But most people agree that both weed and alcohol, regardless of how they fare relative to each other, have detrimental effects on the body, especially in the long term. Traveling, which you mentioned, especially by plane, does not carry these risks.

While your opinion obviously differs, I personally don't see why drugs are necessary to enjoy life. I don't smoke, drink, or use weed. I have many "problems" that others do not share - my job is tedious, I have always had difficulty making friends, never had a girlfriend, and my health has had setbacks. But I never have turned to drugs to get away from these issues. Instead, I take pleasure in the little things of life, like going for bike rides in state parks, playing Halo 4, and spending time with family over the upcoming holidays. It is unreasonable to think that everyone can be content with all or even most of their lives, because society cannot function without trash collectors and assembly line workers.

If you think life sucks, then it has always sucked and it certainly sucks less today than it did 100 years ago. As long as you have the basics of food, water, shelter, and medical care (which will now be available in just over a year), it is not necessary to use drugs to be content with life.

Things happen... to some people. The strange thing about stuff happening is that it always seems to happen to the same people.

I am very fortunate to have a job right now, and I want to keep it that way. But I also realize that it's possible that, at some point in the future, I could be laid off without any employment in sight. That's why I have enough money available to live, if necessary, on a shoestring budget for three years without outside support. It wouldn't be a fun time of life, and I wouldn't be able to go to the movies or take vacations, but I would survive and make the best of the little things in life. Most importantly, I will never, under any circumstances, end up as a leech off my parents, living in their basement.

On the other hand, there are some people who spend most of the money they earn. It's funny how you see people who are very poor but still manage to go out to the bars downtown and buy overpriced drinks.

Today's world is so abundant that most people can make it on any salary, provided that they live frugally and manage their finances. There are few cases where one would be so desperate to get a job that allowing facebook profiling is necessary.

And finally, to get around this issue, you can simply do what I do: don't act stupidly. If you don't go out and get trashed, you won't end up with embarrassing drunk pictures on facebook. What a concept!

A very interesting proposal, and one that might work - but I see two problems with it.

First, you are annoying everyone else by holding the bright, large device up and texting away, oblivious to everything going on around you. That's just as bad as conducting a loud conversation.

Second, it is simple to track down the device initiating the attack. This isn't a huge DDOS attack where there are thousands of computers participating; there is one device, and it is associated with your full name and address in the carrier's database.

I think that what is missing here is that this old-world scheme, where you create software and sell it at a set price, is obsolete. Rather than criticizing piracy, companies need to realize that it is just another threat to their business model and react accordingly. Some game companies do this by creating online multiplayer-centric games. Some companies host the software on their own systems and allow client access, therefore eliminating piracy. Some give the software away and provide support, or provide online components of the software at an additional cost. The truth is that creating software and selling CDs is no longer a viable business. You need to come up with a new business model, not add DRM or fight piracy.

I don't see what the problem is with people thinking badly of people for posting drunk pictures on facebook is. In the past, it was possible for people to unethically hide their drunken behavior from parents and employers. Now, it isn't. To me, that is a positive change.

Keep in mind, we're not talking about fake pictures or lying here, both of which are unethical. The truth is that if you don't want to show up drunk urinating on a lightpole on facebook, then don't urinate on a lightpole. Whatever happened to the notion of personal responsibility? How did it suddenly become wrong for people to post pictures, and yet it is somehow right for people to act like idiots?

Employers correctly think badly of excessive drinking because it demonstrates a lack of responsibility. They don't want such people going out at night and representing their organizations in such a negative light. I can't blame them. It is a good thing for society, especially for people who act responsibly, that such behavior is recorded because doing so encourages honesty and rewards positive behavior.

And why is this a problem? You used World of Warcraft during those times; nobody is lying about your use. As with anything else, people can draw their own conclusions about you based on your behavior.

I still don't see what the issue is here. If they don't want to be friends with you because of your playing habits, then that's fine. Some people complain about lawsuits and the legal system being able to obtain information that hurts them - but isn't that what the justice system is about? I want people to lose custody of children because their shoppers' cards prove they are feeding them junk food, not retain custody by destroying or hiding that data - because the kids will be better off for it.

Our society does have too many laws and policies, and they need to be reduced. That's what voting, and failing that, demonstrating, is for. But prosecuting people for violating the existing laws using all available data is not wrong. It is being fair to upstanding citizens who follow the law.

That may be the case now, but I don't believe that medical pioneers will be so undervalued 10 years from now.

