinking "I *must* make $100k+ to survive" is one of the many factors sending this industry down the toilet. Every blogger should want to make $100k. It's good for the internet economy and for the blogging community if bloggers make $100k and up. Doctors, Lawyers, CEO's and other professions make over $100k, and I don't see you saying "It's because those Lawyers make over $100k that the legal system is going down the toilet."
The more money you have coming in, the better off you'll be, it's that simple, and if you want to live cheap, then you probably wont be able to afford private school for your kids, and you might not be able to afford the best medical treatments or the best healthcare plan.
And let's be realistic, if you are single, most of the good women prefer a man who makes over $100k vs a man living in the middle of nowhere making $30k.
What kinda man do most dads tell their daughters to go for? The Lawyer, the Doctor, the CEO, the very sorta man who just happens to be making over $100k.
Overall I look forward to making money by telecommuting and working from home. Nothing good comes from getting dressed up each morning to go to work and be around people I probably don't care to be around in the first place.
However, blogging has to actually be making people rich. If a site is bringing in millions in ad revenue, and the individual blogger guy is making under $100,000 a year, of course somethings wrong with that.
Now, if you make $100,000 a year working from your home, yes it's worth having a nervous breakdown over, but if you make $30,000, then hell no it's not.
Ideally, bloggers should just get a portion of the ad revenue and get rich along with the website. Either way, if this guy gained 30lbs it's not because of his career, it's because he refused to exercise and eat right.
If a guy gains 30lbs, and is psychologically stressed out, maybe this guy should become a fireman or construction worker where he can do hard labor every day. And if being a blogger is oo stressful maybe he should go to Iraq and fight for his country.
Seriously, this article looks to me like a lot of whining. Most people have more difficult jobs than his job. Now, my post is not all about insulting the person in the article. I'll explain my intentions below:
A. Increase the value of bloggers and the telecommuting community (we should all be able to work from home!)
B. Maximize the amount of money telecommuters can make.
I think these should be the two goals of the telecommuting community. Maximize growth and income potential, and increase the value of telecommuting to society overall.
Getting dressed up to go to work should be a thing of the past. It's better for roads, it's better for the environment. It's healthier, because the average person can be more productive from home than they are going to work, because at work someone can have the flu and infect everyone.
If you are a libertarian, telecommuting increases your sense of freedom and thus your quality of life. Why do you want to be micromanaged by a boss? The main two concerns are maximizing the amount of money which bloggers make (through technological design, activism, bloggers unions and guilds etc), and maximizing the overall value of the blogsphere and of industries which support the telecommuter community.
Bloggers need both better technologies and better business models so that people can make a decent income blogging.
It's a decent career but there's just not enough money in it yet to make it worth the pain and stress.
We need alternative business models to increase the value of the blogsphere. Anyone got ideas?
And how do you divide the ownership by statement in an automated fashion?
And how can we attempt to copyright all our internet activity? is it even possible?
If what you say is possible, how can we copyright our AIM logs so we can sue any corporation that uses or reproduces it?
It is possible to copyright literary art right?
How might it be done?
Maybe we don't want to be consumers. Maybe we want to upload our own tracks and not deal with Myspaces "music" site. Maybe Myspace should just let users sell their own tracks and stop kissing the music cartels asses.
Start an open source patent foundation, allow individuals to sell their patents to the open source foundation and recieve a lump sum of money.
The foundation then profits off the patents themselves while keeping the patents open source.
I'd rather sell my patents than give them away, and I'd rather sell them to an open source foundation where I can receive credit for the creation of it.
Why? Why would a gang of suicide bombers fear the mafia, or the crips, or anyone else? The mafia and the crips fear these people, not the other way around.
Point is, if you are a terrorist, the entire united states has declared war on you already, so it doesn't matter if you fight the united states through the war on drugs or through the war on terror, you're a terrorist if you are involved with either.
The laws, much like the new set of laws to arrest people for clicking on illegal hyperlinks, is by design set up to create an environment where even being suspected of, or attempting to view childporn is enough to get raided.
Even if you have no child porn on your computer, you still get arrested and treated as a pedophile, and thats the problem with these sorts of laws. These sorts of laws cast such a wide net that it doesnt matter who is guilty or whos innocent, the purpose of the laws is simply to arrest anyone who LOOKS or SEEMS or ACTS like a pedophile, whether they actually are a pedophile or not.
