I still hold that Kansas has some of the most archaic, arcane, and anachronistic alcohol laws (hey, at least I liked the alliteration!) in the U.S. Among them:
1) Liquor stores must have a specific green-and-red neon sign that shows in the window during operational hours (Why? I suspect that some neon sign maker must have had a brother-in-law in the legislature...)
2) Liquor stores are the only places that can sell any beer stronger than 3.2% or other form of alcoholic beverage (although they never do complain about cooking sherry or lemon extract in grocery stores).
3) Liquor stores are officially not supposed to be open on Sundays (although they are saying that this is a county-by-county/city-by-city decision now).
Personally, I like to quote from Alan Dean Foster's book The Tar-Aiym Krang, which said "The planet Moth had no drinking laws. Only sober ones."
1) The politicians who are going to back Thompson's ideas, because the legislation that they will craft will end up getting tossed into the compost heap by the courts, leaving them looking useless;
2) The court judges who are going to have to listen to Thompson's drivel as he tries to support the bill;
3) The voters of Massachusetts, who are going to wonder, with all of the things that need doing, why their elected officials are politically grandstanding with this nonsense.
Groups 2 and 3 I have sympathy for. Group 1... sorry, I've used up my sympathy supply.
I offer no argument about the name. I offer no argument about the content. The games themselves are "on the edge" - taking risks, going in areas other gaming companies don't go, and so forth. Good for them... and good for computer gaming in general, because if nobody went past the edge, we'd still be choosing between "Space Invaders" versus "Pac Man".
I just think that "The Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition" is going to be seen as hypocritical with their treatment of "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!", and will take a hit to its credibility.
First off, I'm not angry or upset about Columbine Massacre. If I find something to be tasteless / offensive / not my cup of "Hot Coffee" <grin>, then I just don't buy it. Seems simple enough to me, so I'm not interested in "how can you judge it without playing it" arguments.
However, I see the organizers of Slamdance as trying to have their cake and eat it, too. They courted the makers of the Columbine RPG primarily for shock value... and the publicity. Then they found out that some of their sponsors objected, and planned to do their objecting with their sponsorship of Slamdance, and decided to remove the game from the competition, meanwhile loudly blaming "outside pressures" for "muzzling" games.
And that is what bugs me about Slamdance. If they were willing to seem edgy with their inclusion of Columbine Massacre, then they could have accepted the consequences of their sponsorships getting yanked. But they didn't, so they shouldn't.
"I don't feel like (Baxter and Roberts) ought to be vilified in this, I think they had the best of intentions to showcase this game."
I disagree with this statement. Given that Baxter and Roberts actually courted this game, I think that their soi-disant "best intentions" were for the best publicity possible for Slamdance. I also think that, once they started getting bad publicity, they decided to pull the plug. In short, it strikes me that Slamdance used the game and the game designer.
Now, having said that, I would like to point out the following:
"Freedom of speech" does not guarantee "popularity of speech." If enough people were put off by the game's material, they have a choice not to buy it. If companies are offended enough to not want to be associated with the game, they have the option to pull their advertising from someone who is putting the two together.
If a governmental entity (Federal, state, or local - take your choice) had come in and said, "STOP! We have placed this game on the 'Games Known To Be Tasteless' list, and demand that you cease at once from doing anything with it!" there would be a hue and cry - and rightly so. That is prior censorship, and that is what the framers of the Bill of Rights wanted to prevent.
Companies and business owners, though, are NOT governmental entities (regardless of how much they might wish to be). They do not have police powers, and do not have armed force backing them up to impose their will. Slamdance could have easily (well, honestly, easily-for-me-to-say) bit the bullet on principle and declared, "Boycott / pressure / threaten what you will, this game is still in the competition!" Instead, the organizers went with a half-rattling "Here it is... oh, wait, I guess if people are going to bitch about it, then we'll take it out."
I have a sneaking respect for the audacity of the creator of Columbine, if not for his taste. Slamdance, though, lost whatever respect I had for it with this whole fiasco.
Where would our civilization be without second class citizens?
How else would we have been able to make some of the steps forward in medicine, were it not for some of the work done on "disposable" people?
