Actually, they're banned because the majority are addicting and cause long-term damage. Pot causes lung cancer more effectively than cigarettes. That alone means it ought to stay banned.
In any case, those are not banned for religious reasons. Alcohol generally is.
Fasting is not really fasting. You fast in the day, have a buffet nightly at sundown. It's one of those weird things religions do while saying they do something else.
Indonesia is essentially a Muslim theocracy. It is illegal to be atheist; people are in jail for it right now. Other religions aren't exactly safe, either.
This is very dangerous a sentiment, and if you want to know why, you need only look to the early days of psychiatry. Any divergence from a cultural norm can be labeled "crazy," resulting in locking such people up and torturing them. Maybe not the brown people, but the gay people and Muslims ought to watch out.
In reality, the really dangerous crazies tend to not be obviously so, and the good crazies take pride in the fact they're a bit off. I might go around in pony shirts and a Rainbow Dash hat barefoot trying to buy H2SO4, but I have zero intention to go on a murderous rampage at any point in the foreseeable future.
Plenty of "normal" people have done bad things. In fact, every homegrown terrorist I can think of was described as normal. Don't hate "crazy" because it's different. It's usually us crazy people who save your ass in the long run - Feynman, Einstein, Descartes, etc..
Insane people will always do bad things and will always exist. You can make it a little harder, maybe, but history has shown us insanity knows no bounds.
Yet every time something like this happens, kneejerk commences. Yellow journalism pours on the stories about "GUNS BOUGHT LEGALLY!" and such, because political intrigue gets eyes on the TV. Then we get idiots running for office on the topic, that because there exist outliers in the dataset, the entire set must be purged. Which wouldn't even work, mind you. If the second amendment were repealed, we'd have about as many guns coming into the country as we have meth, pot, and all the other highly illegal items. The only difference would be that it would be illegal to own guns, so only criminals and insane people would... yeah, helpful.
This is one of the few times I am happy the Republicans and the like exist. Maybe they're generally hypocritical elitists, but at least on this topic, they tend to be right, damn it.
Which is my point, to an extent. I did not want to become a programmer because I saw it as easily replaced by foreign labor and because of the large number of assholes I had already met in it. Yet if a woman makes the same decision, it seems everyone wants to make it about gender. That's not striving for equality; that's sexism in at least one direction, probably both to some extent depending on the people saying it. Either you have the extreme feminists who believe the world should be a matriarchy, or you have people who believe women are too weak to make their own decisions and handle the same stupidity men do. Neither are right. Neither should be encouraged nor accepted. Equality and general social harmony doesn't come through screaming about things of no consequence because it offends some made up sensibility of yours, it comes from learning to accept that, ultimately, your offense/fear/weakness is your problem.
Again, if this were a case of something more specific, maybe it would be different. But, "you said BIG BOOBS, you should be FIRED!" is so irrational I have a very hard time even categorizing it as extremism. It sounds a lot like people with nothing better to do than bitch and moan.
"What I find so depressing is how far down I had to look in this thread of posts before I found an intelligent reply to the issue at hand. Folks like to pretend like it was just a harmless joke, and then they sit around and scratch their heads wondering why more women aren't in IT fields when there's such a constant stream of juvenile hostility towards them."
I am going to repeat what I just said.
Do you honestly believe women are not in IT because of things like this? Because never once have I met a woman that said anything to the effect. Certainly not "well, I kept being offended by comments, so I left!" Why do you think women are so weak that we need to censor things in order to make sure they go into IT?
Further, I don't wonder, I blame it on cultural differences, like the ones you and the GP are propagating that women are weak and couldn't possibly do something without everyone making sure to not make them uncomfortable in the process.
"I'm a male, but to me, it's just a matter of respect for other people. Some people have it, but as this shows, there are still a lot of people who don't.
If this were a comment to the effect of "This function is misbehaving, IT MUST HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED BY A WOMAN," I might agree. That is not the case, nor have I ever once seen that. This is literally a stupid joke that has been around since calculators became common place. It is not sexist - it is just dumb. If a woman is honestly offended by this, frankly, that's her issue, but it's along the lines of a homosexual being offended by the "have a gay old time" in the Flintstones song.
