Not factoring in learning skills or implants would be a major mistake, hence it's not a straw-man argument.
A straw-man argument in this case would be any argument other than the one that the original poster made. Since he didn't post specifics criteria for his math, it's not possible to refute. I understand that he didn't make a realistic argument, but I never claimed that it was realistic either. Just that everyone else was making a different argument than he was, therefore they weren't really refuting his. I don't think he really meant for his to be realistic anyway.
And you usually end up in such situations due to not thinking ahead and not using the tools at your disposal(Map, local channel, scanner, asking friends etc etc)
That goes back to another comment I made about social skills and free time being the main resources that will benefit a player in EVE. So, I agree with you on that.
Besides, if you knew anything about the game mechanics, you'd know that the difference between level 4 and 5 is only really noticeable on a few specialist ships, such as Dominix(Drone control Bonus), ergo, there's no real "maxing out", unless you go for Tech 2, but then you move on to another level. Hence, it's not a straw-man argument.
I did play the beta for a a couple months, and then for several months after it was released before I got tired of it. I'm not an expert, but I do know how the system works. Neither I, nor the original poster were making any claims about what skills are necessary or more valuable or anything of that sort. He seemed to have done a quick napkin-math calculation of how long it would take to max out all the skills related to weapons, combat, piloting and such for a BS. That's it. No claims about where to stop training or where you reach diminishing returns. Maxing out everything was the easiest way to make the calculation. So all these replies about how you don't have to max out or that it would be better to focus on certain skills, etc., are just straw-man arguments. They don't refute or even address what was actually said. Unless the original poster comes back and posts specifically which skills he was talking about, and whether or not he factored in learning skill upgrades or not, we'll have no way of refuting it. I see it as just him considering the kind of time it would take to reach the highest level of skill in an area. Nothing more. The only reason I replied in the first place is because everyone started with the straw-man replies, so let's just drop it, k?
There is a ton of player skill in combat. It's just tactical skills instead of twitch skills.
Well, there are tactics involved when choosing when and where to fight, ship types and loadouts, and how many ships to bring, but that's only for planned combat. Unplanned combat is when you get ambushed or have to fight at a time and place not of your choosing and for which you aren't prepared. The outcomes of such combat are usually foregone conclusions.
3 years is bullshit. A focused character can pilot battleships decently in PvP in less than 3 months(Besides, you need that time just to figure out the finer details of the game mechanics.
It's not bullshit if you read his post instead of posting some stupid straw-man response. He said this:
I calculated how long it would take me to be fully trained on captaining a battleship, with all the necessary skills for both weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering.
Notice how he says 3 years to max out all the necessary skills for weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering. See the difference between that and "can pilot battleships decently"?? Please tell me you see the difference.
Yes but the GP poster was implying that it was necessary to max out ALL of the skills to be able to fly a BS effectively, which is false.
I don't think he was implying that at all. He was just saying that it would take 3 years to max out all the weapon-related, piloting, and maneuvering skills for a BS. He didn't say it was absolutely necessary to be effective with a BS. He was just giving an idea of the kind of time it takes to max out your skill level in a particular area.
Again, I don't know what skills you are including in your estimate. Beginner level skills train very quickly, so the broadness of your skillbase doesn't have as much effect on the time as the depth of your skills. He said this:
I calculated how long it would take me to be fully trained on captaining a battleship, with all the necessary skills for both weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering.
I take that to mean more than just piloting, but many other skills as well. So, unless you can both come up with a specific list, I'll accept for now that it would take about 3 years to max out all the skills "for weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering." As for the matchups, when I was playing, many, if not most, BSes were equipped to kill frigs since that's what most other people were piloting. If you were in a frig and couldn't escape because of countermeasures that the BS was mounting, then you were dead. That simple.