How else would we have had such a burgeoning entertainment industry, had it not been for laws that deprived actors and actresses from burial in sacred ground?
Who else can be used for a way to see how far a government can go before the first-class citizens decide that enough is enough?
Of course, sometimes a government can overplay its hand. When people find out that convicted sex offenders are not allowed in public hurricane shelters, but have to report to the local jail (and give 24 hours advance notice, even!), there might be a feeling that things might have gone too far.
But then again, when we're "thinking of the children," we don't have to do a whole lot more thinking, do we?
...how many of the Oklahoma City terrorists were Muslims?
All of them - just check the database.
How many of the abortion clinic bombing terrorists were Muslims?
All of them - just check the database. And don't tell me you can't!
How many of the Columbine terrorists were Muslims?
All of them - just check the database. And don't whine about it being exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. After all, we're protecting our country... or at least all except for the statistically insignificant number who are Muslims... oops, sorry, I meant "potential terrorists."
I know this is off-topic, but when I hear people refer to the NRA as overheated and overpoliticized gun owners, I sigh, and think, "They didn't used to be...."
I remember when I was in Boy Scouts during the 1970's and I took the dreaded "Rifle and Shotgun" merit badge.
Back then, the NRA was a gun safety and training organization. They struck everyone as being straight-forward and calm, more interested in making sure that people knew how to prevent gun accidents and how to responsibly own firearms.
Then things changed, and they transformed themselves into a political organization - and now they're either seen as "the safeguard of the American way" or "crazy gun-toting fascists," depending on whose overheated rhetoric was heard last.
Perhaps this should be seen as a warning to other groups - once you enter the political fray, you become a political animal. Or in the words of the Punisher, "The means always screws up the ends."
Next thing you know Microsoft execs will be brutalizing school kids for their lunch money.
That remark touches a nerve for me. There was a girl in my elementary school who kept taking my lunch money. Worse yet, she took it from other kids in the school.
However, I was the first one to stand up to her, and tell her that she wasn't going to get MY money, and that I was going to keep it!
So she told me to put my tray back, and turned to the next kid in line.
But I could tell that I'd had some effect from the way she kept looking at me funny for the rest of the year, and the whispering of the other kids told me that I'd made an impression on them as well.
During the Korean conflict, the Chinese stated that they were not aggressors. When called on that, the speaker said that "the People's Republic of China, by definition, is incapable of aggression." (I pause briefly for you to collect your thoughts from this non sequitur.)
Perhaps they thought that everyone else might have forgotten that little bit of sophistry....
I wasn't arguing the damages, myself. However, since you raise the point, here's a quote from TFA:
Furthermore, the page featured comments from other MySpace users, many of them other Clark students who knew Ms. Draker. These messages were less than complimentary. And it wasn't just school students; "a few were individuals Ms. Draker did not recognize, that lived near Clark High School, and had made suggestive, lewd and obscene comments based on the content of the webpage.
If everything in the article is true, it sounds as though a jury may have a hard time believing that (A) the children were just indulging in high spirits with a light-hearted prank, and (B) no damage was done by it.
This doesn't sound like some sue-happy opportunist whining "everybody's picking on me" - it sounds as though she's had some pretty deliberate, malicious damage done to her reputation. (And, yes, MySpace gets checked by employers and prospective employers... and even if it wasn't, what part of this whole fake website idea seems like it remotely might have been a good idea?)
So, yes, if my kids were involved (I shudder to think of it - I have two), I'd have no choice (legally and ethically) but to shoulder the responsibility, and then in turn see to it that they learned better from this. (How? I don't know yet, but the temptation of combining thumbscrews and Yoko Ono music would probably be there...)
You are over-reacting. Nobody is even remotely suggesting that children require 24/7 oversight.
Oversight is required for children. They do not yet know the rules for society, and the people that they spend the vast majority of their time with (namely, parents) are the best examples and role models that they're likely to get.
Your suggestion of 24/7 oversight seems to suggest that the children could put a fake MySpace site together in a split second, and that is not the case. The fact that they clearly didn't see anything wrong enough with the situation to stop is an indication of failure on the parents' part. Thus, the responsibility is theirs.
