The term is still young, but I'm seeing and hoping for better things from the current administration.
That depends entirely on what you consider "better".
I cringe every time I hear another story of Obama insulting (inadvertantly, I hope) a foreign dignitary or showing obiesance to another head of state.
In the course of a year he, Bush, and Congress grew the national debt to 11 trillion dollars, and it took 100+ years to get that debt up to 9 trillion dollars!
Do you know what happens to people with too much debt? They go bankrupt. Though this is moderated strongly by the government, essentially the creditors get to divy up the person's assets amongst themselves. What do you think will happen when a whole country goes bankrupt? Do you think China is going to say "Aww shucks, well, we lost on that deal?"
I don't understand the "spend your way out of a recession" idea. It's exactly the same as going broke, and then just charging everything to your credit card. You lose your ass doing that, though to be sure you lose it comfortably until the collectors come.
That's all Obama's policies are doing, making the US more comfortable while we wait for the debt collectors to arrive.
I'd take an ass who spends a little too much and tries (misguided though some of his attempts were) to make us safer over the smooth talker who racks up obscene debt to make us more comfortable temporarily. What the country needs is a slap in the face to wake up and return to what made us great, instead all we've gotten for 20 years is coddling. The current generation has been resting on the shoulders of giants, instead of building something even greater for those who come after us. Obama is the epitome of this. Bush at least attempted to make the world a better place.
His point is valid, as solar power is still a very small minority in the production of electricity. I think the parent's point was that we should have nearly free electricity by now, as predicted by "solar innovators" in the past. However, it is encouraging that the price continues to drop and production continues to increase. I'd personally love to use it, but it is still and will continue to be far too expensive for many years to come for someone like me who lives in the upper north.
What I'd really like to see is PV efficiency in the 20-30% range. Then not only would it be viable for home use, but it would mean the solar panel roof of the new Prius could drive the whole car, instead of just the AC.
Honestly, it sounds like you greatly assisted your mis-diagnosis. Perhaps if you had stuck with the first doctor, instead of seeing a different doctor each time, it would have been spotted a full year sooner, hmm?
My paraphrase of doctor visit #2:
"Doctor, I r having that thing again" "Meh, prolly nothin" "Tahts wut u said last time" "Orly? Lets run some tests..."
See, if you see a new doctor each time, you start at the beginning each time. Do a little research, find a decent doctor, and see them more than once about a chronic issue! Good night, it's not that hard. If it's a rare case any doctor will miss it on the first shot, unless you are dying from it (even then they probably will miss it the first time, medicine is hard!).
Seeing new doctors will not help if they are all taking that first shot at it. They will probably miss it too.
Oddly enough the category that did best is also the easiest to copy: PC game sales only dipped 17% compared to the 30% dip in console game sales.
The obvious conclusion of course, is that had it not been for pirating, PC sales would actually be UP 10% and laughing in the face of all those difficult-to-pirate console games and such.
Your number 4 is exactly how performing artists make their money right now.
You know, all those people you see on VH1 and used to see on MTV? Yeah, they might get a dime off of every album sold, if that. In fact, they are often hugely in debt to the recording studios.
Why do you think they tour 8-10 months out of the year? That's how they make money, and they make a lot of it on the road. Enough to cover the ripoff deal they get from the studios, and then some.
The people hurt by massive "pirating" are the companies ripping artists off. Songwriters can be an exception in this specific case, but their royalties are generally small and only a few make it big with a hit.
There's no reason the 300 million dollar blockbuster should go away, that is until everyone and their brother can afford a nice home theater (hint: that won't happen any time soon). Movies are just better in the theater, and people recognize that, and turn out in droves for even mediocre movies. If anything, eliminating copyright will make the whole thing less romantic, and more people would end up saying "screw it" and just pay the $10 to see the movie in the theater.
Heck the new 3d that is popping up all over the place is pretty frickin cool, and you won't be seeing that in a home theater for a while yet.
Downloading movies for most people is a pain, and more expensive than some folks realize. If you've got a 50gb monthly cap for $50 a month, that 4-8gb DVD quality movie just cost you $4-$8. A steep discount from $15-$20, sure, but it isn't free. It's actually much less worth it for me, my cap is 20gb for $70 per month. Yeah, crappy internet for sure, heh.