If you're a fan of Trade Wars style games or Elite style games,
I loved Tradewars and Elite, and I was ecstatic when I heard about EVE. However, I started playing when it came out and it was a complete letdown. Talk about a grind. It was the most yawn-inducing game I've played in a long time. Takes forever get anywhere, combat is automatic, skills are earned realtime, which is nice as a levelling idea, but reduces the game to one of social skills and free time being the dominant factors. Social skills are very important when forming, joining, or running a corp. You gotta be able to get people working together. In this case free time isn't needed to level up, it's needed to make trade runs, guard your fellow corp-mates while they're making runs or mining or whatever they happen to be doing, or just ferreting out ways to make money. They even managed to make combat pretty boring by making it automatic and taking individual skill completely out of it. You generally know pretty quick when you're in over your head. And a few seconds later it gets confirmed as you watch your ship turn into a fireball. All in all, this game is entirely too similar to real work for me. I feel like they should be paying me to play it.
or if you miss the days of old Ultima Online where you could PvP to your hearts content without being screamed at by the playerbase,
There's plenty of griefing going on in EVE, that's for sure. Between the random PKing just for kicks, and the scams that people pull, it's not much fun for n00bs. I think that's gonna have a real bad effect on EVE's future population level. I never got off on griefing, so this isn't a selling point for me either.
Your math must be pretty whacked out. The games has barely been out two years, and there are plenty of battleship pilots. It's more like 6 months to be a competent battleship pilot. (Not maxed, but more than competitive)
Umm.. you say his math is whacked out, and then go on to say that you're not talking about the same thing (i.e. being maxed out). So how exactly is his math whacked out?
Besides, frigates are MUCH more fun to fly anyway, and you can train for them in much less time.
Let me know just as soon as you're able to take out a battleship with your frigate, or even survive an attack by a hostile battleship. Frigates are cogs. More like support systems for battleships when it comes to combat. They serve useful functions, but they aren't the ones that do the killing.
Point taken. But if porn were truly harmless, then we would allow children to see it... or leave it up to the parents, not the state, to decide.
I see what you're saying. I don't know if I'd consider porn completely harmless or not. I see it much like violence in games and movies. It's fine for most people, but some people can't separate fantasy from reality, so for those people it's not ok. Kids aren't equipped to understand porn, so I don't think they should have access to it. I don't think it should be up to parents because kids are fundamentally unable to deal with it because they aren't mature enough and are likely to cause some harm to others by their misunderstanding of it. Same reason we don't let them in to see NC-17 movies and we don't let them drink alcohol. Lack of the maturity necessary to handle it.
That's why the only material that's going to get prosecuted is the stuff that will fail the Miller test in just about any jurisdiction, not just in Alabama.
That seems like the real problem with the whole thing to me. Are they gonna take a poll of all jurisdictions on each case to determine what percentage feel it's obscene? Do they need a simple majority, or is there some specific percentage necessary to deem it to be generally offensive?
But they seem to do a pretty good job of keeping child porn on the outer fringes of the Internet.
I think you'll find a lot more support worldwide for locking up child pornographers than you will for anything else that the government wants to declare to be deviant. Yeah, you may not have much trouble in places where you have a fundamentalist regime or ultra-conservative government, but that will hardly make a dent since no sane pornographer would operate in countries like that. So again, I think this is a waste of time and money. If you don't want to see it, don't look at it.
But so long as we have moved into an age in which local standards are unenforceable, it is inevitable that the worst of the worst stuff out there is going to be prosecuted. This sounds like a reasonable way to do it. The new standards will be much more lenient than many local communities would prefer, but they will be better than nothing.
How would they be better than nothing? If you don't want to look at internet porn, then don't look at it. I can understand going after kiddie porn producers. They're harming children and deserve to be punished. But other than that, I don't see why a porn producer in LA should be prosecuted for offering a masturbation video on his website because some evangelical group in Alabama is offended by it. What the hell are they going to the site for in the first place? If your town is so damn conservative, then put up a local firewall or something and do the rest of the world a favor by cutting yourselves off from it as much as possible. I wonder how they think they'll stop porn producers in other countries from making obscene stuff available. If they can't do that then the whole thing is a colossal waste of time and money.
Yes you did. In the following quote, you imply that an Islamic republic would be as fascist and repressive as the Christian republic you believe the US is becoming.
