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Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JC Jaros who wrote (2009)	12/23/1999 2:57:00 PM
From: Rusty Johnson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2617

Can Linux Billionaires Carry the Free-Software Torch? Salon salon.com Thanks to wired.com Happy Holidays to all.

To: JC Jaros who wrote (2009)	12/23/1999 7:25:00 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2617

Hemp is indeed a valuable product. It's fumes can be used to keep thousands of antiwar protestors docile while their friends are drafted and turned into cannon fodder. It is better and cheaper than water cannon and political propaganda, as the people who gov'ts seek to control will pay for their own consumption of the product gladly. It can also be used to sedate unruly astronauts who become restless on long voyages to other planets. Some side effects that may be undesirable can be noted, however. People who use it for its alleged narcotic effects take to growing their hair in long knotty masses and wearing strange clothes. However, for people seeking to keep masses of the proletariat in meek submission to draconian measures, it may be a panacea to make the stuff freely available. Queen Victoria used it as an analgesic for menstrual pain or perhaps to put up with Albert, her chief house dude. It did not seem to make her disposition any better as she was fond of saying she was not amused. Although there is much dissenting opinion as to it medicinal value I would warrant that governments anxious to license its use will see the point of getting into the marketing of it. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario makes 800 million a year profit, at one time Canada's most profitable corporation. As well, its main purveyor being a government body, (a Crown corporation) they tax the hell out of the stuff and make double on it. No private enterprise can sell the liquor over the counter for take home in this province. So, for Ontario, the hempen 'narcotic' makes perfect sense. I predict they will become major pushers of the noxious weed in jig time when they are told it is the answer to skyrocketing government costs. Heaven forfend that they will actually cut those costs, as they find them of dire necessity to expend. Its use for rope in the British Navy for centuries is famous. It is more desirable than sisal, its cousin fiber, as it is more resistant to rot. For that purpose it was cultivated on the north shore of the St. Lawrence (Quebec) almost exclusively for Navy usage. (Hence the term, "smoking rope") It grew a better fiber than the stuff from the Phillipines, and besides it was a lot closer to Britain. Most of the timber for their vessels came from Quebec and New Brunswick. At that time Ontario was merged with Quebec as one colony and its name was Quebec for the entire area. Everyone knows that hemp fabric makes great bags, rugs, and has myriad other uses as a cloth. It is dirt cheap to grow with few diseases and little crop loss. But the product became illegal in 1937 with the Harrison Stamp Tax act and ever since the RCMP has assiduously prosecuted its usage. The rope quality plant has precious little 'narcotic' ingredient, or THC. The stock part that makes good strong fibre is unlikely to make anyone queasy unless they smoked about a pound of the stuff. So prohibition of the temperate grown plant for its fibre make little sense. FYI, hemp's psychoactive ingredient is not a narcotic, but a depressant, like alcohol. A narcotic acts on certain brain centres and may control pain but has certain dangers. Hemp also control pain as well but indirectly. There are more effective direct analgesics but hemp has the advantage of making the user ignore the pain due to the depressant effect. But taboo is stronger than sense in anyone's government. If they thought it would buy one vote, half the inebriated politicians in Ontario would have all the marijuana users rounded up and shot at dawn. EC<:-}