"I think what is infuriating to many is people start with "I don't understand" then proceed to "therefor it doesn't matter". Telling people how they should feel about things that you can't understand is the hight of arrogance. Maybe instead these people should take some time and listen, and just accept that other people are impacted by things like this and just because you are not doesn't mean they shouldn't be.
You don't get it. Fine. Then don't tell other people how to feel. Women don't need your big smart male brain to explain how their poor womanly one should react to things that relate to experiences men don't have."
I have issues with this line of reasoning. You can't have it both ways.
You claim "we" can't understand how women feel about this: why not? Isn't that pretty horribly sexist in itself? It's definitely a lot more sexist than "0xB16B00B5", but I guess that's alright, because you're insulting men and that's fine. Did you stop to think maybe "we" are just right?
You seem to think women are just more fragile than men. We can't understand how they are so easily harmed by a hexadecimal constant, so we should just nod and not try to point out why it means nothing, because that will make them feel worse. Don't you think that is patronizing at all?
I am pretty much tired of political correctness and reverse sexism being used to attack people who actually do things. This is the internet. If women are not contributing to the kernel, you know fucking well it is because they are choosing not to. If you believe that is because of "0xB16B00B5", well, that seems more insulting than saying "herp derp women can't program" to me.
Suck that corporate cock. Some guy did something that didn't really even violate the policy of a fast food restaurant and got beaten up - obviously it was his fault!
In a civilized society, people would be in jail right now.
And people couldn't, you know, have taken a photo of your open window and posted it on 4chan if it was really worth looking at, without the involvement of Google?
You're not as fucking interesting as you tell yourself.
The restaurant was already recording you, FYI. It's just a question of who is doing the recording. Much like police: they will happily film you, brutalize you if you attempt to film them, and conveniently lose the tapes if one of their own cameras catches their corruption.
"BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work."
Fucking bullshit. Copyright was invented in the 18th century and its modern form is even newer. You know what music came before that? Almost all of the Baroque movement and literally two thousand years of folk music that is still around in some form. The fate of ancient music of fallen civilizations has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with lack of a standardized system for representing music in writing at the time and a lack of continued performance of the music which would have kept it alive in spite of not being written down.
I don't know, but I would say you have the right to release your chapter 11 by itself. As it stands, you do not. This is pretty objectively wrong, even if you agree with the fundamental lie surrounding copyright.
We'll see how that goes. Even if it does get loosened - which I have zero expectation of, as right now I can name a number of countries working on passing new, extreme copyright/trademark laws - it will last about 10 years and swing right back to a downward spiral. Only this time we'll have that lull to look back on as the good old days, so things will become worse before someone stops it the next time. Think gas prices.
As far as I care, the very idea that ideas can be owned is wrong and a hindrance on every aspect of society. Look at the absurd amounts of fanfiction in existence: it is all, technically, illegal. At one point there were even lawsuits about it. I don't think that is right. Every work is equally worthy of the same protections or lack thereof, no matter what they are based on. That is the problem. Copyright is built on a 300 year old myth started by the Romantics that all works of true art are totally original products of divine inspiration. We no longer believe that; it's about time we accept that copyright is wrong in its foundation and that nothing exists in a vacuum.
Patents? Maybe they can be fixed, but I doubt that, too. When the situation is spiraling downward at an absurd speed and you consider that an improvement, you'll forgive me for not buying that it is not the root idea that is the problem.
Even if it can be fixed, we need to ask as a society if the costs outweigh the benefits. That can't happen as long as one side uses propaganda, bribery, and misinformation.
(As a note, I consider trademarks more a matter of fraud - I think the current definition is too broad, but the basic idea of only one entity being allowed to mark products as being produced by them has nothing to do with information and is not wrong. That is something that can and should be fixed, rather than abolished.)
"The under 25 generation has pretty much repudiated that entire concept, and often voice the opinion here on Slashdot and elsewhere that a bell once rung can't be un-rung, and an idea once published can't be owned by anyone. As justification they point to the Life Plus 70 years extension of copyrights and paint patents with the same brush."
The fundamental problem is that once you declare an idea property, you start to create artificial scarcity. That is bad for society. Our ultimate goal as a species should always be post-scarcity existence; enforcing scarcity legally, on highly questionable reasoning, is immoral.