Also finding quality on a torrent site can be frustrating, plus the fact that it may take you a month to download it if it isn't the most popular movie in the world (for which the studios have already recieved piles of cash), and buying the DVD starts to look more attractive. Just look at the torrent download numbers, while seeing a torrent with 2000-3000 leachers is certainly impressive, it is a pitifully small number compared to the numbers of people going to see that same movie in the theater. In fact, a lot of theaters do that much business in an afternoon. It may seem big, but it really isn't at all.
I know a lot of people who won't touch limewire, either, half the crap on there have had viruses slipped into the install or the crack or whatever, it's opening yourself up to a world of hurt.
In any case, if it were anything more than a small minority of people who download movies instead of going to theaters and/or buying the DVD, studios would not be making hundreds of millions of dollars per blockbuster. On average, they make more money each year than they did the year before. Hell a mediocre movie pulls in $40 million in a weekend, that's 4 million people who went to see the movie, and paid $10 for the privilege! These next few years might finally see a steady decrease in profits for studios, but that is not because of copiers. It's because the economy is shit right now.
I'd say a few thousand people downloading a movie over a weekend vs several million going to see it in theaters would constitute a small minority, wouldn't you?
Nah, there would be a lot of incentive, economically, for the countries to negotiate translation among each other.
That's actually the way to snake TLD ownership away from the US - you just make an equivalent TLD in each country. Then a new International Level Domain would be necessary, which could be run by an international body.
That's the way to do it, rather than say "Hey cool, ok, now give us your servers..."
Note that it would take more than one country doing this to make it work. Otherwise the US is likely to just ignore them and say "sucks to be you guys". If all of Europe did it though, well that has a significant impact and would prompt the US to join in too.
Seriously, you guys used to be a lot more sly than you are now.
The fact of the matter is that we already have small-scale local DNS overrides. It's just that most of us would prefer them to stay small-scale - we think it's a very good thing to have a global common reference.
In other words, the system works great now, we just want to see if we can fuck things up?
Brilliant.
Nobody has yet to offer a reason grounded in reality for removing US control over the DNS other than "We don't think they should have it."
Well why not? It's one area we've done frickin stellar with internationally, why take it from us? Because you don't like our politics or something? That's pretty hypocritical. Sounds like one of the arguments for -not- relinquishing control, because then the internet will be subject to idiotic global politics.
The net is already sloppy, but I see the problem as no more than an extention of what we have.
I.e. country X sets up its own DNS, then negotiates translation with the US. Idealy the two would share lists and not copy over one another, however it would be even easier to add a.us or whatever to the end of the DNS name to designate the version in the opposite country. Then website owners would need to be aware, and post links and advertise their website with both their internal and external addresses.
It's another layer of management, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal, really.
The US has never claimed to be "dictator of the world", has never acted as such, and asside from a few very small engagements (which usually went poorly) has only ever interceded militarily in international matters when US interests/security were at stake. It's always "Why wouldn't the US help us?" followed by "Why won't the US just butt out?"
If the other countries would do things for themselves instead of riding our coattails, we wouldn't be the dominant country in the world. One country, at least, that isn't doing that also happens to be rising fast and is in position to displace the US as top dog in another few decades, maybe sooner.
Things change, quit whining about not being #1 any more, it's old news. Europe had a good run, but a few thousand years ago it was small potatoes. Before that was a brief stint where the Mongolians were in charge, and before that Messopotamia ran the show.
If you don't like the way the US runs the internet (again, never heard a complaint about actually running it!), then your country can set up its own DNS body, set up its own standards, and if it wants to negotiate translation with the US system, fine, that can be worked out.
Quit whining about it and take responsibility for your own country's actions. The only way the US could ever be a "dictator of the world" is if the rest of the world lets us. We built our internet, we designed our systems, that you guys use it is great, but you have no right to demand it from us.
If it's yours, defend it, keep it, and maintain it. If it's not, leave it the hell alone ya whiny bastards.
I hate to break it to you, but actual writers, artists, and design professionals also expect and did expect their work to be monetized.
How else do you expect them to make money?
