Alcohol is significantly more addictive than cannabis. This relatively well-known chart is a good starting point (despite being ugly and imprecise; it covers the general idea).

My theoretical solution for a lot of things is "legalise it, tax it, regulate it" - a solution that cuts out a lot of the problems of illicit SUPPLY (which is the main problem with such things), not illicit, personal substance abuse. But I'm just not sure that approach is worth the gain for something like cannabis.

While I have no personal interest in cannabis (I don't like any drug that messes with my ability to think clearly - cannabis and alcohol both included), I do think this approach is exactly what is needed for a variety of drugs, cannabis included. Take a look at how many people are currently in prison for cannabis related offences around the world (and especially in the US) and think about what it's costing to keep them there. This - in and of itself - is enough of a reason that it'd be worth it.

I'm pretty sure most western countries have a complaints department for law enforcement.

Many years ago in my teenage years in New Zealand, I was chatting to random people on IRC (a pretty new protocol at the time) and there was a guy bragging about bombing a plane - specifically, putting explosives on the landing gear of the plane.

Being young and paranoid, but not yet particularly clever in the ways of the computer security world, I 'anonymously' emailed the police with information about it. My attempts at anonymity were however not good enough and a few days later the police came and took all my computer equipment. The search warrant read "Attempted murder and breach of the telecommunications act" (I still have it, along with the write up I got in the newspaper as a reminder of absurdity). Of course, I was never arrested as I had done nothing illegal.

While that all annoyed me greatly, it didn't annoy me nearly as much as them keeping my stuff for over 3 months before I got it back. When I did finally get it back, the power switch on my main system was physically broken and the HDD was formatted.

I made a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority (a government body) and they ended up writing a letter of apology. So, while complaining certainly didn't do anything useful for me, the point is that there WAS a body for me to complain to.

I'm sure it's a little more complex in countries like the US and Australia since there may be differences by state as well as the federal level to think about, but a quick Google search seems to confirm that complaints departments and/or processes do exist there also.

That is a serious strawman and if you think I said anything like that at all, you either lack reading comprehension or are just looking for a fight.

In case it's the former, please note that I also wrote: "Also note that I did say "a large number of soldiers" and not all. There are plenty of cases you can find of soldiers going against orders they believe to be morally reprehensible, but the fact that OTHER soldiers then do it is a testament for the argument and not against it.".

Beyond that, assuming your brother is a front line soldier that has seen combat, ask him about his combat experience. Ask him what was going through his head at the time. I'm willing to bet that he was 'focusing on the job at hand' - the training teaches soldiers to shut out their own concerns and doubts because otherwise they simply wouldn't be effective soldiers.

I get it. You care for your brother. You most likely respect him. You are quite likely proud of him and the job he does. You don't like that I said something bad about soldiers because it besmirches him. I don't know your brother nor anything about him beyond what you've said. But I wasn't talking about your brother - I was talking about soldiers in general. I was talking about what is intended by the training that they go through, and indeed is generally very successful.

It's even entirely possible your brother is one of those who would not blindly follows orders and would think for himself. But if that's the case, then by definition he's not a good soldier from the perspective of his superiors; they failed to do what they wanted as far as his training is concerned; and it might get him in to trouble one day.

All evidence that I've seen shows that a large number - possibly even the majority - of soldiers have been brainwashed in to following orders unconditionally and will commit the most horrendous crimes against humanity when ordered to do so. And - even when not ordered - that same brainwashing includes training in not thinking of 'the enemy' as human, because that causes you to delay in the critical moment. So they dehumanise the enemy to the point that further atrocities can be committed even when not under orders to do so.

Note that I don't blame the soldiers themselves in a lot of these situations - they are often good people who given time to think and reason it through would not behave that way, but their training has so messed with them that some actions they'll take don't reflect on the person they are.

Also note that I did say "a large number of soldiers" and not all. There are plenty of cases you can find of soldiers going against orders they believe to be morally reprehensible, but the fact that OTHER soldiers then do it is a testament for the argument and not against it.

Who says the code has to be written for the general case. It had better be a LOT more intelligent than the equivalent of a bunch of "if/then" statements.

Also, philosophically speaking, I'd say a human's decision making is just a really complex set of algorithms that we don't understand particularly well at this point. What we do know is that humans make significant mistakes with regularity, so the test isn't whether or not these autonomous systems make mistakes in difficult circumstances, but rather the ratio of mistakes compared to human agent.