Right now, the social media companies are receiving all sorts of attention as the leading "innovators," as if creating a place to post on friends' walls and share pictures is actually so valuable. Meanwhile, a huge amount of information on biology is just waiting to explode as computing power becomes cheaper and cheaper.

People pay for what they value. Today, people think that disease, disability, and death are just natural occurrences that just need to be accepted. Once someone finds a cure for cancer, or Alzheimer's disease, or any one of a number of diseases, people will suddenly realize that the idea that people are born, get sick, grow old, and die no longer has to be the norm. The superstars will then be the people who cured blindness or who slowed aging, and things like facebook will rightfully be looked upon as useful tools, but not as huge innovations that are worth billions of dollars.

It will just take people to see that medicine can actually make them feel better, not just postpone disease as today's primitive treatments do. Between the time the first major cure is discovered and aging is eliminated, people will respect medical researchers a lot more, because they will realize that they have a chance of making it to the point where suffering is a thing of the past.

Upload bandwidth is limited. I have a business account at $60/month that provides 2 megabits per second. That's $17 more than the residential service, but you could pay $9.95 and get a webserver that has a connection with 100Mbps of upload bandwidth. If you have 500GB of files to transfer, and you host them on a 2Mbps connection, it would take a month to upload all of the files to even one visitor - and your entire connection will be saturated all the time while you provide poor download speeds to whoever is accessing the server.

I don't agree with this comment. The parents were certainly wrong in forcing him to attend a certain school. However, the bottom line is that he decided to go to that school. He is an individual person of sound mind who could have told his parents that he was not going to accept their offer and set out on his own instead, as many have done. He didn't end up at the school by accident; he made a conscious decision to go there.

I agree with the idea that you're in a bad situation. I often post that while all other obstacles can be overcome when it comes to finances, illness is the one thing that can't be controlled and the government should redistribute wealth from the healthy to the sick so that everyone has the same opportunity.

But on the other hand, you were not forced to go to the college where you ended up. You could have decided not to accept your parents' offers for help and instead taken out student loans at a more reasonable college. This is the same reason why I don't buy a house or an expensive car - because I always have two years' salary set aside in the case I get sick or lose my job. When I buy something, I create an Excel spreadsheet and list the pros and cons, and consider all the positives and negatives of all the options. The people who are being foreclosed upon now and complaining about having lost their jobs are in that situation because they did not save enough money for that possibility and instead bought a bigger house that they would default upon immediately if they were fired. "Not knowing that you needed to know" something is hardly an excuse that would hold up in any court of law.

You had the right at any time to tell your parents that, when you started college, you would be of legal age and that you weren't going to accept their terms that they send you to a private college. While your situation is unusual and many of the circumstances were out of your control, stating that you share absolutely no responsibility is inaccurate.

If we eliminated 9/10 of the laws in our society, there would be little increase in violence.

Excessive laws cause disrespect for the law, and make it difficult for people to become knowledgeable about the law. That leads people to either break laws that they can't keep track of (because there are so many), or simply disregard the law because everyone else is disregarding it.

Review studies on raising the speed limits on major highways. In June, I drove from Pennsylvania to Chicago. As soon as I crossed the border into Ohio, I was surprised to find the speed limits at 70 instead of 65. I assumed that people would be traveling at five over, since everyone in Pennsylvania drives at 70. Instead, people kept driving at 70 because they generally don't want to get themselves killed by driving at an unsafe speed. Coming back, in a 55 zone near Altoona, people keep driving at (surprise) 70.

When everyone is breaking the law, the law has no effect. The law is meant to keep a few outliers in line, not turn everyone into criminals.

If everyone had to earn respect, then we would walk down the street spitting on people, stealing their wallets, and running them down with cars. A society with complete disrespect is unlivable. I prefer to assume good faith and great ability in everyone I meet until proven otherwise. I believe that people deserve the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if a person decides to abuse that respect, then I'm quick to withdraw it.

Finally, someone I agree with on the privacy issue. In 10 years, everyone will be recording every second of every day, and will be able to look back at their lives and be able to watch anything they ever did. The answer to privacy is simple: if you don't want pictures of you looking like an idiot to show up on facebook, then don't act like an idiot.

Good for her!

Or, perhaps he said it because it is true. It may be true that people between 18 and 29 were always disrespectful; they just always get old and become more respectful with age, as this study seems to indicate. People change over time.