There is nothing wrong with it, but you are right that when marketing teams start getting involved, things start to get both a lot better in terms of quality, and a lot worse in terms of subject matter and motive behind the content itself.
There's a difference between earning a decent living and trying to hit the marketing jackpot to become the "next big thing". Both of them require "monetizing" art and culture, but one we consider acceptable and the other not so much.
I've only ever seen a handfull of websites use frames well.
Most of them suck, badly.
I that has as much to do with their falling from favor as anything. It's usually cleaner and more useful to use CSS and a common layout across many pages, rather than use just as many pages and surround everything with frames. Plus, that way, all your content gets crawled properly, users can bookmark individual pages without having to find your homepage should they wish to browse more of your content, etc.
Too many people wanted the shiny new web technology, and it just lost all credibility as a useful tool when their implimentations turned out horribly.
As far as desktops go, no, linux isn't there yet. You can pop in a CD and turn it on and have everything working for a lot of systems, but there are still a lot that that doesn't work on. There were a relatively small percentage of machines that had serious issues with Vista, but it was a lot larger than a normal XP install and it blew up in MS's face. Linux distros tend to have smaller, more persistant issues at a much higher percentage than even the Vista issues. Two ongoing examples are wireless support and sound support. It's great if it works, but it can be hell to try to fix it. Normal users often have a hard time figuring out how to connect to a wireless network if it doesn't do it automatically, forget trying to troubleshoot linux wireless problems. Also, UI is critical for normal users. They need to be able to do -everything- in the GUI. Can't do that with Linux yet.
Where normal users use Linux is those times they don't know they are using linux. Like those linux-based wireless routers and such. For desktops, the reason normal users don't use linux is because it is a lot harder than using windows in general. Until that changes significantly, most people will stay away from Linux.
If the new mozilla tool makes the stuff greasemonkey does more seemless and less cumbersome, then people will use it. A lot of non-technical people manage greasemonkey as it is (they don't write the scripts, obviously), and FF addons are used extensively by non-powerusers.
Anything that makes it easier to use broadens the potential user base. If it's easier for powerusers, it's easier for non-powerusers as well.
Stereotypes are natural, societal recognitions of patterns. They are certainly not perfect, but they exist because they are more often right than wrong.
To see where the comic book fan/manager stereotypes came from, go to a comic book store. To see where the D&D stereotypes come from, go hang out with D&D players for a while. They fit.
The stereotypes go way beyond that, too. Politicians use them, they call them "demographics". That's your "soccer mom", or "Nascar dad". You say those things, and an image imediately pops into your head of who they are talking about, because you know those types of people!
People can get too broad with stereotypes, but in those cases it's usually a protection mechanism. For example, young black men who wear very baggy clothes. Plenty are harmless, good people, but enough of them are hoodlums, thugs, or wannabe thugs that there is a strong stereotype against young black men who wear baggy clothes. Combine that with the fact that a great many of those who fit the stereotype are racist, and white people especially tend to stear clear.
There are plenty of stereotypes on the flip side of that coin that are just as bad, but the fact is stereotypes exist because people who like or do certain things tend to group together, and people who group together tend to act the same. Thus, a stereotype is born.
You've never been around small children for extended periods of time, have you?
Children by nature are extremely selfish. Parents have to work hard to get little kids to share. Seriously, try working at a daycare or something with kids from 2-4 years old. They tend to start getting better and more civil around 4 years old. Definitely a lot easier to reason with at that age, you simply can't reason with a 2-year old.
In my experience (I volunteered once a week at a daycare for about 6 years), those children who do share well at an early age have either been actively taught that by their parents from day 1, or they have a timid or mousey personality. In the case of timid children, they tend to have things demanded from them and taken rather than actively sharing with the other children.
Kids may play reasonably well together, but they certainly don't share well naturally. It's an unnatural thing that must be taught.
I'm not really sure where I fall on this, so I'm gonna stick with things as they are now, though they are certainly skewed against sexuality more than violence.
The literary question is a case-by-case question. Unless the judge said "No comic book can have literary value, therefore..." then all the ruling means is that -these- comic books don't have literary value. If they were straight up porn mangas depicting little children, I'd probably agree with him. But I don't know what mangas they were, I tend to stay away from stuff that looks like little kids. Some of the other stuff can be funny though, hehe. In any case it does ease the decisions against similar mangas in the future. That's just what caselaw does.