We know that copyrights and patents both favor big business. It is very difficult to produce any sort of artistic work without being in danger of some sort of copyright infringement. Patents are even worse. The only answer is to sign to a major entertainment company (which are all part of cartels) or sell your idea to a large corporation. This is the exact opposite of what copyright and patents were created to do.
We already know from both copyrights AND patents that once you have established the concept of "intellectual property," it will only expand to consume every area of the economy, until economic collapse. America has become a country of management and "intellectual property," our only export being IP and legal/military force to ensure countries follow it. It is not healthy and we can already see the cracks forming in this national model.
All intellectual property is immoral, counter-productive, proven to have failed, and dangerous to the economy. That is why people are starting to call for its total abolition. I am not sure how you can believe anti-patent sentiment is only the effect of anti-copyright bleeding over. In many ways, patents are far worse than copyright, as they actually strangle business. Copyright primarily harms our culture, but patents are destroying our livelihood. Still, it is the very idea that you can own ideas that caused this mess. Just like we got rid of the lie you can own a person, we need to get rid of the lie that you can own information. Only then can we move on as a civilization.
"In American movies the hard-working individual is depicted has having a dysfunctional life and the freeloading slacker is the sage who's got it all figured out. This attitude is virtually non-existent in Japanese film."
And we can repeat the 20s, because that went so well for everyone. Hell, it went so well it was the first and last time we actually went and collectively agreed we made a royal fuckup and took measures to fix it.
It's obvious because the only thing the study successfully proves is basic economic theory. Alcohol is more accessible, cheaper, advertised; therefore it is more used, and earlier used, than substances which are harder to obtain, expensive, and illegal. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from this data without delving into sensationalist pseudoscience.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they're banned because the majority are addicting and cause long-term damage. Pot causes lung cancer more effectively than cigarettes. That alone means it ought to stay banned.
In any case, those are not banned for religious reasons. Alcohol generally is.
Fasting is not really fasting. You fast in the day, have a buffet nightly at sundown. It's one of those weird things religions do while saying they do something else.
Indonesia is essentially a Muslim theocracy. It is illegal to be atheist; people are in jail for it right now. Other religions aren't exactly safe, either.
This is very dangerous a sentiment, and if you want to know why, you need only look to the early days of psychiatry. Any divergence from a cultural norm can be labeled "crazy," resulting in locking such people up and torturing them. Maybe not the brown people, but the gay people and Muslims ought to watch out.
In reality, the really dangerous crazies tend to not be obviously so, and the good crazies take pride in the fact they're a bit off. I might go around in pony shirts and a Rainbow Dash hat barefoot trying to buy H2SO4, but I have zero intention to go on a murderous rampage at any point in the foreseeable future.
Plenty of "normal" people have done bad things. In fact, every homegrown terrorist I can think of was described as normal. Don't hate "crazy" because it's different. It's usually us crazy people who save your ass in the long run - Feynman, Einstein, Descartes, etc..
Insane people will always do bad things and will always exist. You can make it a little harder, maybe, but history has shown us insanity knows no bounds.
Yet every time something like this happens, kneejerk commences. Yellow journalism pours on the stories about "GUNS BOUGHT LEGALLY!" and such, because political intrigue gets eyes on the TV. Then we get idiots running for office on the topic, that because there exist outliers in the dataset, the entire set must be purged. Which wouldn't even work, mind you. If the second amendment were repealed, we'd have about as many guns coming into the country as we have meth, pot, and all the other highly illegal items. The only difference would be that it would be illegal to own guns, so only criminals and insane people would... yeah, helpful.
This is one of the few times I am happy the Republicans and the like exist. Maybe they're generally hypocritical elitists, but at least on this topic, they tend to be right, damn it.
Even in the US, that is quickly becoming attempted murder. Try it. Have fun.
Which is my point, to an extent. I did not want to become a programmer because I saw it as easily replaced by foreign labor and because of the large number of assholes I had already met in it. Yet if a woman makes the same decision, it seems everyone wants to make it about gender. That's not striving for equality; that's sexism in at least one direction, probably both to some extent depending on the people saying it. Either you have the extreme feminists who believe the world should be a matriarchy, or you have people who believe women are too weak to make their own decisions and handle the same stupidity men do. Neither are right. Neither should be encouraged nor accepted. Equality and general social harmony doesn't come through screaming about things of no consequence because it offends some made up sensibility of yours, it comes from learning to accept that, ultimately, your offense/fear/weakness is your problem.