"Nevermind that porn with two consenting adults is completely legal and does absolutely no harm to society. It's just another step towards turning America into a Islamic... -oops!- Christian Republic."
[2] There are plenty of ways to seek out partners for deviant sexual behavior while not publishing porn. It is easier than ever to find a partner, and doing so is not against the law in most places.
If porn depicting these acts is made illegal, do you think it will still be legal to publicly (even on a membership-based website) seek out another adult for such purposes?
[1] Why shoul advertisement be regulated, if there is no harm in porn?
I think it was understood that he meant not harmful to adults. Therefore regulations against offering porn magazines in the book pile at daycare centers would seem appropriate.
I agree that porn created by consenting adults without depicting acts of criminally illegal nature (like snuff films, for example), distributed to consenting adults, should not be restricted. But it does our position no good to tell the opposition that they are wrong just because they can't prove it -- especially when they are saying the same thing to us.
I think the plan should be to point out the same sorts of flaws in their reasoning. Unfortunately, most christian evangelicals and other fundamentalists that I've had the misfortune of interacting with are largely immune to logic and reason.
Actually, there doesn't seem to be any evidence supporting the fact that they're profiting from this. They may not be at all.
You can't seriously believe that Lucent does anything without a profit incentive. Please tell me you don't believe that. Are you saying that the government can force Lucent to work for nothing, or at least for no profit? I'd like to see that law.
My point is that you were just a pawn of a fight between the big corporations, and you were manipulated by a false sense of "doing what is right". I feel bad for you, really, because if you ever realize it, well, I don't think you'll be too happy.
I think you think too much of your own opinion. I was watching in disbelief when the DOJ gave up on the last case. Microsoft broke the law. Microsoft was convicted of breaking the law. Maybe it's not as graphic or tragic as someone getting their face burned off, but that doesn't mean they didn't break the law. You say that there are sweatshops and other illegal activities going on in the US and imply that for some bizarre reason that means that Microsoft should be excused for breaking the law. No, it means we need better enforcement of the law.
The main problem with the last case against MS was that the remedies that the DOJ went after were absolutely ridiculous and would have done nothing to stop Microsoft's abuse of it's monopoly position. The DOJ disgusted me and Microsoft disgusts me even more now. They seem to think they're entitled to the people's money for some reason, and that nobody should be allowed to consider alternatives. The only way anyone could read that letter and not feel sick is if they have no idea about the technologies involved and Microsoft's past, or they don't have a problem with unethical and illegal business practices. You seem to fall into the latter category. The "everyone does it, so it doesn't matter if it's illegal" category. I remember back when people said that Microsoft got to where it was by building a good product and offering it for a price that people were willing to pay. Now that people have built products that are competitive on features and better on price, Microsoft is crying foul. Screw them. The drawbacks of their products have to be considered as well as their benefits. Microsoft thinks that everyone should have to use their software, and in this case they seem to think that the Mass. government should mandate its use, even though it means that people would be locked into MS software just to be compatible with their government. Ridiculous. Microsoft deserves to lose this fight.
t's poorly designed, bloated, fragile, and unsecurable. It's a nightmare for the "normal" person, and sets their expectations at rock-bottom.
And don't forget, they pay through the nose for that "feature set". Many of them just don't realize it since Windows, and sometimes Office, came "free" with their PC.
Right, because I'm sure you personally know Bill Gates, and he has divulged this information to you. You don't know Bill Gates' motivation, and neither do I.
So you'd like to assume the best and the other poster assumes the worst. Given Gates' track record, I think he has more of a leg to stand on. I'm sure Bill probably likes the feeling of helping people, but that doesn't mean that he's suddenly absolved of all his past crimes and transgressions. I view him for what he is, a ruthless businessman, and a human being who exhibits some humanity, and has the kind of vast personal fortune to make a big difference in the world without having a noticeable impact on his lifestyle. I'm sure that the fact that it helps his business and personal reputation quite a bit was not lost on him when he was planning his philanthropy.