You do realise that muslim communities are exploading throughout the world, right? Look at how careful you have to be in Europe if you are going to poke fun at anything Islam related. You can make fun of Christians and others till the cows come home, put post a comic that shows a representation of Allah and you're lible to spark a holy civil war.
Not saying all or even a lot of muslims are terrorists or anything, but modern terrorists are muslim. That should say a little about the belief system - though not everything, other religions have had extremist problems in the past. It seems to be a very agressive and often violent religion if taken literally. Contrast with Christianity, Islam's closest cousin, if you are a literalist you can't be much more than a pacifist. It takes ignoring parts and doing some "interperative reading" to use it as a basis for things like The Crusades. It doesn't seem to take as much work as Islam, but to be fair all it takes for some people is "In the name of God!!" or "In the name of Allah!"
For your neocon cowboy/farmer (fwiw I don't think I've ever heard of a neocon cowboy or farmer, those guys tend to be old school, and if not they are probably liberal - yay handouts!) example, it would be more accurate if the neocons were attempting to infiltrate Iran and spread their neocon cowboy/farmer way of life, to convert the Iranians to neocon cowboy/farmers.
Look at it -that- way and tell me the neocon cowboys/farmers back home don't care about how the Iranian government may move to further their agenda.
Also meant to mention the simple fact that our court system moves slowly and carefuly. You can request a speedy trial and it must be granted (also in the bill of rights), but most don't, so it lumbers.
New laws can take years before they are tested, with the trickiest subjects having to go all the way to the SCOTUS.
Something related to the 5th amendment (it is the right to not incriminate yourself, the right to not speak, among others), however, would probably get tossed at the lowest level. In fact, laws like that tend not to get written, so all we end up with are tricky ones.
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The term is still young, but I'm seeing and hoping for better things from the current administration.
That depends entirely on what you consider "better".
I cringe every time I hear another story of Obama insulting (inadvertantly, I hope) a foreign dignitary or showing obiesance to another head of state.
In the course of a year he, Bush, and Congress grew the national debt to 11 trillion dollars, and it took 100+ years to get that debt up to 9 trillion dollars!
Do you know what happens to people with too much debt? They go bankrupt. Though this is moderated strongly by the government, essentially the creditors get to divy up the person's assets amongst themselves. What do you think will happen when a whole country goes bankrupt? Do you think China is going to say "Aww shucks, well, we lost on that deal?"
I don't understand the "spend your way out of a recession" idea. It's exactly the same as going broke, and then just charging everything to your credit card. You lose your ass doing that, though to be sure you lose it comfortably until the collectors come.
That's all Obama's policies are doing, making the US more comfortable while we wait for the debt collectors to arrive.
I'd take an ass who spends a little too much and tries (misguided though some of his attempts were) to make us safer over the smooth talker who racks up obscene debt to make us more comfortable temporarily. What the country needs is a slap in the face to wake up and return to what made us great, instead all we've gotten for 20 years is coddling. The current generation has been resting on the shoulders of giants, instead of building something even greater for those who come after us. Obama is the epitome of this. Bush at least attempted to make the world a better place.
His point is valid, as solar power is still a very small minority in the production of electricity. I think the parent's point was that we should have nearly free electricity by now, as predicted by "solar innovators" in the past. However, it is encouraging that the price continues to drop and production continues to increase. I'd personally love to use it, but it is still and will continue to be far too expensive for many years to come for someone like me who lives in the upper north.
What I'd really like to see is PV efficiency in the 20-30% range. Then not only would it be viable for home use, but it would mean the solar panel roof of the new Prius could drive the whole car, instead of just the AC.
I'm not sure who or what you are parodying, but I like it.
You should check back once in a while, that 0 is now a 5.
Seems like it works to me. :)
Honestly, it sounds like you greatly assisted your mis-diagnosis. Perhaps if you had stuck with the first doctor, instead of seeing a different doctor each time, it would have been spotted a full year sooner, hmm?