If you don't think this is fair, then my advice is that you not have children.
I would ask everyone to at least LOOK at it before you flame it.
Oh, you silly, simple man - don't you know that this is Slashdot? Where people get their exercise by jumping to conclusions, and then jumping up and down on top of anyone who doesn't support them? <grin>
Now, having said that - I agree with you. We've got Ubuntu loaded on a laptop that otherwise would be a paperweight. It's currently hooked up with a wireless chip, and the sound feeds into our home stereo, so as a result, we can play MP3's, Shoutcast stations, and so forth. (With thanks to the gentle on here who recommended StreamTuner for that last). We don't need an anti-virus on it, we do very minimal web browsing on it, and all told, Ubuntu's been doing quite nicely for us.
Which means, of course, that I am probably going to be the object of scorn, derision, and general flamage as one who sold my geek birthright for a, well, face it, a system that does what I wanted it to do without my having to build it from the ground up.
Nineteenth century social reformers would be thrilled by the advances in the physical conditions and political clout of the poor, but horified by the godlessness, materialism and narcisisstic alienation from our communities that typify most people today.
No, they'd probably just be jealous that they couldn't participate in the Sacrament of the Big Mac.
I read the interview, and the primary thrust of the questions and answers seemed to be:
Q: Do you think you'll get in trouble for your game? A: I shouldn't - it's art, for crying out loud!
Now, I don't think tastelessness is criminal. Otherwise, the creators of the HTML "Blink" tag would've been behind bars some time back. I also think that the author's cries of "Nobody understands why I made this game" necessarily makes him an artist.
Therefore, I can only say that if anyone is trying to blame him for the Dawson shooting, they are making a very long and very awkward reach for a suitable scapegoat.
I found the FAQ interesting. I liked the way they set the tenor of the questions, and included such things as "you weren't supposed to say anything about this!" The research seems pretty clear-cut, and the precautions that the researchers took appears to have been well thought out.
I hope that I underestimate the American people on this (including me), because the next tack that will be taken by Diebold will be, "Well, who in their right mind would want to tamper with an election? Calm down, citizens, this is just scaremongering by the right/left/pedestrians..." Once this is followed up with a suggestion that such might be "fomenting a panic designed to cause a breach of the peace," vague threats of arrest for those involved, and nothing changing.
Well, if nothing else, this voter's going to try his hand at absentee balloting this time around. Just in case...
I would respectfully disagree with you on someof the particulars that you raise.
1) I don't have an iPod. I do have an older HP digital camera, using a high-capacity compact flash device. I tried to read it via Windows XP, and it had trouble. I installed the HP software (and, yes, I made sure that I didn't provide the system with my home phone records even after it said it already knew my SSN <grin>), and it still couldn't read the chip. I connected the chip reader to a small laptop we have that runs Ubuntu, and it (a) recognized the chip reader, (b) recognized the chip, bringing it up to the laptop, and (c) let me copy the files onto another USB hard drive. So, I don't know about iPods, and I know that I had to go through lots of hoops to get a USB wireless dongle recognized, but Ubuntu may surprise you on what devices it automatically recognizes.
2) I'm not sure how to respond to your plaints of apps "feeling cluttered." On the other hand, the small laptop I mentioned above doesn't have a huge amount of screen space, so everything seems cluttered on it from square one.
3) The issue of no "mp3 support out-of-the-box" is from Ubuntu's management, who has done this to sidestep the various legal issues. It wasn't too difficult to put it in, although it'd be a pain in the butt for "grandma who just wants to hear her tunes."
The other things you raise about Ubuntu, as painful as it is for a sometime Linux zealot to do, I have to at least provisionally agree with. The package manager is, unfortunately, not the most user-friendly for middle-range users (like your aptly-described "13-year-old jessica"). I also have yet to see an internet radio system for Linux that works as well as Winamp on Windows (but I also might not have looked far enough yet).
And, in the final analysis, I have to agree with you that it's ready for "Grandma's E-mail Client and Web Browser" system and for "Harold Sharpstuff's Latest and Greatest" system, but not yet for the vast majority of systems that lie in between these extremes.