Evidence turns up rather easily, as we've seen with all the discrepancies that happened in places like Ohio. Once you have some info like that, it shouldn't be too hard to request a recount (if it is too hard, then the laws need to be changed). Then it's just a matter of getting ahold of all the paper votes. Here's where we DEFINITELY need better laws. "Losing" a box of ballots should be a serious felony, punishable by a good 10 years or so in prison. Perhaps then it wouldn't be quite so easy for the local politicos to get someone to let the boxes fall off the truck... and over the bridge... and into the river, or allow them to meet any of a number of other equally undemocratic fates. Right now, nobody ever gets any real punishment for criminal behavior masquerading as unbelievable incompetence.
I'm thinking along the lines of the GTA games, the Splinter Cell games, MGS games, Prince of Persia games, Mercenaries, WWII shooters, etc. Maybe they aren't the top 5 or whatever, but they were still extremely popular, and I can't see stores walking away from that kind of money.
I think it is more likely that the retailers will just not sell anything that is determined to be violent. It probably doesn't make financial sense to take on the extra risk and the extra cost for the bit of money you'll get from those games.
Are you nuts? The violent games out there are some of the biggest sellers. I seriously doubt that most retailers will just pull them off the shelf. Wal-Mart can probably afford to do that. EBGames can't.
I think you're both partially right. I think that this bill will help to divert blame away from retailers. I don't think that the blame will land on parents. I think it will still land directly on the game publishers and developers. Parents are notorious for not assuming responsibility and pointing the finger at whoever created whatever it is that they are blaming for their child's misbehavior. Be it video games, movies, guns, the Internet or whatever. Interestingly, I don't see much of them pointing the finger in the case of drugs, which would presumably be the fault of the federal and state governments for allowing them to be available. Not sure why that is.
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Not factoring in learning skills or implants would be a major mistake, hence it's not a straw-man argument.
A straw-man argument in this case would be any argument other than the one that the original poster made. Since he didn't post specifics criteria for his math, it's not possible to refute. I understand that he didn't make a realistic argument, but I never claimed that it was realistic either. Just that everyone else was making a different argument than he was, therefore they weren't really refuting his. I don't think he really meant for his to be realistic anyway.
And you usually end up in such situations due to not thinking ahead and not using the tools at your disposal(Map, local channel, scanner, asking friends etc etc)
That goes back to another comment I made about social skills and free time being the main resources that will benefit a player in EVE. So, I agree with you on that.
Besides, if you knew anything about the game mechanics, you'd know that the difference between level 4 and 5 is only really noticeable on a few specialist ships, such as Dominix(Drone control Bonus), ergo, there's no real "maxing out", unless you go for Tech 2, but then you move on to another level. Hence, it's not a straw-man argument.
I did play the beta for a a couple months, and then for several months after it was released before I got tired of it. I'm not an expert, but I do know how the system works. Neither I, nor the original poster were making any claims about what skills are necessary or more valuable or anything of that sort. He seemed to have done a quick napkin-math calculation of how long it would take to max out all the skills related to weapons, combat, piloting and such for a BS. That's it. No claims about where to stop training or where you reach diminishing returns. Maxing out everything was the easiest way to make the calculation. So all these replies about how you don't have to max out or that it would be better to focus on certain skills, etc., are just straw-man arguments. They don't refute or even address what was actually said. Unless the original poster comes back and posts specifically which skills he was talking about, and whether or not he factored in learning skill upgrades or not, we'll have no way of refuting it. I see it as just him considering the kind of time it would take to reach the highest level of skill in an area. Nothing more. The only reason I replied in the first place is because everyone started with the straw-man replies, so let's just drop it, k?
There is a ton of player skill in combat. It's just tactical skills instead of twitch skills.
Well, there are tactics involved when choosing when and where to fight, ship types and loadouts, and how many ships to bring, but that's only for planned combat. Unplanned combat is when you get ambushed or have to fight at a time and place not of your choosing and for which you aren't prepared. The outcomes of such combat are usually foregone conclusions.
