Who here thinks that auto-updating firmware via a disc is possibly the stupidest DRM scheme in existance?
Oh, sure, they can patch the copy protection when it fails...and so can we.
Yes, I'm sure it will required a signed binary, but keys leak. And buffer overflows exist.
Before, if we wanted to hack the firmware of DVD player, we had to take it apart. With Blu-Ray, we might have to pop the lid and disable a lead, or maybe we just need to brute-force one key, but they have the ability to read new firmware off a disc built-in.
Erm, I think you misunderstood what I said. Mainly because you were looking for a mistake to 'correct'.
While I did indeed say the LKP was GPL, I then immediately said it wasn't GPL, which should have clued you into the fact that one of those was not true, but a hypothetical 'This is the way it should be'.
The only way SCO had rights to include Linux kernel code in the LKP was to GPL it (Or ask fifty people for another license, but that did not happen.), and thus, if they did include Linux kernel code, the LKP should have been GPLd.
And, like it or not, saying what is legally required as if it is 'true' is a perfectly valid way of speaking in English. It is fine to say 'You can only go 55 on that road', when that is technically untrue. You can go any speed the road can handle. You can even go speeds the road cannot handle, although very briefly.
Likewise, it is perfectly fine to say, if you include GPL code in your product, you must only distribute that product under the GPL. Yes, you could, indeed, not do so, and break the law, but I'm afraid that's how English works for you. (Before you mention relicensing, reread where I said 'GPL code'. If you get the code under another license, you can do whatever that license says.)
And the fact you 'corrected' me shows you were wandering around trying to find people who think incorrectly. So you assumed I thought 'If they find GPL code in your product, it's magically GPLd', which I never even implied. I just said that if you redistribute code you got under the GPL, you 'must' use the GPL, where by must I mean 'To stay within the law'.
No, you two are confused. The problem isn't with the kernel, it's with the LKP.
While the hypothetical Linux code in the LKP may or may make the SCO kernel GPL, it most certainly makes the LKP GPL.
Which it is not. That's the GPL violation, right there.
For what it's worth, I don't think a court would find a GPL LKP 'contaminates' the SCO kernel, either. 95% of the LKP just has to be stubs to the SCO kernel that SCO wrote. If the other 5% is Linux code, it's probably fairly self-contained.
Not that I'm entirely sure there is actually any Linux code in there, and I think everyone's getting a bit ahead of themselves. Yes, SCO has said several things like that, but they've also said several things not like that. Going by what SCO says is useless.
And there are very few things that actually could be copied and make sense. Almost everything in Linux is done via glibc, of which they use a legal copy of in Unixware to link with Linux programs. The kernel module is just to translate glibc Linux kernel calls into Unixware. (Why they just didn't hack glibc to work on Unixware I do not know.)
So basically any copied code would have to be to support a serious feature that Unixware was missing but glibc required.
They supposedly did know it had the 'bad stuff' in it, as they'd been talking about it for months at that time and taken IBM to court over it!
The only question was, did they realize it was still on their FTP site? Sure, we knew, but did they?
Which has now been anwered with a yes.
Until that was answered, they might have had an out in that they simply did not realize it was there.
Now they're offically fucked even if Linux code had SCO code in it. It's GPL'd no matter what, because they knowingly distributed their own code under the GPL on their FTP site. For months after they knew of their code being in Linux, and even after other people had pointed out their inanity in distributing 'their own' code under a license they were accusing IBM of putting it under.
Of course, Linux doesn't have their code in it, and they know it doesn't, which is why they didn't care. But the point it, now, it doesn't matter at all. Even if 90% of Linux was lifted wholesale from SCO, it's legal.
I think that conclusively proves the idea that there is nothing that you can say in jest about human nature that is stranger than someone, somewhere, actually behaves.
However, almost no telephone wires has land purchased by eminent domain.
They have to buy land if they want to put a pole on private property. They do not have to buy land if they just want to string it over your property.
And they therefore place almost every pole on the public right of way, again without paying anything, and run the wires wherever they want.
And, ironically considering the recent decision that says the government can buy land and give it to people who bring in more tax revenue, all the telephone purchased land has been purchased by the government and the telephone company just gets to put up poles for free. (Why should the phone company purchase the land when the government will do it for free?)
The telephone company, basically, owns no land. Everything they have ever put up is on public or government land, with the government purchasing land for them.
Half the time, the damn switching hub thingies on the side of the road are on government land.
