There's no point to arguing with you. People like you are the reason I vote. See you in the booths.

Actually, it's cheaper to be the provider of the drugs and then declare them exempt from receiving the (already low) funds to handle the homeless, etc. Frankly, if it's legal and out-in-the-open, then it's also just as easy to track. That means that if someone screws themselves up, just like with alcohol, they either get into meetings / rehab, or they end up on the street.

The problem with your argument is that the information is hidden and obfuscated. (Reaches farther back in slashdot.) There's an article back there on how the uninformed are more likely to believe lies than truth. That's how misinformation works. You're more likely to believe your friend when they lie to you than the more / less complicated truth from a stranger.
Would it make you feel better if I pushed your Authority Button?

Is it bad that I've got the headphones on while I'm posting? Should I wait an hour before getting back on the internet?

The "cost of human lives" as a result of addiction is a drop in the bucket compared to the deaths we could prevent were we to devote the money used on the "War on Drugs" for other things.

What I think you're missing is that it's not a moral argument. It's a matter of money and always has been. The money we spend on the "War" (and yes, I always wrap it with quotations) is paying a lot of people and providing a lot of jobs. As for your arguments about the human harm, what about the legal drugs that are easily purchasable like tobacco and alcohol? Oh, and let's not forget the pharmaceuticals that have caused allergic reactions so severe, a bright child goes in and comes out hours later mentally retarded. The government doesn't care about human lives, we do. They only claim to care so we don't get out our pitchforks and torches.

So, don't come down here with your anger. People will do whatever they will and, let's face facts: you can't stop them. All you can do is waste money trying. So quit wasting my money, alright?

I can't stop laughing. This is hysterically stupid and, well, I had to check the calendar to make sure I wasn't three months ahead...

Nope! Not April 1st... Okay, that makes them taking this seriously a little more scary...

"Where once the human race had laughed and reveled in the absurd, in the products of pure imagination, they now earnestly pursued stasis. The leading artists, scientists, engineers, philosophers, and politicians, were eager to confirm the discoveries of the past, not make new ones. And now, few even remembered the past well enough to know what had already been discovered! The past itself was no longer of interest -- had not been for centuries, even thousands of years.
The light had gone out. Stability and stasis across millennia had led to stagnation."
- "Foundation and Chaos", by Greg Bear, part of Asimov's Foundation series.

Just putting this out there...

I find the way they handled the "spam problem" in the fictional book Daemon quite perfect: "All spammers will die."

It's simple, straightforward, and is impossible to stop as it [the Daemon] operates outside the law. The first time the scenario is presented, four people are shot to death and that message is left amid the carnage. That happens a few dozen times over worldwide and you start to see a pattern even spammers will recognize...

Moral relativity aside, from a certain standpoint that tactic might actually work; there is nothing right now that scares spammers. Being found requires a significant amount of resources: tracing down the network, identifying a single point of control (if there is one,) identifying the person(s) attached to that system, etc. Botnets make the problem exponentially harder. Yet, we still can't really do anything about it and we have to dedicate entire careers to the act of reducing spam. There is something fundamentally wrong with that, I think.

A digital signage network would be a better idea, especially in the long run. Check out Popstar Networks. [ www.popstarnetworks.com ]

I find this a bit ridiculous. I really don't care if you have a genetic predisposition to being aggressive. I don't even care if the voices in your head are telling you to cut people into little strips and make belts out of them. The key is that when you *act* on those things and violate the rules society has, you are going to be punished. Then again, this happened in Italy. As a citizen of the US, I'm not terribly worried.

I am surprised that we're cracking down on something without providing a solution. People realized fiddling with radios would cause a problem on the road loooong ago (when the first radios were being installed in cars) and there was this huge uproar over it. They tried sanctions of all kinds, had a (relatively) big campaign to do -something- about these dangerous devices in cars, but when they realized that people liked them so much and they weren't going away, what happened? We have radios in cars to this day. Car manufacturers, in response to the renewed complaints started including steering-wheel controls and voice activation to their radios, but -we still have radios in cars.-

I understand how texting while driving is an extreme distraction. I understand being on the phone can be a similar distraction. Having a toddler in the seat (I came from the generation that sat in the front seat) can be an equivalent distraction, if not more so, **but we still do it.** Don't sit there and write tickets or make laws that ban their use. If someone uses a phone responsibly, without incident, why should they be punished? And what's more, why aren't we designing technologies that solve the problem? Head's-up displays and voice-driven interfaces aren't all that futuristic anymore. Ask car manufacturers to include those as options in -every car- with a bluetooth-based phone interface. Have phone designers come up with cheaper phones that have bluetooth in them so they can use that interface. It's going to cost money, but it's going to cost someone regardless.

Instead of raging like I hear some people online (e.g. "People who talk on the phone while driving need to be shot",) quit complaining and do something about it.

Jesus christ, you have issues. Really. Get over yourself.

I was overjoyed when I didn't have to spend $85 on SPSS for my statistics class, but now that I'm graduated what the hell am I doing with R? Nothing. I found the same thing with LaTeX. Using those technologies is great and, really, I don't mind having spent the time learning, but if I were to turn in a pdf of my LaTeX compiled work, I believe my boss just might shoot me.

The key is striking the right balance [in the public's eye] between closed and open source. Yes, the G1 is even more open, but is it too open? Also, what language is required to program the G1? I've never heard anything about it aside from ads and comments saying "Open source!!11!" This system leads with its strengths: design, programming, and the Palm name. Google isn't known for their phones. Palm is.

I think what was meant is a reference to the developers' [demonstrated] willingness to listen to the community's developers, along with the overall design of the operating system which is drastically different from the massively popular contender: the iPhone. If you read the palm developer website, it appears much friendlier and more open than anything I've seen on the iPhone website.

As for your comment, when phones can do very nearly anything our laptops / netbooks can do, then yes, I would measure a phone based on its "vibe." It's not so much -what- is being done, but how it is done that makes it different.

[Cue the "vibe" jokes]