Slashdot Mirror
It beat the problems with older armor. Even with a wrench, an armored knight might need some help from oil in order to get his nuts off.
I still hold that Kansas has some of the most archaic, arcane, and anachronistic alcohol laws (hey, at least I liked the alliteration!) in the U.S. Among them:
1) Liquor stores must have a specific green-and-red neon sign that shows in the window during operational hours (Why? I suspect that some neon sign maker must have had a brother-in-law in the legislature...)
2) Liquor stores are the only places that can sell any beer stronger than 3.2% or other form of alcoholic beverage (although they never do complain about cooking sherry or lemon extract in grocery stores).
3) Liquor stores are officially not supposed to be open on Sundays (although they are saying that this is a county-by-county/city-by-city decision now).
Personally, I like to quote from Alan Dean Foster's book The Tar-Aiym Krang, which said "The planet Moth had no drinking laws. Only sober ones."
Which saps? Well, there are a few:
1) The politicians who are going to back Thompson's ideas, because the legislation that they will craft will end up getting tossed into the compost heap by the courts, leaving them looking useless;
2) The court judges who are going to have to listen to Thompson's drivel as he tries to support the bill;
3) The voters of Massachusetts, who are going to wonder, with all of the things that need doing, why their elected officials are politically grandstanding with this nonsense.
Groups 2 and 3 I have sympathy for. Group 1... sorry, I've used up my sympathy supply.
I offer no argument about the name. I offer no argument about the content. The games themselves are "on the edge" - taking risks, going in areas other gaming companies don't go, and so forth. Good for them... and good for computer gaming in general, because if nobody went past the edge, we'd still be choosing between "Space Invaders" versus "Pac Man".
I just think that "The Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition" is going to be seen as hypocritical with their treatment of "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!", and will take a hit to its credibility.
First off, I'm not angry or upset about Columbine Massacre. If I find something to be tasteless / offensive / not my cup of "Hot Coffee" <grin>, then I just don't buy it. Seems simple enough to me, so I'm not interested in "how can you judge it without playing it" arguments.
However, I see the organizers of Slamdance as trying to have their cake and eat it, too. They courted the makers of the Columbine RPG primarily for shock value... and the publicity. Then they found out that some of their sponsors objected, and planned to do their objecting with their sponsorship of Slamdance, and decided to remove the game from the competition, meanwhile loudly blaming "outside pressures" for "muzzling" games.
And that is what bugs me about Slamdance. If they were willing to seem edgy with their inclusion of Columbine Massacre, then they could have accepted the consequences of their sponsorships getting yanked. But they didn't, so they shouldn't.
I disagree with this statement. Given that Baxter and Roberts actually courted this game, I think that their soi-disant "best intentions" were for the best publicity possible for Slamdance. I also think that, once they started getting bad publicity, they decided to pull the plug. In short, it strikes me that Slamdance used the game and the game designer.
Now, having said that, I would like to point out the following:
"Freedom of speech" does not guarantee "popularity of speech." If enough people were put off by the game's material, they have a choice not to buy it. If companies are offended enough to not want to be associated with the game, they have the option to pull their advertising from someone who is putting the two together.
If a governmental entity (Federal, state, or local - take your choice) had come in and said, "STOP! We have placed this game on the 'Games Known To Be Tasteless' list, and demand that you cease at once from doing anything with it!" there would be a hue and cry - and rightly so. That is prior censorship, and that is what the framers of the Bill of Rights wanted to prevent.
Companies and business owners, though, are NOT governmental entities (regardless of how much they might wish to be). They do not have police powers, and do not have armed force backing them up to impose their will. Slamdance could have easily (well, honestly, easily-for-me-to-say) bit the bullet on principle and declared, "Boycott / pressure / threaten what you will, this game is still in the competition!" Instead, the organizers went with a half-rattling "Here it is... oh, wait, I guess if people are going to bitch about it, then we'll take it out."
I have a sneaking respect for the audacity of the creator of Columbine, if not for his taste. Slamdance, though, lost whatever respect I had for it with this whole fiasco.