3 years is bullshit. A focused character can pilot battleships decently in PvP in less than 3 months(Besides, you need that time just to figure out the finer details of the game mechanics.
It's not bullshit if you read his post instead of posting some stupid straw-man response. He said this:
I calculated how long it would take me to be fully trained on captaining a battleship, with all the necessary skills for both weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering.
Notice how he says 3 years to max out all the necessary skills for weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering. See the difference between that and "can pilot battleships decently"?? Please tell me you see the difference.
Yes but the GP poster was implying that it was necessary to max out ALL of the skills to be able to fly a BS effectively, which is false.
I don't think he was implying that at all. He was just saying that it would take 3 years to max out all the weapon-related, piloting, and maneuvering skills for a BS. He didn't say it was absolutely necessary to be effective with a BS. He was just giving an idea of the kind of time it takes to max out your skill level in a particular area.
3 years to pilot a BS well is VERY wrong.
Again, I don't know what skills you are including in your estimate. Beginner level skills train very quickly, so the broadness of your skillbase doesn't have as much effect on the time as the depth of your skills. He said this:
I calculated how long it would take me to be fully trained on captaining a battleship, with all the necessary skills for both weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering.
I take that to mean more than just piloting, but many other skills as well. So, unless you can both come up with a specific list, I'll accept for now that it would take about 3 years to max out all the skills "for weapons use, piloting, and maneuvering." As for the matchups, when I was playing, many, if not most, BSes were equipped to kill frigs since that's what most other people were piloting. If you were in a frig and couldn't escape because of countermeasures that the BS was mounting, then you were dead. That simple.
If you're a fan of Trade Wars style games or Elite style games,
I loved Tradewars and Elite, and I was ecstatic when I heard about EVE. However, I started playing when it came out and it was a complete letdown. Talk about a grind. It was the most yawn-inducing game I've played in a long time. Takes forever get anywhere, combat is automatic, skills are earned realtime, which is nice as a levelling idea, but reduces the game to one of social skills and free time being the dominant factors. Social skills are very important when forming, joining, or running a corp. You gotta be able to get people working together. In this case free time isn't needed to level up, it's needed to make trade runs, guard your fellow corp-mates while they're making runs or mining or whatever they happen to be doing, or just ferreting out ways to make money. They even managed to make combat pretty boring by making it automatic and taking individual skill completely out of it. You generally know pretty quick when you're in over your head. And a few seconds later it gets confirmed as you watch your ship turn into a fireball. All in all, this game is entirely too similar to real work for me. I feel like they should be paying me to play it.
or if you miss the days of old Ultima Online where you could PvP to your hearts content without being screamed at by the playerbase,
There's plenty of griefing going on in EVE, that's for sure. Between the random PKing just for kicks, and the scams that people pull, it's not much fun for n00bs. I think that's gonna have a real bad effect on EVE's future population level. I never got off on griefing, so this isn't a selling point for me either.
Your math must be pretty whacked out. The games has barely been out two years, and there are plenty of battleship pilots. It's more like 6 months to be a competent battleship pilot. (Not maxed, but more than competitive)
Umm.. you say his math is whacked out, and then go on to say that you're not talking about the same thing (i.e. being maxed out). So how exactly is his math whacked out?
Besides, frigates are MUCH more fun to fly anyway, and you can train for them in much less time.
Let me know just as soon as you're able to take out a battleship with your frigate, or even survive an attack by a hostile battleship. Frigates are cogs. More like support systems for battleships when it comes to combat. They serve useful functions, but they aren't the ones that do the killing.
Point taken. But if porn were truly harmless, then we would allow children to see it... or leave it up to the parents, not the state, to decide.
I see what you're saying. I don't know if I'd consider porn completely harmless or not. I see it much like violence in games and movies. It's fine for most people, but some people can't separate fantasy from reality, so for those people it's not ok. Kids aren't equipped to understand porn, so I don't think they should have access to it. I don't think it should be up to parents because kids are fundamentally unable to deal with it because they aren't mature enough and are likely to cause some harm to others by their misunderstanding of it. Same reason we don't let them in to see NC-17 movies and we don't let them drink alcohol. Lack of the maturity necessary to handle it.
