I can think of a few reasons that drug cartels would want to end prohibition:

• If the drug cartels were consolidated or whittled down to a few, then direct confrontation between a few very large cartels would probably be too bloody and costly, so it would make more sense to reach an "agreement" and maintain a monopoly. Think OPEC.
• The money and the customers aren't in Mexico. Legalizing drugs in Mexico doesn't make them legal in the U.S., so the price stays high, while production costs go down, and profit increases.
• Being legitimate makes a Drug Lord's life a little less stressful, turns them from thugs into powerful respectable gentlemen, and gives them an opportunity to establish a legacy for their family and children. Being the next Morgan or Rockefeller might be pretty tempting

Plus, going legit could also mean a shadow government to avoid directly antagonizing the U.S. Who's in charge of Russia right now? The elected President or Mr. Putin, the unofficial actual leader of Russia?

Given the levels of organization, sophistication, business savvy, and ruthlessness needed to run a modern day, world wide drug organization, why haven't they gone legit and taken over Mexico's politics? Seriously, at some point it just be easier to influence the Mexican government into passing laws that legalize drugs and turn Mexico into a legitimate drug clearing house for the world.

I leave it up to an economist/historian to point to relevant examples in History where the only way to increase the profit of an illegal market was to legalize the market.

So not only did a civilian institution create a MWD, it has *civilian* security guarding it...? Does this worry anyone else?

Firstly, conversely, capitalism isn't foolproof either. It can develop natural monopolies that require government action to control or to break-up.

Secondly, in regards to your statement that "nothing wrong with capitalism," I would counter that under pure capitalism, *everything* can be bought and sold, including votes. So if government officials aren't supposed to be bought off, then that implies that capitalism has something wrong with it and needs to be kept in check.

I guess I'm saying that capitalism has significant advantages, but it's definitely not the sacred cow that many of our politicians like to portray it as. The real question is when do we start debating as to whether capitalism has failed or whether government has failed or whether the voters have failed or some combination thereof?

It is about wealth distribution. The top richest 400 families own more wealth than the bottom 50%. Do you really believe that ~2,000 Americans provide more value and have more worth than 150 million Americans?

If wealth, aka money, represents time and skills, do you really think that 400 American families can provide more skills and time to society than 150 million Americans?

If wealth represents physical wealth, such as land, do you really think 400 American families can make better productive use of that much physical wealth than 150 million Americans?

Capitalism is a tool to support society by efficiently allocating resources and promoting individual initiative. Society, and thus capitalism, depends on people to make it work. If 50% of our population isn't benefiting from capitalism, then 50% of our population is going to stop supporting society. And when push comes to shove, it's 150 million Americans against 400 families. Who are you going to bet on? Or do you think that a dwindling middle class is going to keep 50% of Americans in check in order to preserve the top few percent?

plus their office is practically outside my front door (as opposed to my current 45 minute commute each way). This would make a massive difference to my life.

The commute alone is worth switching for. That's an (unpaid) hour and a half of your life that you get back.

Warning! Potentially dumb question:

What value does a Python IDE provide? Given that Python is strongly typed only at run-time, the IDE cannot perform syntax-completion, rename variables, provide warnings/errors as you type, provide context sensitive help, etc., that you would normally get with an IDE for a statically typed language such as Java. Might as well just stick to using your favorite text editor.

Most folks think that the law will be overturned by an oppressed minority or by some do-gooder as part of a noble crusade.

In reality, it will be used to pander to the extreme right wing in order to fire up their support base by making some minority look bad in the upcoming elections.

Contrived example: Someone sends a offensive picture of bacon to an American Muslim. The offended Muslim invokes the law. The extreme right wing gets righteously outraged, wraps itself in the Flag and First Amendment and challenges the law in court. Obviously the court strikes down the law. The extreme right wing portrays this as a victory for real Americans (aka right wing voters) over Muslim extremism and as a defeat of Sharia law in America.

Great, just great. I can see the calls for banning solar energy technology since it allows drug lords to escape detection via electric meters.

Just imagine the rhetoric: "Only pot-farmers use solar energy." "Support HB123 to place export controls on drug energy technology to Mexico!" "Off grid, on drugs!" "Tell the police if your neighbor has gone wireless!"

Question: in order to receive the free games, will you have to accept a click-through agreement and sign away your right to sue Sony over the breach?

I'll take a stab at explaining the excitement with a really, really, really, tremendously bad analogy.

If you could build a warp drive (something that bent space) in order to cross vast distances quickly, then it should also, in theory, be capable of time travel (since time and space are interrelated.) Showing N=NP is analogous to proving that a warp drive would allow time travel. This would mean that Captain Kirk (or any other captain of a warp capable starship) is a Time Lord.

If you can show that N=NP, then *all* of those really hard, can't be solved with a million computers performing a million operations per second in a million years, would instead be solvable by a million computers performing a million operations per second in a few hundred years or faster.

The counter is why is Obama being held to a higher standard than other white presidents or presidential candidates? Why should Obama have to produce twice the birth certificates as other (white) presidents and presidential candidates? It's insulting.

Asking why Obama didn't show his long form birth certificate earlier is akin to requiring one form of identification, such as a driver's license, when writing a check, but then asking a black person to show a second form of identification (their passport) and then accusing the black person of identify theft for not showing the second form of identification. Finally, when the black person relents and shows their passport, you then accuse the black person of having caused all the trouble by not showing their passport earlier.

I'm at the point where I really do think that the birther nonsense is based on racism. I read an opinion piece that made the point that because Obama isn't white, he has to continually prove that he's good enough to be President. The short form birth certificate wasn't good enough, the long form isn't good enough, his grades are being called into question implying that he got into college because he was a minority instead of on his merits, etc.. Basically, the op-ed's point was that, even in today's society, a black person has to show that they're twice as qualified in order to be accepted and even when 'accepted' their qualifications will be constantly questioned by whites. Unfortunately, I think the opinion writer is correct.

The cloud saves are there to encourage folks to buy the same game on multiple platforms.

Or they want to hold your save games hostage in order to discourage jailbreaking, piracy, mods, etc..

Or they want to be able to insert advertisements into your save games.

Or they want to send targeted emails based on your save games. "We noticed that you haven't played (aka created any save games) for game "Foo!" in a while. Here's a discount code for some downloadable content for "Foo!".

Yes, guns make it easy to kill people.

Which is why slaves don't have guns.

If you have allergies, try eating some locally produced honey. The theory/wive's tale is that it will help your body adjust to the local pollens and reduce your allergies since the honey was made using local pollen.

Obviously, YMMV, ask your local beekeeper.