And, yes, half-assed deregulation is what screwed up California. The story I heard is that they deregulated the production of power and placing it on the grid, but continued price regulations of the selling.
Thus producing the same effect as rent control has had in New York. Except instead of buildings standing vacant, it was power plants not being built in the first place.
You know, there is an obvious, sane way to deregulate everything, to introduce competition while keeping things stable. Take whatever tiny monopoly cannot be removed, like the power grid or the phone lines, hand it to something like the USPS, an 'organization' that is part of the government but is expected to pay its own way, and let everyone hook into it and compete for customers.
And then there is the other way, the way the government likes to do it, the fucking stupid way. It's hard to describe, but, like obscenity, you'll know it when you see it. Or at least when you get slammed upside the head by it.
I have never used a cell in DC, not having been there in almost a decade, and so had no idea... (And I wouldn't have noticed, as I have Verizon.)
But that's exactly the sort of shit I'm talking about. Verizon doesn't own the damn subways. They were given the right to run wires through the subway because DC would look ugly with telephone wires.
And now that they 'own' this space, they think not only can they run cell tower wires through it, but that other companies can't.
I bet they even run private WANs through there, too, for businesses in multiple buildings. They charge the businesses for the wires, run them though their free access space, and rake in the cash.
We need to go out and take every telephone wire and accessway back from every phone company, becuase they simply will not stop abusing them. My personal preference is to just give them 24 hours to remove their wires from public places or have them confiscated (hehe), but in the real world we'd probably have to buy them using eminant domain.
Well, that's why I said 'old Sims' game. Even in The Sims, you could build a 'hotel' or even a 'motel', if you didn't mind everyone sharing a last name.
Witness the various taxes (Yes, government taxes) that were put on the phone bills, and then given back to the phone company to built infrastructure for, for example, rural areas. A large amount of 'taxes' on your phone bill are handed directly back to the phone company with the requirement they use it in a certain way, usually to do with infrastructure.
Telephone wires have always been treated as a public good, and the government has invested quite a lot of money into them, often times putting up the poles or digging the holes as part of road construction at no cost to the phone company. Or letting them have access to government areas...every public subway system in the world has telephone wires running through it at some point, and the telephone company has keys and doesn't even have to go through the government.
But, anyway, the mere right to run wires over public and private land is worth millions in any community. Actually, it's probably literally priceless, as they couldn't purchase all the rights they need.
Phone companies have no right to whine they have to share the wires.
It's completely absurd to let phone companies own and control the wires, and yet be allowed to string wires wherever they want with no compenstation to the property owners or the state.
Oh, wait. This is the US. We give completely absurd handouts to corporations all the time. In fact, I'm fairly sure that's our motto.
What we need to do, and what we were working towards, is have one government-operated entity, or just the government itself, control the wires and the building they go to, and the phone companies jsut come in and hook up. That's, legally, almost where we were...sure, the phone companies owned the building and wires, but they had to charge themselves the same amount ot use them as anyone else.
This, of course, is completely unacceptable, because...um. I dunno.
All I can say is, thank God gays can't get married! (That's my new standard tagline whenever the Republicans rip us off. Feel free to use it.)
Your second argument is based on your first. If enough publishers did make enough popular AO games, parents would indeed get very used to having to purchase every single video game their children wanted. So when their kids comes to them and says 'I need a copy of this', they'll say 'Okay, give me the cash'.
Unlike now, where at least the hope is they will go 'Why are you telling me? You have an allowance, I'm not your toy store.' and the kid has to admit it's a M or AO game and thus he can't purchase it, thus triggering all sorts of alarms in the parent.
There are all sorts of hoops people get used to leaping through, especially for their kids. Parents often grant more responsiblity to their kid than society does...just ask any parent in a town with a Walmart that does a lot of model making. Walmart cards to make sure you're over 16 if you buy model glue, and those parents just sigh, buy whatever the kid says, and makes sure the kid pays for it.
The fourth time that a parent has to inspect a game carefully because it's rated 'AO' and finds it's The Sims, they're going to stop inspecting them.
First of all, there are very few developers that would deliberately stoop to Rockstar's level. Electronic Arts (the top software publisher in America) makes E- and T-rated games almost exclusively; they're not going to all of a sudden start making hardcore porn.
Didn't you just read the article? Jack first went after the Sims 2 by lying about the fact the nude models have genetalia, and now he's lying about Wil's statements. The Sims, if you missed it, is published by EA.
If he keeps going after the game industry randomly, he's going to make alot of enemies.