My paraphrase of doctor visit #2:
"Doctor, I r having that thing again" "Meh, prolly nothin" "Tahts wut u said last time" "Orly? Lets run some tests..."
See, if you see a new doctor each time, you start at the beginning each time. Do a little research, find a decent doctor, and see them more than once about a chronic issue! Good night, it's not that hard. If it's a rare case any doctor will miss it on the first shot, unless you are dying from it (even then they probably will miss it the first time, medicine is hard!).
Seeing new doctors will not help if they are all taking that first shot at it. They will probably miss it too.
Oddly enough the category that did best is also the easiest to copy: PC game sales only dipped 17% compared to the 30% dip in console game sales.
The obvious conclusion of course, is that had it not been for pirating, PC sales would actually be UP 10% and laughing in the face of all those difficult-to-pirate console games and such.
Right?
AmIright?
No?
Oh. ;)
Your number 4 is exactly how performing artists make their money right now.
You know, all those people you see on VH1 and used to see on MTV? Yeah, they might get a dime off of every album sold, if that. In fact, they are often hugely in debt to the recording studios.
Why do you think they tour 8-10 months out of the year? That's how they make money, and they make a lot of it on the road. Enough to cover the ripoff deal they get from the studios, and then some.
The people hurt by massive "pirating" are the companies ripping artists off. Songwriters can be an exception in this specific case, but their royalties are generally small and only a few make it big with a hit.
There's no reason the 300 million dollar blockbuster should go away, that is until everyone and their brother can afford a nice home theater (hint: that won't happen any time soon). Movies are just better in the theater, and people recognize that, and turn out in droves for even mediocre movies. If anything, eliminating copyright will make the whole thing less romantic, and more people would end up saying "screw it" and just pay the $10 to see the movie in the theater.
Heck the new 3d that is popping up all over the place is pretty frickin cool, and you won't be seeing that in a home theater for a while yet.
I'd claim that.
Downloading movies for most people is a pain, and more expensive than some folks realize. If you've got a 50gb monthly cap for $50 a month, that 4-8gb DVD quality movie just cost you $4-$8. A steep discount from $15-$20, sure, but it isn't free. It's actually much less worth it for me, my cap is 20gb for $70 per month. Yeah, crappy internet for sure, heh.
Also finding quality on a torrent site can be frustrating, plus the fact that it may take you a month to download it if it isn't the most popular movie in the world (for which the studios have already recieved piles of cash), and buying the DVD starts to look more attractive. Just look at the torrent download numbers, while seeing a torrent with 2000-3000 leachers is certainly impressive, it is a pitifully small number compared to the numbers of people going to see that same movie in the theater. In fact, a lot of theaters do that much business in an afternoon. It may seem big, but it really isn't at all.
I know a lot of people who won't touch limewire, either, half the crap on there have had viruses slipped into the install or the crack or whatever, it's opening yourself up to a world of hurt.
In any case, if it were anything more than a small minority of people who download movies instead of going to theaters and/or buying the DVD, studios would not be making hundreds of millions of dollars per blockbuster. On average, they make more money each year than they did the year before. Hell a mediocre movie pulls in $40 million in a weekend, that's 4 million people who went to see the movie, and paid $10 for the privilege! These next few years might finally see a steady decrease in profits for studios, but that is not because of copiers. It's because the economy is shit right now.
I'd say a few thousand people downloading a movie over a weekend vs several million going to see it in theaters would constitute a small minority, wouldn't you?
Why should an international body control Italian powerstations?
That's stupid.
Same with an international body controling US DNS servers/standards.
Nah, there would be a lot of incentive, economically, for the countries to negotiate translation among each other.
That's actually the way to snake TLD ownership away from the US - you just make an equivalent TLD in each country. Then a new International Level Domain would be necessary, which could be run by an international body.
That's the way to do it, rather than say "Hey cool, ok, now give us your servers..."
Note that it would take more than one country doing this to make it work. Otherwise the US is likely to just ignore them and say "sucks to be you guys". If all of Europe did it though, well that has a significant impact and would prompt the US to join in too.
Seriously, you guys used to be a lot more sly than you are now.
