Posts by BenWilson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Kyle, that's an extreme position. I take the position that if something you do harms other people directly, then it's wrong. The practicalities are obviously complex, when you consider the extremely minor harms that can be inflicted - like stopping people making any noise because others can hear it, for instance. Clearly there's an acceptable level of harm weighed up against the enjoyment of many.
The question at hand is whether the harm of pokies outweighs the good of it. And it's a very complex question. Surely losing all your money, particularly if you have dependents, is a harm. How many people does it afflict, out of how many people are gambling? Set against that is the pleasure of all the people, harmed or otherwise, who used the pokies. Can that be easily measured?
One measure is simply that they choose to do it. I think it's extremely patronizing to suggest that people have no rationality about this matter. The problem gamblers may have some bizarre affliction, fine, but the rest? The person who gambles to a set limit well short of everything they have? Is this person somehow less human, less capable of deciding that what they did was enjoyable? Gamblers that I have spoken to just seem to love it. With a passion that I only experience in my loves. They are still realistic about how much they can afford to lose, but they really really want to. They get a big buzz out of it.
As a non-gambler myself, I found it extremely hard to get, until hanging out with a very good friend of mine in Australia. I went with him to the races once, and the casino many times. He displayed the kind of excitement about going that you only see in people who are doing something they really love. He was quivering with anticipication. When I asked him what the thrill was, he described many of the other enticements of the occasion, like the girls, the drinking, the socializing, the spending a silly lazy day in the sun indulging yourself, the sights, the smells, but above all, the thrill of the gamble. I got all the other stuff, but the thrill of the gamble didn't hit me. But to see him at the races made me realize how harmless his thrill was, and how....thrilling..... it was. I was actually envious that he could get such a buzz from it. It made me feel like a boring old wanker that I couldn't get that thrill.
That put it in perspective. It's just not my buzz. But for many people it's a very big buzz, and mostly a harmless one. At the end of a day's racing he'd have spent $100 on average, same as a night at the casino. I'd have spent the same, playing the arcade games, going to a movie, having drinks in the club, etc. All of which was equally frivolous, and sadly didn't give me anywhere near as much enjoyment as he seemed to get. I drew the line at keeping him company at the pokie machines, which he explained to me were addictive because you could gamble for so damned long on them. He didn't love them quite so much, but he said if he only had small change some days he'd play them for a few hours, quite merrily entertaining himself.
I'm not convinced at all that the world is made a better place by taking that thrill away from tens of thousands of people, because a far smaller number of people can't control their addiction. The reason I'm not convinced is because the same principle applied to many other vices doesn't seem to hold, many of which appear far more harmful than gambling.
If the comeback is to say that at least we shouldn't increase the number of vices by which people can destroy their lives, then I have to say it's an extremely poor comeback. That is a virtual halt to the development of all enjoyable human activity. It's the kind of thing old people who don't enjoy very much any more would insist on, because it costs them nothing. They think. Until someone invents something they might like and some sap gets addicted to it. Which, ironically, happens all the time. Medical marijuana, for instance. Just because some people can't control a dope habit, lots of old people, who are dying anyway, can't have the pain relief, or, shock horror, get pleasantly high on their death bed.
If there's any hole in my argument that I can openly confess to it is how to deal with vice and children. I don't even pretend to have the answers to that other than to be totally conservative and say kids shouldn't be allowed anything they might get addicted to, which accounts for about 95% of the things I used to enjoy doing when I was actually a child.
-
Russell, I got that you don't like pokies. I don't either. What I don't get is why you think it's so different from other vices which you clearly do not have a problem with. So far the only argument you have presented is that they target the poor. But guess what? Every vice targets the poor, except for the really expensive ones. Hence my insistence that you take a hit on one of your vices when you insist someone else does the same. You drink whiskey? Think of how many poor people that particular drug has ruined? I suggest it's waaay more than the pokies. It has probably aided and abetted the pokies too, it's a natural ally.