Again, if this were a case of something more specific, maybe it would be different. But, "you said BIG BOOBS, you should be FIRED!" is so irrational I have a very hard time even categorizing it as extremism. It sounds a lot like people with nothing better to do than bitch and moan.
But you didn't have the required emotional outrage! You are a horrible person! Just people people who didn't want to burn those witches.
"What I find so depressing is how far down I had to look in this thread of posts before I found an intelligent reply to the issue at hand. Folks like to pretend like it was just a harmless joke, and then they sit around and scratch their heads wondering why more women aren't in IT fields when there's such a constant stream of juvenile hostility towards them."
I am going to repeat what I just said.
Do you honestly believe women are not in IT because of things like this? Because never once have I met a woman that said anything to the effect. Certainly not "well, I kept being offended by comments, so I left!" Why do you think women are so weak that we need to censor things in order to make sure they go into IT?
Further, I don't wonder, I blame it on cultural differences, like the ones you and the GP are propagating that women are weak and couldn't possibly do something without everyone making sure to not make them uncomfortable in the process.
"I'm a male, but to me, it's just a matter of respect for other people. Some people have it, but as this shows, there are still a lot of people who don't.
If this were a comment to the effect of "This function is misbehaving, IT MUST HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED BY A WOMAN," I might agree. That is not the case, nor have I ever once seen that. This is literally a stupid joke that has been around since calculators became common place. It is not sexist - it is just dumb. If a woman is honestly offended by this, frankly, that's her issue, but it's along the lines of a homosexual being offended by the "have a gay old time" in the Flintstones song.
"I think what is infuriating to many is people start with "I don't understand" then proceed to "therefor it doesn't matter". Telling people how they should feel about things that you can't understand is the hight of arrogance. Maybe instead these people should take some time and listen, and just accept that other people are impacted by things like this and just because you are not doesn't mean they shouldn't be.
You don't get it. Fine. Then don't tell other people how to feel. Women don't need your big smart male brain to explain how their poor womanly one should react to things that relate to experiences men don't have."
I have issues with this line of reasoning. You can't have it both ways.
You claim "we" can't understand how women feel about this: why not? Isn't that pretty horribly sexist in itself? It's definitely a lot more sexist than "0xB16B00B5", but I guess that's alright, because you're insulting men and that's fine. Did you stop to think maybe "we" are just right?
You seem to think women are just more fragile than men. We can't understand how they are so easily harmed by a hexadecimal constant, so we should just nod and not try to point out why it means nothing, because that will make them feel worse. Don't you think that is patronizing at all?
I am pretty much tired of political correctness and reverse sexism being used to attack people who actually do things. This is the internet. If women are not contributing to the kernel, you know fucking well it is because they are choosing not to. If you believe that is because of "0xB16B00B5", well, that seems more insulting than saying "herp derp women can't program" to me.
Suck that corporate cock. Some guy did something that didn't really even violate the policy of a fast food restaurant and got beaten up - obviously it was his fault!
In a civilized society, people would be in jail right now.
And people couldn't, you know, have taken a photo of your open window and posted it on 4chan if it was really worth looking at, without the involvement of Google?
You're not as fucking interesting as you tell yourself.
The restaurant was already recording you, FYI. It's just a question of who is doing the recording. Much like police: they will happily film you, brutalize you if you attempt to film them, and conveniently lose the tapes if one of their own cameras catches their corruption.
I would love to say it changed my opinion, but I have not been to a McDonalds in at least 7 years. Hard to change much.
No sign legalizes physical assault.
In the UK, you get stabbed. Or shot... because the criminals had guns, anyway.
"BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work."
Fucking bullshit. Copyright was invented in the 18th century and its modern form is even newer. You know what music came before that? Almost all of the Baroque movement and literally two thousand years of folk music that is still around in some form. The fate of ancient music of fallen civilizations has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with lack of a standardized system for representing music in writing at the time and a lack of continued performance of the music which would have kept it alive in spite of not being written down.