If you click a link, or search for child porn in Google, thats enough to get you raided because you're acting like a pedophile. And sure thats bad, or perhaps stupid, but the law says you can get prison time for ATTEMPTING to access child porn.
The laws are vague enough where a lot of people can be set up, trapped, or end up in situations such as this guy.
Oh you are not kidding here.
My wife and I have over the children from our in-laws. And they sleep in the bed with my wife. Just like kids do.
Though when that happens I on purpose stay away and sleep in the guest bedroom or what have you. The first time I did this my wife looked funny at me. I said, "think about it, think really hard about it."
It took her a moment or two and then she realized that I as a male cannot easily show emotion to children... There is a barrier that I have to erect, as I don't want people to ever think the wrong thing. Why? Because of the reason you said, Guilty first, innocent later.
And often it depresses me... See, this is what I was afraid of. The lawmakers in these cases have absolutely no expertise or even basic knowledge about how the online community, or how computers work, yet they make laws which govern something they know little to nothing about.
Why don't they ask people who know the internet how to best govern it? Some of the laws are the sorta laws which by design will create situations just like this one.
I don't see why a terrorist who hates this country and the people in it, would sell useful harmless products like software when the terrorist could sell crack or meth. Piracy, usually, is a victimless crime, so why would terrorists sell that when terrorists can sell poisons like drugs?
The only reason terrorists would sell pirated software that I can think of would be to install viruses on the computers of the people who purchase it, but why the hell would terrorists need to install viruses this way when the terrorists could just create a worm and upload it to the internet and let people install it themselves?
Slashdot Mirror
Genetics is truly a double-edged sword. Just deciding that some gene needs to be "fixed" brings a value judgement with it. And that same little hop to deciding one person is better than another.
Hopefully it only gets as extreme as wanting to help fix other people's genes instead of exterminate them. Where do you people jump to the conclusion that they want to exterminate people?
So you are saying if the gay gene, or the gene for black skin is discovered, that the evil scientists will want to exterminate them?
Ridiculous. If these people want to exterminate the bad genes, they'll do it with race based medicine, and I don't see enough people being concerned about that or the potential for genocide, because the majority of people probably secretly support genocide of some other group as long as it's not their group of genes.
Either genocide is always wrong or it's always right, which is it?
I don't want to be at home all the time. I like to leave the house and I'm generally not productive when at home. I go to work to be at work and I go home to be at home. I would rather never mix the two. Why do you need downtime from work? Why don't you just live your job?
Take a sleeping bag with you to work, sleep at work and then you don't have to pay for a home you probably never spend much time in anyway.
In that case you have an unusual personality from the typical slashdot computer geek.
Myself, I don't like gossip, I don't care what my coworkers had for dinner or whats going on in their lives. I don't want to have to drink coffee.
What if some of us want to just wake up and work from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep and then repeat that for weeks or months at a time, taking breaks only for food, sex, and showering/shaving etc.
What if we want to live like a hermit and focus on nothing but our work, the beautiful code that we produce might be more interesting to us than the words which come out of coworkers mouths.
Then they should work retail or some public service job where they have to be dressed up all the time.
I prefer it when my work feels like play. I don't want to get all worky and dress worky to feel like I'm working. And a lot of people like me really would rather work long hours and perhaps never stop working than to go through rituals every day, including the ritual of being late for work, or needing a cup of coffee in the morning, or putting on the tie and all the bullshit that has nothing to do with the actual work.
I guess it's a preference, your point is taken.
To each his own, I suppose. No woman wants to raise kids with a bum. A woman wants a man who can make her feel safe, because the world is a scary and dangerous place. Women also want a shoulder to cry on when times are tough, so ideally women want BOTH likeable and rich.
However when women have to choose between the rich/powerful/strong asshole, and the weak/bum/jobless asshole, which asshole is she going to choose?
Most of us are either very likeable and very poor (myself included), or rich jerks. The majority of women still go for the rich jerks over the likeable poor fellow which proves that despite what you say, women DO have needs and DO want providers.
And I see nothing wrong with the system, it's a man's job to provide for and protect his family. And a woman should choose the man who is best able to protect her and her kids, because that's the rational choice, and it's natural.
The only reason it can be a problem is when the rich guy also happens to be a complete asshole who treats women like shit, but he's so rich and so powerful that he still manages to keep a good woman.
So in essence, good women are attracted to power, and in my opinion, a good woman deserves to be with a man who is both srong AND good, rather than a man who is weak and good. It's just the rational decision.