That's why the only material that's going to get prosecuted is the stuff that will fail the Miller test in just about any jurisdiction, not just in Alabama.
That seems like the real problem with the whole thing to me. Are they gonna take a poll of all jurisdictions on each case to determine what percentage feel it's obscene? Do they need a simple majority, or is there some specific percentage necessary to deem it to be generally offensive?
But they seem to do a pretty good job of keeping child porn on the outer fringes of the Internet.
I think you'll find a lot more support worldwide for locking up child pornographers than you will for anything else that the government wants to declare to be deviant. Yeah, you may not have much trouble in places where you have a fundamentalist regime or ultra-conservative government, but that will hardly make a dent since no sane pornographer would operate in countries like that. So again, I think this is a waste of time and money. If you don't want to see it, don't look at it.
Any "implication" you find is your own. You are projecting your own values into the statement.
lol... ok then, explain what you meant. You still haven't done that. I would love to know how else that sentence could be interpreted.
But so long as we have moved into an age in which local standards are unenforceable, it is inevitable that the worst of the worst stuff out there is going to be prosecuted. This sounds like a reasonable way to do it. The new standards will be much more lenient than many local communities would prefer, but they will be better than nothing.
How would they be better than nothing? If you don't want to look at internet porn, then don't look at it. I can understand going after kiddie porn producers. They're harming children and deserve to be punished. But other than that, I don't see why a porn producer in LA should be prosecuted for offering a masturbation video on his website because some evangelical group in Alabama is offended by it. What the hell are they going to the site for in the first place? If your town is so damn conservative, then put up a local firewall or something and do the rest of the world a favor by cutting yourselves off from it as much as possible. I wonder how they think they'll stop porn producers in other countries from making obscene stuff available. If they can't do that then the whole thing is a colossal waste of time and money.
Interesting because I did not, you did.
Yes you did. In the following quote, you imply that an Islamic republic would be as fascist and repressive as the Christian republic you believe the US is becoming.
"Nevermind that porn with two consenting adults is completely legal and does absolutely no harm to society. It's just another step towards turning America into a Islamic... -oops!- Christian Republic."
[2] There are plenty of ways to seek out partners for deviant sexual behavior while not publishing porn. It is easier than ever to find a partner, and doing so is not against the law in most places.
If porn depicting these acts is made illegal, do you think it will still be legal to publicly (even on a membership-based website) seek out another adult for such purposes?
[1] Why shoul advertisement be regulated, if there is no harm in porn?
I think it was understood that he meant not harmful to adults. Therefore regulations against offering porn magazines in the book pile at daycare centers would seem appropriate.
I agree that porn created by consenting adults without depicting acts of criminally illegal nature (like snuff films, for example), distributed to consenting adults, should not be restricted. But it does our position no good to tell the opposition that they are wrong just because they can't prove it -- especially when they are saying the same thing to us.
I think the plan should be to point out the same sorts of flaws in their reasoning. Unfortunately, most christian evangelicals and other fundamentalists that I've had the misfortune of interacting with are largely immune to logic and reason.
Actually, there doesn't seem to be any evidence supporting the fact that they're profiting from this. They may not be at all.
You can't seriously believe that Lucent does anything without a profit incentive. Please tell me you don't believe that. Are you saying that the government can force Lucent to work for nothing, or at least for no profit? I'd like to see that law.
My point is that you were just a pawn of a fight between the big corporations, and you were manipulated by a false sense of "doing what is right". I feel bad for you, really, because if you ever realize it, well, I don't think you'll be too happy.
I think you think too much of your own opinion. I was watching in disbelief when the DOJ gave up on the last case. Microsoft broke the law. Microsoft was convicted of breaking the law. Maybe it's not as graphic or tragic as someone getting their face burned off, but that doesn't mean they didn't break the law. You say that there are sweatshops and other illegal activities going on in the US and imply that for some bizarre reason that means that Microsoft should be excused for breaking the law. No, it means we need better enforcement of the law.