And, you know, I take it all back. Game publishers don't even have to make AO games.
All they have to do is refuse to have their games rated. But, to fend off legal attacks, they then say 'This game is not to be sold to people under 18' right on the box.
Just one popular publisher quitting the ratings game would give all the retailers a very hard choice. Rockstar might have pulled it off by itself, GTA is so popular.
If you think this isn't possible, I suggest you study the history of the 'Comics Code', which has a scarily identical history. This is exactly why it went away. A few popular comics 'failed' it, and they published anyway, and stores had to make a hard choice.
I think the best thing for Wil to do is to realize the entire industry is in this together, and state publically that, while he didn't say that, he accepts the premise that external mods to games should be included, and thus he's going to up the rating on The Sims 2 to AO because you make the people walk around naked, and various mods can make it even worse.
Seriously. The only reason the ratings have any power is because various stores refuse to carry AO games. If the rating system bows to this idiot, the gaming industry needs to respond by only producing AO games. If the top five studios went in together, they coudl do it. If the rating people refuse to 'overrate' games, include hidden content the same way Rockstar did...content you can't possibly get to, but is included in the data files anyway. Scan in hardcode porn and put it in the texture file or whatever.
And then watching retail stores that refuse to carry AO games either give in or get made irrelevant, thus making the entire rating system irrelevant.
Congrats, Jack. It's entirely possible you'll be the death of the entire video game rating system if you piss the industry off bad enough. They'll just make everything AO, and then where will you be?
Which incidentally will result in parents being trained to purchase completely harmless AO games, and thus not batting an eye when 13-year old Jonny wants Hardcore Rape Simulator 2: The Revenge, now with motion feedback.
But when has anyone who cares 'about the children' actually cared when their actions harm children?
I didn't say anything like that. I said it was a theory.
And it's a completely ironclad theory that pretty much proves God doesn't exist, from basic will-understood principles.
Now, of course, you'll be asking for this theory. Well, I can't find it at the moment, because, like I said, the shelf it's kept on is infinitely big, containing a disproof of all non-existant things.
Do you have a theory that demonstrates why my theory does not exist? Apparently, the burden of proof is on you. (Probably easier to just disprove my infinite long shelf.)
Or should we just dispense with all this silliness and realize that no one's ever needed a theory that something doesn't exist. Everything doesn't exist in science until demonstrated otherwise, either by observation or by reasoning from things that do exist.
Which is why God isn't a scientific question, and ID is a damn stupid scientific theory. (Why does helium float? Well, as we know, the natural state for everything is down, and thus invisible fairies must be lifting it.)
If you want a 'theory' behind that, it's the fundemental axioms that 'Things that exist are finite in number' and 'For everything that exists, we can come up with a variant of it that does not exist', ergo 'There must be many more things that do not exist than do'. (Skipping the philosophical question whether or not things that do not exist can be said to 'not exist', or if nothing meaningful can be said about them at all.)
Combine that with 'Knowledge by humans is expensive to gain' and the concept that 'It is more productive to learn about existing things than non-existing things'. I.e., it makes no sense searching a field for a badger that doesn't live in that part of the world.
Now you come to the conclusion that science should spend more times on things we have a good reason to think exists, rather than merely things we can imagine exists but probably don't.
Now, that not a scientific theory, just a philosophical statement about why science needs a classification mechanism that involves the likelyhood of things being true. And the major mechanism is 'What can we observe?'.
If we can't observe it, it needs a theory to explain it. (And this theory must fit certain rules.) Whereas if we can observe it, it is, nominally, a 'fact' or 'law', treated as true until there's a damn good reason to think otherwise. (Like opticical illusion.) Theories are built on facts. You cannot have circular theories that do not refer to facts.
Otherwise there are plenty of much more pressing questions than the existence of God, like "Is there a gigantic planet eating shrimp headed towards earth?'.
Actually, the airport could get around this, because they are the landlord. While they cannot stop anyone from operating an antenna, they could trivially put a clause in their contract forbidding any leasee from offering internet service at all.
Of course, they'd actually have to come out and do that, instead of lying.
And, actually, the FAA might have something to say about that. Airports can't put completely random stuff in their leases to the airlines, they aren't like malls.
And I hope some quickwitted lawyer sues the airport for (claiming they are) operating a security system that cannot accept legal interference from wifi devices. It would be bad enough if you could take the airport security system out with an unauthorized transmitter. But the airport publicically 'admitting' you can take it out with such a low-powered and legal transmitter, and that the airport knows this, is past the bounds of negligent behavior and into criminal irresponsiblity. (And then they went and told people about it!)