And you miss the extremely obvious flipside too. A lot of people LIKE gambling on pokies. Something about it does it for them. The vast majority of them do not lose everything that way. They are not ruined. They are just entertained. Just because you don't doesn't make it impossible or inconceivable that most gamblers get genuine enjoyment from gambling. They're playing a game. Their enjoyment is not irrelevant.
The mere existence of a small minority of people who are harmed by being unable to control their usage of something is not enough argument to ban it. I'll have you know I squandered 90% of everything I earned as a child playing computer games in arcades. I never ever 'won', always the house took my money. But I loved it. It was social, it was engaging. It killed time. Just because the arcade was exploiting 'sound psychological principles' to 'make huge profits from children' doesn't make what they were doing was wrong.
I imagine you have spent huge sums of money over the years enjoying music that you have paid for. Of course it cost the production company waaay less than they charged you. Of course the nature of music targets the mass market, many of whom are poor and would be better off feeding their kids with the money they spent on CDs. Of course they target children. Of course they ruthlessly promote it in drinking establishments. A mate of mine spent almost his entire student loan on his extremely impressive music collection, a loan that he still has not paid off to this day, ten years later. Personally I think you are both totally nuts. I would always just download a ripz. But I'm not about to say that there should be restrictions on how and where music can be sold just because there are some junkies. The world shouldn't revolve around junkies. A caring world will help them out, within reason. But for god's sake let people who aren't junkies, the majority, get on with their shit.
-
Finn
It increases the likely ongoing expenses and risks involved in owning the code for the client, and therefore decreases the value of you writing it.It also means you're entrenched. If I'm the employer, I agree with you. As a worker, what you say only works in theory. Yes, some employers really like programmers who write beautiful code that anyone could understand. But anytime that programmer wants a pay-rise, then they can be replaced more easily. So hence I say that it is clearly to the advantage of many programmers not to make their stuff easily accessible. What I'm saying is Machiavellian, but that doesn't make it untrue.
Indeed the very best, most open programmers are the open source coders who get paid absolutely nothing, and don't even own the source. God bless their kind and generous souls, but when you gotta eat and want job security, face facts - many people see it more in their interests not to be so trusting of their employers.
Furthermore, I'm not actually convinced it makes a great deal of difference, except in the disaster cases, when the coder become incapacitated. By and large a person looking after the shit they made is the most efficient way, and sharing it all around is just an overhead. I've so often been faced with code that has been written in what is supposedly an open and wonderful way, and found it no less impenetrable than some spaghetti shit written by some hack.
To me the main reason for good coding is actually for yourself. You develop a consistent style that you can read and rapidly debug. You can support and write more code that way. As for fixing up other people's code, that's the stuff of nightmares, no matter how elite a programmer they think they are. In fact, the more elite, the harder it is.
Just my perspective. I'm sure there's a million academic studies on why great coding in great teams is great and really serves the company. What I haven't seen is any studies in what is the best path to being a well-paid programmer. From my experience, the best programmers are usually the least well paid, and that especially includes academics.
-
Nice one. That's especially poignant because neither one causes the other. Both are caused by a third factor (good weather, probably).
Another good one.
"Wearing a protective helmet causes head injuries"
People tend not to wear protective helmets unless they are doing something where there's an above average chance of smashing their head somehow.
-
Not a very good practice from a technical perspective but interesting to see.
Depends on your technical perspective. If you're writing code so you're the only guy who understands it, it's all good. If you're teaching yourself Maori it's also good. If you want Pakeha code review, it probably doesn't help much. Except in one thing - everyone will always know 'who wrote THAT piece of code???'.
To be honest, I wouldn't be the least bit fazed by Maori variable names. Code's code, and it's usually so friggin cryptic and similar that the Maori would just add color and entertainment.
-
Banning fun isn't the point - in this case the house always wins.
The house always wins down at the pub selling beer too. And fags. For every addiction, the house wins.