But when you have a wife and kids, then you'll have to pay for private school, and college, and whatever the kids need to be as successful as you are, and the wife will expect that because it's a mans job to provide for his family.
That's what being a man is all about.
And you don't need to move to Bumfuck, Idaho. Find a city with 50k-200k people and you'll have a pretty good selection, but still be where you can afford to live on a 5 figure salary. The outskirts of Charlotte or Greensboro, NC come to mind, or even larger like some of the 'burbs around Raleigh. Even better, and closer to my 50-200k number, find a town with a major college. Blacksburg and Charlottesville, VA, or Amhearst, MA, or Ithaca, NY. All small towns with great primary and secondary schools, affordable housing, and lots of hot chicks. It's not penis size that counts, it's wallet size.
Women by nature are more attracted to powerful men.
And it's a fact that there aren't a lot of good women on earth, so if you go to a small city you'll just have less of a selection of a scarce commodity.
Would you go to the desert in search of water? No of course not. College towns are a good option, but college towns are near big cities, and most people don't stay in them beyond 4 years.
Well yeah if you don't like being a blogger and can do something else, then why blog?
But if you like being a blogger, and it's the main thing you are good at, then you better fight to protect your turf.
But even in the case of building airplanes, the design could be done at home.
This isn't really about blogging, it's about small business. Small, one man shops really are a drain on your life. You fear that if you close too early or open too late you'll miss that one big customer. Until you get big enough to spread the load, that will be the case.
A note for bloggers - you might want to move. There were two in that story - one in SF, one (I believe) in NY. Note: you're bloggers, nobody cares where you live and you can source from anywhere in the (US/NA/World). Based on the "all day and night at the keyboard" comments, these folks aren't getting their inside scoops from wandering the streets of the big technology cities. Might I suggest somewhere inexpensive, somewhere relaxing from which to blog. Make it within 100 miles of an airline hub if you do a lot of conferences. Office space in small towns is often $8/SF (per year) or less, and really good housing is actually affordable on 40k-50k/yr. If they move out of San Francisco and out of New York, then there will be less women to choose from, from which to marry. What if they like the women in San Fran and New York?
I'm sure most bloggers wont be marrying professional women but if you actually WANT to, then the big city is the place to find these women and this could be the main reason some of them live in these places.
I don't rule out the possibility that the guy living in San Francisco could be gay, but once again, you completely ignore the fact that there's a very large concentration of physically attractive single women in these areas that probably wont be found in the less densely populated places like North Dakota, Idaho, or Montana.
The problem with living in small towns is, it's hard as hell to find a mate in a small town. Thats the main reason most people leave the small town for the big city in the first place.
Your post wasn't completely wrong, you are right on it being more efficient to live and work in a small town. And if these guys have wives, maybe they can do that for a few years. But most people aren't going to want to find a wife in Idaho, and most people aren't going to want to raise kids in Idaho either.
I don't know about you, but I want my time to be worth the absolute maximum amount of money possible. I value my time, and I love my life, and I don't want to waste my time and my life making somebody else rich. I want to make myself rich.
And women prefer powerful men. If you want a "good" woman, assuming you don't have one already, having money and power helps, unless you plan on being a fireman, cop, or work for a non profit and then perhaps you get women through status. But the simple fact is, the more money you make, the better able you are to protect your wife and kids.
Proof? Look at Africa, no money, and as a result no security. Look at this country, look in the ghettos and trailer parks, no money = no security. The more money you have, the more security you have, because society decides our worth by our salary.
Don't you think you're worth more than this?
The greed behind thinking "I *must* make $100k+ to survive" is one of the many factors sending this industry down the toilet. Every blogger should want to make $100k. It's good for the internet economy and for the blogging community if bloggers make $100k and up. Doctors, Lawyers, CEO's and other professions make over $100k, and I don't see you saying "It's because those Lawyers make over $100k that the legal system is going down the toilet."
The more money you have coming in, the better off you'll be, it's that simple, and if you want to live cheap, then you probably wont be able to afford private school for your kids, and you might not be able to afford the best medical treatments or the best healthcare plan.
And let's be realistic, if you are single, most of the good women prefer a man who makes over $100k vs a man living in the middle of nowhere making $30k.
What kinda man do most dads tell their daughters to go for? The Lawyer, the Doctor, the CEO, the very sorta man who just happens to be making over $100k.
Overall I look forward to making money by telecommuting and working from home. Nothing good comes from getting dressed up each morning to go to work and be around people I probably don't care to be around in the first place.