And, on top of it, the airport is encouraging people to bring wifi devices into the airport, to hook to its network instead, which is probably so stupid it's classified as a felony. Yes, the airports wifi might be magically on the right channels and in the right positions to not interfere, but what if someone boots their computer in the wrong place and the computer tries the wrong channel first?
I'm so sick of people crying 'security' and 'terrorist' for the wrong reasons, so it would be nice to have it completely backfire this once and have the airport sued for having the shittiest security in the universe. Even though they probably don't actually, it would be a nice lesson for those who are willing to lie about things being security risks when they aren't, to make a profit and invade privacy.
So you can't back up the statement 'Some [universities] teach courses on wiccan practices, native american mysticism and other courses that are just as "religious" and just as "scientific" as reading John of Damascus.'.
I can't disprove the existence of courses. You find one of them. And until then, the assumption must be you are lying, or seriously misinformed.
Where in my post did I ever refer to persecution of anyone?
Also let's imagine that someone would propose a new course at some university that would study early Christian philosophy. Just a look through and analysis of ideas and trends and how it borrowed from Greek philosphy and Judaic background and such. Do you think most universities would approve of that?
The answer you are leading to here is 'No, because universities don't like Christianity.'. Either that, or you have no idea how to come to a conclusion.
And then you lead on to how they are teaching other things. Unwillingness to teach one belief system, yet teach others, is persecution, dumbass. That was your entire point. Liberal professors persecuting Christians, based on the lie that universities teach other religions. Universities, at least public ones, do not teach any religion at all. (And there are no private Wiccan or Native American universities I am aware of, but even if there were, they would be greatly outnumbered by Christian.)
And apparently you've never studied greek philosophy. It has nothing to do with the religion of the greeks. You will not find greek gods anywhere in any philosophy text. (You will, however, find the Christian god, as quite a lot of philsophy between 400 AD and the present talks about him.)
The greeks don't talk about religion at all, with the minor exception of some of Plato's concepts, which assert 'absolute Good' exists. And the major exception of Xenophanes, he asserted God exists and is everywhere. That's like one guy out of dozens. (1)
And I'm completely baffled that you don't understand the difference between teaching something, and teaching about something. So, in your school, when they covered WWII, did they teach you Nazism? Did they teach you atomic weaponary? Did they teach you genocide?
Or did they, like everyone else's school, just teach you about those things?
They don't teach you any philosophies or religions at school, except for stuff like 'Just say no'. They teach you skills. They teach about history and literature and (in some social sciences) philosophy and religion.
But literature classes don't teach you how to write, and religious classes don't teach you how to practice a religion. They are not teaching skills, they are teaching information about those those things.
Political science is different. It's a science. (No comments about how soft sciences aren't real sciences. It's taught as if it is one.) Sciences are sets of skills in addition to knowledge, and you are indeed taught these skills. Although it is possible to just learn about sciences, most people, for example, know about Freud, but couldn't begin to use his theories for anything. (Which is just as well, as they are stupid and mostly discredited.)
1) Well, neoplatonism was almost hijacked by a Christian hater in the 3rd century, but that was a) idiotic, as neoplatism was probably the most Christian-based philosophy to start with, and thus b) didn't work, and neoplatonism marked the end of Greek philosophy anyway. It was only hijackable because it was dying. I suspect philosophy courses that do talk about neoplatonism talk about the original version, not the 'let's introduce as many non-Christian superstitions as we can' version.
ID is always a fun discussion, because I find myself on the 'wrong' side. You see, I think there's more to humanities' existance than random chance. I don't know if we could exist without whatever this 'more' is, but I think it is there regardless. (Maybe we ourselves made it.)
I just disprove of teaching this in school, for three reasons.
The main one being that it's not 'true'. Beliefs are not facts. It would be cool if my personal belief was proven, but that doesn't mean it has been proven. I am not so goofy as to think my personal 'feeling' about the universe is true. (And regardless, there's no sense trying to get others to 'believe' in it.)
And two, ID is based on lies and delibrate misinterepetations about evolutions in particular and science in general. There a few very specific things we do not understand about evolution, and we keep filling these holes. ID likes to leap on these holes, and has to keep backing off when another theory emerges about how something evolved.