That's brilliant! Imagine the research papers that could come from the A track:
... and countless others
Where would our civilization be without second class citizens?
How else would we have been able to make some of the steps forward in medicine, were it not for some of the work done on "disposable" people?
How else would we have had such a burgeoning entertainment industry, had it not been for laws that deprived actors and actresses from burial in sacred ground?
Who else can be used for a way to see how far a government can go before the first-class citizens decide that enough is enough?
Of course, sometimes a government can overplay its hand. When people find out that convicted sex offenders are not allowed in public hurricane shelters, but have to report to the local jail (and give 24 hours advance notice, even!), there might be a feeling that things might have gone too far.
But then again, when we're "thinking of the children," we don't have to do a whole lot more thinking, do we?
All of them - just check the database.
All of them - just check the database. And don't tell me you can't!
All of them - just check the database. And don't whine about it being exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. After all, we're protecting our country... or at least all except for the statistically insignificant number who are Muslims... oops, sorry, I meant "potential terrorists."
<IRONY=0%>
Oh, dammit, I forgot the <IRONY=100%> tag again!
You say that as though you are surprised!
Slashdot has had a long and honorable history of putting headlines out that provide more sound and fury than the actual article.
I know this is off-topic, but when I hear people refer to the NRA as overheated and overpoliticized gun owners, I sigh, and think, "They didn't used to be...."
I remember when I was in Boy Scouts during the 1970's and I took the dreaded "Rifle and Shotgun" merit badge.
Back then, the NRA was a gun safety and training organization. They struck everyone as being straight-forward and calm, more interested in making sure that people knew how to prevent gun accidents and how to responsibly own firearms.
Then things changed, and they transformed themselves into a political organization - and now they're either seen as "the safeguard of the American way" or "crazy gun-toting fascists," depending on whose overheated rhetoric was heard last.
Perhaps this should be seen as a warning to other groups - once you enter the political fray, you become a political animal. Or in the words of the Punisher, "The means always screws up the ends."
That remark touches a nerve for me. There was a girl in my elementary school who kept taking my lunch money. Worse yet, she took it from other kids in the school.
However, I was the first one to stand up to her, and tell her that she wasn't going to get MY money, and that I was going to keep it!
So she told me to put my tray back, and turned to the next kid in line.
But I could tell that I'd had some effect from the way she kept looking at me funny for the rest of the year, and the whispering of the other kids told me that I'd made an impression on them as well.
*putting parent hat on as well*
OK, I can see that.
...can anyone here tell me what makes this even remotely (pardon the expression) a GOOD idea?
We have been using technology to bring people closer, but there are some advantages to keeping one's distance.
A popular legend, but not actually based in fact.
Here is a pretty decent discussion of the truth - and some of the hype - about Dvorak vs. qwerty.
I now switch you back to your regularly-scheduled browsing.
Aren't they the party that proposes setting national policy by a daily horoscope? That would make the United States a Cancer...
(Stop that snickering, you in the back!)
During the Korean conflict, the Chinese stated that they were not aggressors. When called on that, the speaker said that "the People's Republic of China, by definition, is incapable of aggression." (I pause briefly for you to collect your thoughts from this non sequitur.)
Perhaps they thought that everyone else might have forgotten that little bit of sophistry....
For as long as I have lived, I have seen some unusual mottoes, but this one takes the cake.
If everything in the article is true, it sounds as though a jury may have a hard time believing that (A) the children were just indulging in high spirits with a light-hearted prank, and (B) no damage was done by it.
This doesn't sound like some sue-happy opportunist whining "everybody's picking on me" - it sounds as though she's had some pretty deliberate, malicious damage done to her reputation. (And, yes, MySpace gets checked by employers and prospective employers... and even if it wasn't, what part of this whole fake website idea seems like it remotely might have been a good idea?)
So, yes, if my kids were involved (I shudder to think of it - I have two), I'd have no choice (legally and ethically) but to shoulder the responsibility, and then in turn see to it that they learned better from this. (How? I don't know yet, but the temptation of combining thumbscrews and Yoko Ono music would probably be there...)
You are over-reacting. Nobody is even remotely suggesting that children require 24/7 oversight.