However, blogging has to actually be making people rich. If a site is bringing in millions in ad revenue, and the individual blogger guy is making under $100,000 a year, of course somethings wrong with that.
Now, if you make $100,000 a year working from your home, yes it's worth having a nervous breakdown over, but if you make $30,000, then hell no it's not.
Ideally, bloggers should just get a portion of the ad revenue and get rich along with the website. Either way, if this guy gained 30lbs it's not because of his career, it's because he refused to exercise and eat right.
If a guy gains 30lbs, and is psychologically stressed out, maybe this guy should become a fireman or construction worker where he can do hard labor every day. And if being a blogger is oo stressful maybe he should go to Iraq and fight for his country.
Seriously, this article looks to me like a lot of whining. Most people have more difficult jobs than his job. Now, my post is not all about insulting the person in the article. I'll explain my intentions below:
A. Increase the value of bloggers and the telecommuting community (we should all be able to work from home!)
B. Maximize the amount of money telecommuters can make.
I think these should be the two goals of the telecommuting community. Maximize growth and income potential, and increase the value of telecommuting to society overall.
Getting dressed up to go to work should be a thing of the past. It's better for roads, it's better for the environment. It's healthier, because the average person can be more productive from home than they are going to work, because at work someone can have the flu and infect everyone.
If you are a libertarian, telecommuting increases your sense of freedom and thus your quality of life. Why do you want to be micromanaged by a boss? The main two concerns are maximizing the amount of money which bloggers make (through technological design, activism, bloggers unions and guilds etc), and maximizing the overall value of the blogsphere and of industries which support the telecommuter community.
Bloggers need both better technologies and better business models so that people can make a decent income blogging. It's a decent career but there's just not enough money in it yet to make it worth the pain and stress. We need alternative business models to increase the value of the blogsphere. Anyone got ideas?
And how do you divide the ownership by statement in an automated fashion? And how can we attempt to copyright all our internet activity? is it even possible?
If what you say is possible, how can we copyright our AIM logs so we can sue any corporation that uses or reproduces it? It is possible to copyright literary art right? How might it be done?
The government snoops on everyone. Being more or less of a target doesn't make any difference to a government who watches every living thing.
Maybe we don't want to be consumers. Maybe we want to upload our own tracks and not deal with Myspaces "music" site. Maybe Myspace should just let users sell their own tracks and stop kissing the music cartels asses.
Start an open source patent foundation, allow individuals to sell their patents to the open source foundation and recieve a lump sum of money. The foundation then profits off the patents themselves while keeping the patents open source. I'd rather sell my patents than give them away, and I'd rather sell them to an open source foundation where I can receive credit for the creation of it.
Why? Why would a gang of suicide bombers fear the mafia, or the crips, or anyone else? The mafia and the crips fear these people, not the other way around. Point is, if you are a terrorist, the entire united states has declared war on you already, so it doesn't matter if you fight the united states through the war on drugs or through the war on terror, you're a terrorist if you are involved with either.
The laws, much like the new set of laws to arrest people for clicking on illegal hyperlinks, is by design set up to create an environment where even being suspected of, or attempting to view childporn is enough to get raided. Even if you have no child porn on your computer, you still get arrested and treated as a pedophile, and thats the problem with these sorts of laws. These sorts of laws cast such a wide net that it doesnt matter who is guilty or whos innocent, the purpose of the laws is simply to arrest anyone who LOOKS or SEEMS or ACTS like a pedophile, whether they actually are a pedophile or not. If you click a link, or search for child porn in Google, thats enough to get you raided because you're acting like a pedophile. And sure thats bad, or perhaps stupid, but the law says you can get prison time for ATTEMPTING to access child porn. The laws are vague enough where a lot of people can be set up, trapped, or end up in situations such as this guy.
The only benefit of having more laws is that you have more criminals.
I don't see why a terrorist who hates this country and the people in it, would sell useful harmless products like software when the terrorist could sell crack or meth. Piracy, usually, is a victimless crime, so why would terrorists sell that when terrorists can sell poisons like drugs?
The only reason terrorists would sell pirated software that I can think of would be to install viruses on the computers of the people who purchase it, but why the hell would terrorists need to install viruses this way when the terrorists could just create a worm and upload it to the internet and let people install it themselves?
I just don't see the logic.
It seems almost any activity or medium can be linked to child porn or terrorism. I'm as skeptical about this as you, I'm not convinced.
I'm sure there are mafias out there doing these things, but enough to create new laws and agencies? I don't think so.