Or, at least, it would back off if it was the least bit honest, which it isn't. Instead, it's a bunch of 'talking points', a set of cleverly designed arguments that aren't actually true but at least one of will be irrefutable by any random debator, but could easily be destroyed by ten minutes on google. ID is dishonest, and people arguing for it are either dishonest, deluded, or misinformed.
And third, as you say, it's an attempt to make a wedge to introduce religion into schools. Next step is 'the young earth hypothesis', which is where ID learned all its tricks.
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Oh, sure, they can patch the copy protection when it fails...and so can we.
Yes, I'm sure it will required a signed binary, but keys leak. And buffer overflows exist.
Before, if we wanted to hack the firmware of DVD player, we had to take it apart. With Blu-Ray, we might have to pop the lid and disable a lead, or maybe we just need to brute-force one key, but they have the ability to read new firmware off a disc built-in.
While I did indeed say the LKP was GPL, I then immediately said it wasn't GPL, which should have clued you into the fact that one of those was not true, but a hypothetical 'This is the way it should be'.
The only way SCO had rights to include Linux kernel code in the LKP was to GPL it (Or ask fifty people for another license, but that did not happen.), and thus, if they did include Linux kernel code, the LKP should have been GPLd.
And, like it or not, saying what is legally required as if it is 'true' is a perfectly valid way of speaking in English. It is fine to say 'You can only go 55 on that road', when that is technically untrue. You can go any speed the road can handle. You can even go speeds the road cannot handle, although very briefly.
Likewise, it is perfectly fine to say, if you include GPL code in your product, you must only distribute that product under the GPL. Yes, you could, indeed, not do so, and break the law, but I'm afraid that's how English works for you. (Before you mention relicensing, reread where I said 'GPL code'. If you get the code under another license, you can do whatever that license says.)
And the fact you 'corrected' me shows you were wandering around trying to find people who think incorrectly. So you assumed I thought 'If they find GPL code in your product, it's magically GPLd', which I never even implied. I just said that if you redistribute code you got under the GPL, you 'must' use the GPL, where by must I mean 'To stay within the law'.
While the hypothetical Linux code in the LKP may or may make the SCO kernel GPL, it most certainly makes the LKP GPL.
Which it is not. That's the GPL violation, right there.
For what it's worth, I don't think a court would find a GPL LKP 'contaminates' the SCO kernel, either. 95% of the LKP just has to be stubs to the SCO kernel that SCO wrote. If the other 5% is Linux code, it's probably fairly self-contained.
Not that I'm entirely sure there is actually any Linux code in there, and I think everyone's getting a bit ahead of themselves. Yes, SCO has said several things like that, but they've also said several things not like that. Going by what SCO says is useless.
And there are very few things that actually could be copied and make sense. Almost everything in Linux is done via glibc, of which they use a legal copy of in Unixware to link with Linux programs. The kernel module is just to translate glibc Linux kernel calls into Unixware. (Why they just didn't hack glibc to work on Unixware I do not know.)
So basically any copied code would have to be to support a serious feature that Unixware was missing but glibc required.
The only question was, did they realize it was still on their FTP site? Sure, we knew, but did they?
Which has now been anwered with a yes.
Until that was answered, they might have had an out in that they simply did not realize it was there.
Now they're offically fucked even if Linux code had SCO code in it. It's GPL'd no matter what, because they knowingly distributed their own code under the GPL on their FTP site. For months after they knew of their code being in Linux, and even after other people had pointed out their inanity in distributing 'their own' code under a license they were accusing IBM of putting it under.
Of course, Linux doesn't have their code in it, and they know it doesn't, which is why they didn't care. But the point it, now, it doesn't matter at all. Even if 90% of Linux was lifted wholesale from SCO, it's legal.
However, if they're going to argue it has no retail value, it was pretty damn stupid to sell it, wasn't it? ;)
Yes, but I am failing to see how it is juicy.
I think that conclusively proves the idea that there is nothing that you can say in jest about human nature that is stranger than someone, somewhere, actually behaves.
However, almost no telephone wires has land purchased by eminent domain.
They have to buy land if they want to put a pole on private property. They do not have to buy land if they just want to string it over your property.
And they therefore place almost every pole on the public right of way, again without paying anything, and run the wires wherever they want.
And, ironically considering the recent decision that says the government can buy land and give it to people who bring in more tax revenue, all the telephone purchased land has been purchased by the government and the telephone company just gets to put up poles for free. (Why should the phone company purchase the land when the government will do it for free?)
The telephone company, basically, owns no land. Everything they have ever put up is on public or government land, with the government purchasing land for them.