This kind of bold-faced lying makes me sick.
That same argument can be used against anything. Complaining about police brutality? Tough, it's worse in the Congo.
Just because there is worse does not mean you are the best, and certainly not that you cannot and should not improve.
I don't know, but I would say you have the right to release your chapter 11 by itself. As it stands, you do not. This is pretty objectively wrong, even if you agree with the fundamental lie surrounding copyright.
We'll see how that goes. Even if it does get loosened - which I have zero expectation of, as right now I can name a number of countries working on passing new, extreme copyright/trademark laws - it will last about 10 years and swing right back to a downward spiral. Only this time we'll have that lull to look back on as the good old days, so things will become worse before someone stops it the next time. Think gas prices.
As far as I care, the very idea that ideas can be owned is wrong and a hindrance on every aspect of society. Look at the absurd amounts of fanfiction in existence: it is all, technically, illegal. At one point there were even lawsuits about it. I don't think that is right. Every work is equally worthy of the same protections or lack thereof, no matter what they are based on. That is the problem. Copyright is built on a 300 year old myth started by the Romantics that all works of true art are totally original products of divine inspiration. We no longer believe that; it's about time we accept that copyright is wrong in its foundation and that nothing exists in a vacuum.
Patents? Maybe they can be fixed, but I doubt that, too. When the situation is spiraling downward at an absurd speed and you consider that an improvement, you'll forgive me for not buying that it is not the root idea that is the problem.
Even if it can be fixed, we need to ask as a society if the costs outweigh the benefits. That can't happen as long as one side uses propaganda, bribery, and misinformation.
(As a note, I consider trademarks more a matter of fraud - I think the current definition is too broad, but the basic idea of only one entity being allowed to mark products as being produced by them has nothing to do with information and is not wrong. That is something that can and should be fixed, rather than abolished.)
"The under 25 generation has pretty much repudiated that entire concept, and often voice the opinion here on Slashdot and elsewhere that a bell once rung can't be un-rung, and an idea once published can't be owned by anyone. As justification they point to the Life Plus 70 years extension of copyrights and paint patents with the same brush."
The fundamental problem is that once you declare an idea property, you start to create artificial scarcity. That is bad for society. Our ultimate goal as a species should always be post-scarcity existence; enforcing scarcity legally, on highly questionable reasoning, is immoral.
We know that copyrights and patents both favor big business. It is very difficult to produce any sort of artistic work without being in danger of some sort of copyright infringement. Patents are even worse. The only answer is to sign to a major entertainment company (which are all part of cartels) or sell your idea to a large corporation. This is the exact opposite of what copyright and patents were created to do.
We already know from both copyrights AND patents that once you have established the concept of "intellectual property," it will only expand to consume every area of the economy, until economic collapse. America has become a country of management and "intellectual property," our only export being IP and legal/military force to ensure countries follow it. It is not healthy and we can already see the cracks forming in this national model.
All intellectual property is immoral, counter-productive, proven to have failed, and dangerous to the economy. That is why people are starting to call for its total abolition. I am not sure how you can believe anti-patent sentiment is only the effect of anti-copyright bleeding over. In many ways, patents are far worse than copyright, as they actually strangle business. Copyright primarily harms our culture, but patents are destroying our livelihood. Still, it is the very idea that you can own ideas that caused this mess. Just like we got rid of the lie you can own a person, we need to get rid of the lie that you can own information. Only then can we move on as a civilization.
"In American movies the hard-working individual is depicted has having a dysfunctional life and the freeloading slacker is the sage who's got it all figured out. This attitude is virtually non-existent in Japanese film."
Have you ever even heard of "anime"?
And we can repeat the 20s, because that went so well for everyone. Hell, it went so well it was the first and last time we actually went and collectively agreed we made a royal fuckup and took measures to fix it.
Don't do it! In a week you'll be a crack addict on E at a rave somewhere in Thailand!
It's obvious because the only thing the study successfully proves is basic economic theory. Alcohol is more accessible, cheaper, advertised; therefore it is more used, and earlier used, than substances which are harder to obtain, expensive, and illegal. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from this data without delving into sensationalist pseudoscience.