Not saying I'm in favour of killbots - I'm really not. But I'm not in favour of humans killing each other either. If killing is going to be done (which it is), I'd rather go with whichever system is going to make the least mistakes and have the least side-effects.

I use deathswitch for exactly this. Because of the limitations of the free system, when I fail to log in periodically (it sends email reminders) it will send an email to an address that is then forwarded to multiple trusted people with instructions on how to retrieve my passwords. The passwords themselves aren't in the email, just 'how to figure them out'.

It's not perfect, but it covers enough of the possible scenarios that I'm happy with it. Should any of the unlikely scenarios occur where it falls down, there are probably more pressing concerns than my passwords.

Of course that has occurred to me; but I do see how you could interpret otherwise from what I wrote. I didn't really intend to go so far down on that off-topic side path.

Generally speaking, most people do not enjoy their jobs to the point that if they had the choice of making the same money to do 'whatever they want' they would choose something other than what they're doing. That's the kind of "work" I was referring to the elimination of. The "Star Trek utopia" to use a concept that most geeks should be familiar with.

Not all 'hippies' are created equal. I tend to consider myself as somewhat hippy-ish. I believe in peace, love, understanding, environmentalism, nuclear power, GMO foods, high-technology, and the idea that we can - in a perfect world - eliminate the need for work allowing people to concentrate on the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.

Note that the vast majority of 'hippies' disagree with me vehemently on nuclear power and GMO foods (and some disagree on the high-tech). From my point of view as a scientifically minded person though, I see these as being the sensible environmental low-impact choices of the present day.

As for your gas-guzzler (and mine) - I look forward to the day they no longer exist.

Yes, this can be a problem. But I fail to see how this is my problem. While information density of language can vary (I am always astounded how marketing people in my company can talk for 20 minutes to say something I would've said in 30 seconds), there is a limit. If the information I want to convey requires 300 characters, I'll use 300 characters.

I don't view twitter or facebook as specific markets. I view them as a way to reach a general audience (specific markets would be things like the advertisement I placed in a medical journal). And by basically giving up on twitter as I did, I did 'write off that market' (if you view it as such), so I don't see how your decision to insult me with a snarky "get over yourself" was particularly productive.

I think it's a matter of weighing the statement they made vs the action they took. Perhaps it's a cultural difference between us, but as a New Zealander myself, I believe that most other New Zealanders would pay more attention to the fact that they said, "we don't think it's harmful" than the fact that they removed it.

It is fairly clear that they removed it in order to appease the complainers and not out of any perceived harm.

If I thought the risk of false belief was higher (i.e. people paying more attention to the action than the words) then I'd complete agree with you that the action would be too much as it would spread the false belief further, causing additional problems in the future.

This, I agree with. But only because of the limitations and requirements of the society we're in. I think it's sad that people are unable to effectively get their point across because it means that a potential for sharing information (and therefore increasing overall human knowledge) is lost.

I'm taking a more abstract view here and imagining a world that we don't have. If no-one took offence at the style of how something is said and instead concentrated only on what was said, I believe that it would be a better world than the one we do have. More information would be shared, people would be happier, and misunderstandings would be fewer.

I fully agree though that we don't live in such a world, and therefore politeness is definitely important.

I agree. I didn't mean to say the school was doing something 'bad' by taking away the WiFi. The parents are wrong, but they're also heartbroken and it's probably not going to cause any harm to remove the WiFi from these junior classes. I think the school did exactly the right thing - deny that WiFi is harmful (the truth), but take it away anyway in order to appease these people.

While tempting to do so in this kind of situation, I believe his approach was probably more effective. If you go around insulting people, they're less likely to take you seriously or listen to your opinion in the future.

Just think of the flamebait posts here on Slashdot. Occasionally they actually make a reasonable point, but they do it in such a way that most people aren't going to actually take the time to consider the point. It's a sorry state of affairs that 'how' we say something is important rather than only 'what' we say, but it is the case for the vast majority of people and if you intend to interact with other people throughout your life, it's an important skill to learn in order to actually get what you want in life.

You'd think for a press statement designed to appease worried parents, he doesn't need to talk science that is way about most of their heads - just tell them that it's okay.

Thankfully, New Zealand isn't as 'backwater' and 'stupid' as the summary makes out.

From TFA:

And also:

So it really is just a couple of dumb people putting pressure on the school and not indicative of the school's or Ministry of Education's thoughts at all.