Half the time, the damn switching hub thingies on the side of the road are on government land.
And, yes, half-assed deregulation is what screwed up California. The story I heard is that they deregulated the production of power and placing it on the grid, but continued price regulations of the selling.
Thus producing the same effect as rent control has had in New York. Except instead of buildings standing vacant, it was power plants not being built in the first place.
You know, there is an obvious, sane way to deregulate everything, to introduce competition while keeping things stable. Take whatever tiny monopoly cannot be removed, like the power grid or the phone lines, hand it to something like the USPS, an 'organization' that is part of the government but is expected to pay its own way, and let everyone hook into it and compete for customers.
And then there is the other way, the way the government likes to do it, the fucking stupid way. It's hard to describe, but, like obscenity, you'll know it when you see it. Or at least when you get slammed upside the head by it.
They can't do a damn thing if the game industry refuses to sell to people under 18.
But that's exactly the sort of shit I'm talking about. Verizon doesn't own the damn subways. They were given the right to run wires through the subway because DC would look ugly with telephone wires.
And now that they 'own' this space, they think not only can they run cell tower wires through it, but that other companies can't.
I bet they even run private WANs through there, too, for businesses in multiple buildings. They charge the businesses for the wires, run them though their free access space, and rake in the cash.
We need to go out and take every telephone wire and accessway back from every phone company, becuase they simply will not stop abusing them. My personal preference is to just give them 24 hours to remove their wires from public places or have them confiscated (hehe), but in the real world we'd probably have to buy them using eminant domain.
Google Earth is not AJAX.
If you live in Australia, the terrorists have won.
Well, that's why I said 'old Sims' game. Even in The Sims, you could build a 'hotel' or even a 'motel', if you didn't mind everyone sharing a last name.
Witness the various taxes (Yes, government taxes) that were put on the phone bills, and then given back to the phone company to built infrastructure for, for example, rural areas. A large amount of 'taxes' on your phone bill are handed directly back to the phone company with the requirement they use it in a certain way, usually to do with infrastructure.
Telephone wires have always been treated as a public good, and the government has invested quite a lot of money into them, often times putting up the poles or digging the holes as part of road construction at no cost to the phone company. Or letting them have access to government areas...every public subway system in the world has telephone wires running through it at some point, and the telephone company has keys and doesn't even have to go through the government.
But, anyway, the mere right to run wires over public and private land is worth millions in any community. Actually, it's probably literally priceless, as they couldn't purchase all the rights they need.
Phone companies have no right to whine they have to share the wires.
Oh, wait. This is the US. We give completely absurd handouts to corporations all the time. In fact, I'm fairly sure that's our motto.
What we need to do, and what we were working towards, is have one government-operated entity, or just the government itself, control the wires and the building they go to, and the phone companies jsut come in and hook up. That's, legally, almost where we were...sure, the phone companies owned the building and wires, but they had to charge themselves the same amount ot use them as anyone else.
This, of course, is completely unacceptable, because...um. I dunno.
All I can say is, thank God gays can't get married! (That's my new standard tagline whenever the Republicans rip us off. Feel free to use it.)
Unless they're the the same company.
But you can't build motels in any other old Sim game, so the joke wouldn't work.
Unlike now, where at least the hope is they will go 'Why are you telling me? You have an allowance, I'm not your toy store.' and the kid has to admit it's a M or AO game and thus he can't purchase it, thus triggering all sorts of alarms in the parent.
There are all sorts of hoops people get used to leaping through, especially for their kids. Parents often grant more responsiblity to their kid than society does...just ask any parent in a town with a Walmart that does a lot of model making. Walmart cards to make sure you're over 16 if you buy model glue, and those parents just sigh, buy whatever the kid says, and makes sure the kid pays for it.
The fourth time that a parent has to inspect a game carefully because it's rated 'AO' and finds it's The Sims, they're going to stop inspecting them.
First of all, there are very few developers that would deliberately stoop to Rockstar's level. Electronic Arts (the top software publisher in America) makes E- and T-rated games almost exclusively; they're not going to all of a sudden start making hardcore porn.
Didn't you just read the article? Jack first went after the Sims 2 by lying about the fact the nude models have genetalia, and now he's lying about Wil's statements. The Sims, if you missed it, is published by EA.
If he keeps going after the game industry randomly, he's going to make alot of enemies.
And, you know, I take it all back. Game publishers don't even have to make AO games.