I don't think it's a matter of 'pure individual responsibility'. It's much like arguments to ban this drug or that. The addicts will still get their fix, but it will cost them more and they'll be getting it from gangsters. The people who wouldn't even try it gain nothing. But those who could control their addiction and have a bit of fun (however lame you might think their fun is) do lose something. Much like piss, where most people just have a budget they stick to, most gamblers are really just time-killers doing something that they like at a fairly consistent cost. Yes, some people take it way too far. This happens in almost every single thing that humans can do, that some people obsess about it to the detriment of themselves and their loved ones. They need help, and banning their obsession just makes it an illegal obsession which they still have.
You can't cure gambling by banning it. And you can't effectively ban it, either. Remove pokies in one place, they'll just go somewhere else. One less suburban pokies machine is one more loser at the casino. One less casino is just 10,000 more people playing it online and sending the money to the Nevada gaming commission. One less TAB is one more illegal bookie.
I'm not opposed to any number of minor restrictions on it, particularly for children (remember them anyone??). Indeed, I think it is a great evil, much like being addicted to cigarettes. But banning is not a solution, it is problem. The solutions are helping addicts and their families, educating society at large, and letting those who have some degree of control over their vice be. Feel free to give them a piece of your mind though.
It seems to me that even quite rational people are incredibly hypocritical when it comes to vices. Always, their vice is OK, but everyone else's should be banned. I try to at least be unhypocritical about it - I personally can't stand gambling, and consider any money put on a raffle or any other such crap as a charitable donation which I've already written off. But I won't moralize about it, because I also waste money stupidly on things I like too. That's money that's not going to my kid's education, or my life savings, or whatever. It's foolish and detrimental, but I do it anyway because I like it. If you want to ban gambling, then in all consistency you have to find one of your own vices and ban that too. Preferably one that you really, really like, so that you feel the pain that you will be inflicting on others. And if you think you don't have any vices, then your vice is most likely being a sanctimonious bastard, and you will have to give that up. Can you do it?
-
His TradeMe behavior hardly looks like the work of an actual proper secretive terrorist conspiracy.
Yeah, if you want to buy something under the radar on TradeMe you don't bid on an auction, or click Buy Now. You arrange to meet the vendor and then make them an offer in cash. They then withdraw the item. Since a weapon is something that you might want to inspect first, this hardly comes at a cost, and the vendor is hardly going to get bitter about not having to go down to the Post office and try to sweet talk them into allowing a weapon through the post.
I can't think why anyone who was into their net security would even dream of buying a gun on TradeMe using a consistent login. But perhaps the 'internet security whizz' claim was a puff. Company profiles often are. Actually security whizzes are quite rare and very well paid, in my experience. Also extremely square. Would you really trust a guy with a facial tattoo to be setting up the security on your network? This is a rhetorical question for the prejudice of the masses...
-
Can't say I agree with any of the harm minimization arguments. Everyone's got their drug. For some poor saps it's gambling. Can't understand it, but can't understand BZP either.
I currently have an addiction to online blog commenting, which my dealer (whose identity is carefully hidden, let's just call him Mr B) profits from via the small amount of content I add every week to his site which no doubt triggers some Google hits that drag some people in who see some ads and click something which sends a few cents to Mr B. It is a major timesink. At times it detracts from my work. I also have children, btw, and you must think of them when you consider the harm caused by all this nefarious blogging being so easily accessible to my kind of sucker.
If you think it's not a problem, then perhaps it's just not a problem for you.
In this parody, which is not entirely humorous, I think the key to all the 'your fun shouldn't be allowed' rebuttals lie.
-
The cop in charge is Les Patterson http://www.sirlespatterson.com/
if anyones up for a giggle.LOL poor guy must get that all the time.
-
Yes, I don't really know how you'd conduct a scientific experiment like that in less than the 20-odd years that it would take to control the variables.
And we are presuming it was even 'scientists' coming up with this research. It's a pretty wide term.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 1002 1003 1004 1005 1006 … 1066 Older→ First