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Sims Online Presidential Campaign Shapes Up
Ant writes "Wired News has an article on a campaign for the presidency of Alphaville, the biggest city in The Sims Online. Two challengers will square off in a final primary for the opportunity to unseat Alphaville's incumbent president, the appropriately named Mr-President, in next month's general election."
Yeah, especially given this:
"Baynes has effectively been the standard-bearer of the so-called Alphaville Government, which has no official power"
The US government was never intended to be a democracy. The founding fathers abhorred democracy equating it with "mob rule". Of course they didn't like Tyranny ether, obviously, or there would have been no revolution against England.
The US government is a REPUBLIC, meaning that, instead of having authority given directly to the public, authority is given to a select few, who in turn run the government.
In that way the American government is more modeled after Rome than it is Greece. But still, the constitution divides power between three branches of government, and with the separation of powers implied in the constitution, this allows for a sufficient security against one major voice rising up to silence the others.
A little OT I think it is funny how Republicans are crying that the courts are acting out of line, in regards to homosexual marriage when, in reality, the courts are just doing its job.
I also find it hilarious, and also striking that people dismay the courts because they are "un elected". IMO, that is the great strength of the courts and ESSIENTIAL to the balance of powers in the federal government. We need some branch of the government that is separated somewhat from the consent political, partisan bickering that the other two branches engage in daily.
That is the fallacy of MMOGs. The companies that run the MMOGs treat their customers like it is a privilege to get to play their game. And sadly, the players/customers routinely take it in the ass with a confused smile on their face.
For example, go to any popular MMOG forum and take note of the excessive complaining about all manner of game dynamics and routines. Most of the time, the people complaining would just like the game to be changed in some way, and these feelings are usually shared by the majority. Nevertheless, the most popular retort to any such complaint is something akin to "well it is Square's game, and if you don't like it than you don't have to play!". The extremely sad thing is, is that as customers you should expect a company to improve its product to the majority's wishes, and to fix bugs in a timely fashion, etc. But since such a huge user-base of customers without any self-worth exists, the MMOG companies continue to run their shops the way they do: with a complete disregard for customer satisfaction and product quality.
The United States is a Republic, or Representative Democracy, not a true Democracy. The city-states of ancient Greece were true Democracies, for the most part since women couldn't vote. Native Americans had a form of true Democracy, except voting was just done at the tribal meeting when there was an important decision to make.
Learn something new.
You're confusing the right to free speech with the right to have people listen to you.
You can blather on and on about whatever you want, easily enough. Go stand on the corner of a street, or write your own publication, edit it on your own, print it on your own, and yor speech is as free as it can be, but nobody has to listen.
Just as you're handing out your newsletter, some people may take it and read it, and maybe take it to heart. Some might take it--take it home and use it to line their birdcage without giving the actual content a second thought. Some others may refuse to take the newsletter, and some might even get violent, take all of your papers and shove 'em down your throat...
Such is the same with speech. No one person has to listen to anyone else's insane ranting. They can choose to, but they can just as well choose to say NAAAAANAANAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!! whilst pluging their ears, or quietly nod (thinking that you're a dumbshit.)
That's what the corporations that run the TV do. If you're on their good side, and agree with their shareholders, chances are they'll let you say your piece. If they're honorable (or even just want to appear to be), they might even allow a minority to say something the corporation as a whole wouldn't agree with. Those are the breaks.
Such as it turns out, it's not that rich people and corporations speak louder (but perhaps they can speak more often), it's more that people in general are more inclined to listen to them.
But that too makes sense; they're successful as defined by our society. People would be inclined to listen to those that are successful, in hopes that some of that success would rub off on them--they might even be more inclined to agree--if for no other reason than they want to be on the bandwagon.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I believe you mean host byte order. Network byte ordering is always big endian.
Alas, RTFA. You will see mention of the incumbent president (1), Ashley Richardson (2) and a third fellow called Seth (3). They all come from separate places/have separate viewpoints so that doesn't make 2 parties, does it?
Plus there are other candidates, these are the three most likely to win according to Sim Analysts.
So once again, RTFA before posting.
Actually, SimCity 4 lets you place your Sims in neighborhoods in your city.
/free-plug
I'm a 2000 man.
If you bothered to RTFA, you'd see that the "government" was formed primarily as a way to help protect new players from getting suckered by scam artists. They aren't trying to graft "real world" rules into the game - they are trying to keep people from pissing off all the new players and making them quit. It's the same reason a lot of guilds are formed in other MMORPGs.
Actually each electoral vote is representing the same number of people regardless of which state you are in.
Thus your suggestion that the people in WY are more influencial that the people in CA is a gross display of your misunderstanding of the electoral process in the US of A.
The "president of congress" is not the "president". If you watch C-SPAN sometime, you will notice that people keep on talking to "Mr. President", asking for more time for their speech, or to hold some vote, or for a quorum call, or who knows what else; Bush is not in the room at the time.
Best Slashdot comment ever