All they have to do is refuse to have their games rated. But, to fend off legal attacks, they then say 'This game is not to be sold to people under 18' right on the box.
Just one popular publisher quitting the ratings game would give all the retailers a very hard choice. Rockstar might have pulled it off by itself, GTA is so popular.
If you think this isn't possible, I suggest you study the history of the 'Comics Code', which has a scarily identical history. This is exactly why it went away. A few popular comics 'failed' it, and they published anyway, and stores had to make a hard choice.
Seriously. The only reason the ratings have any power is because various stores refuse to carry AO games. If the rating system bows to this idiot, the gaming industry needs to respond by only producing AO games. If the top five studios went in together, they coudl do it. If the rating people refuse to 'overrate' games, include hidden content the same way Rockstar did...content you can't possibly get to, but is included in the data files anyway. Scan in hardcode porn and put it in the texture file or whatever.
And then watching retail stores that refuse to carry AO games either give in or get made irrelevant, thus making the entire rating system irrelevant.
Congrats, Jack. It's entirely possible you'll be the death of the entire video game rating system if you piss the industry off bad enough. They'll just make everything AO, and then where will you be?
Which incidentally will result in parents being trained to purchase completely harmless AO games, and thus not batting an eye when 13-year old Jonny wants Hardcore Rape Simulator 2: The Revenge, now with motion feedback.
But when has anyone who cares 'about the children' actually cared when their actions harm children?
I've known that since you could put in escort service next to hotel rooms in SimTower.
And it's a completely ironclad theory that pretty much proves God doesn't exist, from basic will-understood principles.
Now, of course, you'll be asking for this theory. Well, I can't find it at the moment, because, like I said, the shelf it's kept on is infinitely big, containing a disproof of all non-existant things.
Do you have a theory that demonstrates why my theory does not exist? Apparently, the burden of proof is on you. (Probably easier to just disprove my infinite long shelf.)
Or should we just dispense with all this silliness and realize that no one's ever needed a theory that something doesn't exist. Everything doesn't exist in science until demonstrated otherwise, either by observation or by reasoning from things that do exist.
Which is why God isn't a scientific question, and ID is a damn stupid scientific theory. (Why does helium float? Well, as we know, the natural state for everything is down, and thus invisible fairies must be lifting it.)
If you want a 'theory' behind that, it's the fundemental axioms that 'Things that exist are finite in number' and 'For everything that exists, we can come up with a variant of it that does not exist', ergo 'There must be many more things that do not exist than do'. (Skipping the philosophical question whether or not things that do not exist can be said to 'not exist', or if nothing meaningful can be said about them at all.)
Combine that with 'Knowledge by humans is expensive to gain' and the concept that 'It is more productive to learn about existing things than non-existing things'. I.e., it makes no sense searching a field for a badger that doesn't live in that part of the world.
Now you come to the conclusion that science should spend more times on things we have a good reason to think exists, rather than merely things we can imagine exists but probably don't.
Now, that not a scientific theory, just a philosophical statement about why science needs a classification mechanism that involves the likelyhood of things being true. And the major mechanism is 'What can we observe?'.
If we can't observe it, it needs a theory to explain it. (And this theory must fit certain rules.) Whereas if we can observe it, it is, nominally, a 'fact' or 'law', treated as true until there's a damn good reason to think otherwise. (Like opticical illusion.) Theories are built on facts. You cannot have circular theories that do not refer to facts.
Otherwise there are plenty of much more pressing questions than the existence of God, like "Is there a gigantic planet eating shrimp headed towards earth?'.
Of course, they'd actually have to come out and do that, instead of lying.
And, actually, the FAA might have something to say about that. Airports can't put completely random stuff in their leases to the airlines, they aren't like malls.
And I hope some quickwitted lawyer sues the airport for (claiming they are) operating a security system that cannot accept legal interference from wifi devices. It would be bad enough if you could take the airport security system out with an unauthorized transmitter. But the airport publicically 'admitting' you can take it out with such a low-powered and legal transmitter, and that the airport knows this, is past the bounds of negligent behavior and into criminal irresponsiblity. (And then they went and told people about it!)
And, on top of it, the airport is encouraging people to bring wifi devices into the airport, to hook to its network instead, which is probably so stupid it's classified as a felony. Yes, the airports wifi might be magically on the right channels and in the right positions to not interfere, but what if someone boots their computer in the wrong place and the computer tries the wrong channel first?