Oversight is required for children. They do not yet know the rules for society, and the people that they spend the vast majority of their time with (namely, parents) are the best examples and role models that they're likely to get.
Your suggestion of 24/7 oversight seems to suggest that the children could put a fake MySpace site together in a split second, and that is not the case. The fact that they clearly didn't see anything wrong enough with the situation to stop is an indication of failure on the parents' part. Thus, the responsibility is theirs.
If you don't think this is fair, then my advice is that you not have children.
Oh, you silly, simple man - don't you know that this is Slashdot? Where people get their exercise by jumping to conclusions, and then jumping up and down on top of anyone who doesn't support them? <grin>
Now, having said that - I agree with you. We've got Ubuntu loaded on a laptop that otherwise would be a paperweight. It's currently hooked up with a wireless chip, and the sound feeds into our home stereo, so as a result, we can play MP3's, Shoutcast stations, and so forth. (With thanks to the gentle on here who recommended StreamTuner for that last). We don't need an anti-virus on it, we do very minimal web browsing on it, and all told, Ubuntu's been doing quite nicely for us.
Which means, of course, that I am probably going to be the object of scorn, derision, and general flamage as one who sold my geek birthright for a, well, face it, a system that does what I wanted it to do without my having to build it from the ground up.
No, they'd probably just be jealous that they couldn't participate in the Sacrament of the Big Mac.
Now, I don't think tastelessness is criminal. Otherwise, the creators of the HTML "Blink" tag would've been behind bars some time back. I also think that the author's cries of "Nobody understands why I made this game" necessarily makes him an artist.
Therefore, I can only say that if anyone is trying to blame him for the Dawson shooting, they are making a very long and very awkward reach for a suitable scapegoat.
I found the FAQ interesting. I liked the way they set the tenor of the questions, and included such things as "you weren't supposed to say anything about this!" The research seems pretty clear-cut, and the precautions that the researchers took appears to have been well thought out.
I hope that I underestimate the American people on this (including me), because the next tack that will be taken by Diebold will be, "Well, who in their right mind would want to tamper with an election? Calm down, citizens, this is just scaremongering by the right/left/pedestrians..." Once this is followed up with a suggestion that such might be "fomenting a panic designed to cause a breach of the peace," vague threats of arrest for those involved, and nothing changing.
Well, if nothing else, this voter's going to try his hand at absentee balloting this time around. Just in case...
I would respectfully disagree with you on someof the particulars that you raise.
1) I don't have an iPod. I do have an older HP digital camera, using a high-capacity compact flash device. I tried to read it via Windows XP, and it had trouble. I installed the HP software (and, yes, I made sure that I didn't provide the system with my home phone records even after it said it already knew my SSN <grin>), and it still couldn't read the chip. I connected the chip reader to a small laptop we have that runs Ubuntu, and it (a) recognized the chip reader, (b) recognized the chip, bringing it up to the laptop, and (c) let me copy the files onto another USB hard drive. So, I don't know about iPods, and I know that I had to go through lots of hoops to get a USB wireless dongle recognized, but Ubuntu may surprise you on what devices it automatically recognizes.
2) I'm not sure how to respond to your plaints of apps "feeling cluttered." On the other hand, the small laptop I mentioned above doesn't have a huge amount of screen space, so everything seems cluttered on it from square one.
3) The issue of no "mp3 support out-of-the-box" is from Ubuntu's management, who has done this to sidestep the various legal issues. It wasn't too difficult to put it in, although it'd be a pain in the butt for "grandma who just wants to hear her tunes."
The other things you raise about Ubuntu, as painful as it is for a sometime Linux zealot to do, I have to at least provisionally agree with. The package manager is, unfortunately, not the most user-friendly for middle-range users (like your aptly-described "13-year-old jessica"). I also have yet to see an internet radio system for Linux that works as well as Winamp on Windows (but I also might not have looked far enough yet).
And, in the final analysis, I have to agree with you that it's ready for "Grandma's E-mail Client and Web Browser" system and for "Harold Sharpstuff's Latest and Greatest" system, but not yet for the vast majority of systems that lie in between these extremes.