The main problem with the last case against MS was that the remedies that the DOJ went after were absolutely ridiculous and would have done nothing to stop Microsoft's abuse of it's monopoly position. The DOJ disgusted me and Microsoft disgusts me even more now. They seem to think they're entitled to the people's money for some reason, and that nobody should be allowed to consider alternatives. The only way anyone could read that letter and not feel sick is if they have no idea about the technologies involved and Microsoft's past, or they don't have a problem with unethical and illegal business practices. You seem to fall into the latter category. The "everyone does it, so it doesn't matter if it's illegal" category. I remember back when people said that Microsoft got to where it was by building a good product and offering it for a price that people were willing to pay. Now that people have built products that are competitive on features and better on price, Microsoft is crying foul. Screw them. The drawbacks of their products have to be considered as well as their benefits. Microsoft thinks that everyone should have to use their software, and in this case they seem to think that the Mass. government should mandate its use, even though it means that people would be locked into MS software just to be compatible with their government. Ridiculous. Microsoft deserves to lose this fight.
t's poorly designed, bloated, fragile, and unsecurable. It's a nightmare for the "normal" person, and sets their expectations at rock-bottom.
And don't forget, they pay through the nose for that "feature set". Many of them just don't realize it since Windows, and sometimes Office, came "free" with their PC.
Right, because I'm sure you personally know Bill Gates, and he has divulged this information to you. You don't know Bill Gates' motivation, and neither do I.
So you'd like to assume the best and the other poster assumes the worst. Given Gates' track record, I think he has more of a leg to stand on. I'm sure Bill probably likes the feeling of helping people, but that doesn't mean that he's suddenly absolved of all his past crimes and transgressions. I view him for what he is, a ruthless businessman, and a human being who exhibits some humanity, and has the kind of vast personal fortune to make a big difference in the world without having a noticeable impact on his lifestyle. I'm sure that the fact that it helps his business and personal reputation quite a bit was not lost on him when he was planning his philanthropy.
Evidence turns up rather easily, as we've seen with all the discrepancies that happened in places like Ohio. Once you have some info like that, it shouldn't be too hard to request a recount (if it is too hard, then the laws need to be changed). Then it's just a matter of getting ahold of all the paper votes. Here's where we DEFINITELY need better laws. "Losing" a box of ballots should be a serious felony, punishable by a good 10 years or so in prison. Perhaps then it wouldn't be quite so easy for the local politicos to get someone to let the boxes fall off the truck... and over the bridge... and into the river, or allow them to meet any of a number of other equally undemocratic fates. Right now, nobody ever gets any real punishment for criminal behavior masquerading as unbelievable incompetence.
It's still more secure than IE.
You make a powerful argument. I'm daunted at the prospect of countering it. I think I'll back down in the face of your intellectual prowess.
I'm thinking along the lines of the GTA games, the Splinter Cell games, MGS games, Prince of Persia games, Mercenaries, WWII shooters, etc. Maybe they aren't the top 5 or whatever, but they were still extremely popular, and I can't see stores walking away from that kind of money.
You'd rather see close-ups of those same bloated bastards stuffing their faces with eachothers' genitals?
Of course not. Everyone knows that you only show hot people having sex in movies and tv.
I think it is more likely that the retailers will just not sell anything that is determined to be violent. It probably doesn't make financial sense to take on the extra risk and the extra cost for the bit of money you'll get from those games.
Are you nuts? The violent games out there are some of the biggest sellers. I seriously doubt that most retailers will just pull them off the shelf. Wal-Mart can probably afford to do that. EBGames can't.
I think you're both partially right. I think that this bill will help to divert blame away from retailers. I don't think that the blame will land on parents. I think it will still land directly on the game publishers and developers. Parents are notorious for not assuming responsibility and pointing the finger at whoever created whatever it is that they are blaming for their child's misbehavior. Be it video games, movies, guns, the Internet or whatever. Interestingly, I don't see much of them pointing the finger in the case of drugs, which would presumably be the fault of the federal and state governments for allowing them to be available. Not sure why that is.