I'm so sick of people crying 'security' and 'terrorist' for the wrong reasons, so it would be nice to have it completely backfire this once and have the airport sued for having the shittiest security in the universe. Even though they probably don't actually, it would be a nice lesson for those who are willing to lie about things being security risks when they aren't, to make a profit and invade privacy.
It's right up there on the shelve next to all the other theories of non-existence of things. It's a pretty good theory, too.
Sadly, that shelf is infinitely large, and thus it's completely impossible to find the actual theory. You'll jut have to take our word for it.
Unless, of course, you have a theory as to why that theory doesn't exist. There's still room on the shelf.
I can't disprove the existence of courses. You find one of them. And until then, the assumption must be you are lying, or seriously misinformed.
Where in my post did I ever refer to persecution of anyone?
Also let's imagine that someone would propose a new course at some university that would study early Christian philosophy. Just a look through and analysis of ideas and trends and how it borrowed from Greek philosphy and Judaic background and such. Do you think most universities would approve of that?
The answer you are leading to here is 'No, because universities don't like Christianity.'. Either that, or you have no idea how to come to a conclusion.
And then you lead on to how they are teaching other things. Unwillingness to teach one belief system, yet teach others, is persecution, dumbass. That was your entire point. Liberal professors persecuting Christians, based on the lie that universities teach other religions. Universities, at least public ones, do not teach any religion at all. (And there are no private Wiccan or Native American universities I am aware of, but even if there were, they would be greatly outnumbered by Christian.)
And apparently you've never studied greek philosophy. It has nothing to do with the religion of the greeks. You will not find greek gods anywhere in any philosophy text. (You will, however, find the Christian god, as quite a lot of philsophy between 400 AD and the present talks about him.)
The greeks don't talk about religion at all, with the minor exception of some of Plato's concepts, which assert 'absolute Good' exists. And the major exception of Xenophanes, he asserted God exists and is everywhere. That's like one guy out of dozens. (1)
And I'm completely baffled that you don't understand the difference between teaching something, and teaching about something. So, in your school, when they covered WWII, did they teach you Nazism? Did they teach you atomic weaponary? Did they teach you genocide?
Or did they, like everyone else's school, just teach you about those things?
They don't teach you any philosophies or religions at school, except for stuff like 'Just say no'. They teach you skills. They teach about history and literature and (in some social sciences) philosophy and religion.
But literature classes don't teach you how to write, and religious classes don't teach you how to practice a religion. They are not teaching skills, they are teaching information about those those things.
Political science is different. It's a science. (No comments about how soft sciences aren't real sciences. It's taught as if it is one.) Sciences are sets of skills in addition to knowledge, and you are indeed taught these skills. Although it is possible to just learn about sciences, most people, for example, know about Freud, but couldn't begin to use his theories for anything. (Which is just as well, as they are stupid and mostly discredited.)
1) Well, neoplatonism was almost hijacked by a Christian hater in the 3rd century, but that was a) idiotic, as neoplatism was probably the most Christian-based philosophy to start with, and thus b) didn't work, and neoplatonism marked the end of Greek philosophy anyway. It was only hijackable because it was dying. I suspect philosophy courses that do talk about neoplatonism talk about the original version, not the 'let's introduce as many non-Christian superstitions as we can' version.
ID is always a fun discussion, because I find myself on the 'wrong' side. You see, I think there's more to humanities' existance than random chance. I don't know if we could exist without whatever this 'more' is, but I think it is there regardless. (Maybe we ourselves made it.)
I just disprove of teaching this in school, for three reasons.
The main one being that it's not 'true'. Beliefs are not facts. It would be cool if my personal belief was proven, but that doesn't mean it has been proven. I am not so goofy as to think my personal 'feeling' about the universe is true. (And regardless, there's no sense trying to get others to 'believe' in it.)
And two, ID is based on lies and delibrate misinterepetations about evolutions in particular and science in general. There a few very specific things we do not understand about evolution, and we keep filling these holes. ID likes to leap on these holes, and has to keep backing off when another theory emerges about how something evolved.
Or, at least, it would back off if it was the least bit honest, which it isn't. Instead, it's a bunch of 'talking points', a set of cleverly designed arguments that aren't actually true but at least one of will be irrefutable by any random debator, but could easily be destroyed by ten minutes on google. ID is dishonest, and people arguing for it are either dishonest, deluded, or misinformed.
And third, as you say, it's an attempt to make a wedge to introduce religion into schools. Next step is 'the young earth hypothesis', which is where ID learned all its tricks.