The fact of the matter is that we already have small-scale local DNS overrides. It's just that most of us would prefer them to stay small-scale - we think it's a very good thing to have a global common reference.
In other words, the system works great now, we just want to see if we can fuck things up?
Brilliant.
Nobody has yet to offer a reason grounded in reality for removing US control over the DNS other than "We don't think they should have it."
Well why not? It's one area we've done frickin stellar with internationally, why take it from us? Because you don't like our politics or something? That's pretty hypocritical. Sounds like one of the arguments for -not- relinquishing control, because then the internet will be subject to idiotic global politics.
The net is already sloppy, but I see the problem as no more than an extention of what we have.
I.e. country X sets up its own DNS, then negotiates translation with the US. Idealy the two would share lists and not copy over one another, however it would be even easier to add a .us or whatever to the end of the DNS name to designate the version in the opposite country. Then website owners would need to be aware, and post links and advertise their website with both their internal and external addresses.
It's another layer of management, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal, really.
The US has never claimed to be "dictator of the world", has never acted as such, and asside from a few very small engagements (which usually went poorly) has only ever interceded militarily in international matters when US interests/security were at stake. It's always "Why wouldn't the US help us?" followed by "Why won't the US just butt out?"
If the other countries would do things for themselves instead of riding our coattails, we wouldn't be the dominant country in the world. One country, at least, that isn't doing that also happens to be rising fast and is in position to displace the US as top dog in another few decades, maybe sooner.
Things change, quit whining about not being #1 any more, it's old news. Europe had a good run, but a few thousand years ago it was small potatoes. Before that was a brief stint where the Mongolians were in charge, and before that Messopotamia ran the show.
If you don't like the way the US runs the internet (again, never heard a complaint about actually running it!), then your country can set up its own DNS body, set up its own standards, and if it wants to negotiate translation with the US system, fine, that can be worked out.
Quit whining about it and take responsibility for your own country's actions. The only way the US could ever be a "dictator of the world" is if the rest of the world lets us. We built our internet, we designed our systems, that you guys use it is great, but you have no right to demand it from us.
If it's yours, defend it, keep it, and maintain it. If it's not, leave it the hell alone ya whiny bastards.
I hate to break it to you, but actual writers, artists, and design professionals also expect and did expect their work to be monetized.
How else do you expect them to make money?
There is nothing wrong with it, but you are right that when marketing teams start getting involved, things start to get both a lot better in terms of quality, and a lot worse in terms of subject matter and motive behind the content itself.
There's a difference between earning a decent living and trying to hit the marketing jackpot to become the "next big thing". Both of them require "monetizing" art and culture, but one we consider acceptable and the other not so much.
I've only ever seen a handfull of websites use frames well.
Most of them suck, badly.
I that has as much to do with their falling from favor as anything. It's usually cleaner and more useful to use CSS and a common layout across many pages, rather than use just as many pages and surround everything with frames. Plus, that way, all your content gets crawled properly, users can bookmark individual pages without having to find your homepage should they wish to browse more of your content, etc.
Too many people wanted the shiny new web technology, and it just lost all credibility as a useful tool when their implimentations turned out horribly.
Yes and no, for Linux.
As far as desktops go, no, linux isn't there yet. You can pop in a CD and turn it on and have everything working for a lot of systems, but there are still a lot that that doesn't work on. There were a relatively small percentage of machines that had serious issues with Vista, but it was a lot larger than a normal XP install and it blew up in MS's face. Linux distros tend to have smaller, more persistant issues at a much higher percentage than even the Vista issues. Two ongoing examples are wireless support and sound support. It's great if it works, but it can be hell to try to fix it. Normal users often have a hard time figuring out how to connect to a wireless network if it doesn't do it automatically, forget trying to troubleshoot linux wireless problems. Also, UI is critical for normal users. They need to be able to do -everything- in the GUI. Can't do that with Linux yet.
Where normal users use Linux is those times they don't know they are using linux. Like those linux-based wireless routers and such. For desktops, the reason normal users don't use linux is because it is a lot harder than using windows in general. Until that changes significantly, most people will stay away from Linux.
If the new mozilla tool makes the stuff greasemonkey does more seemless and less cumbersome, then people will use it. A lot of non-technical people manage greasemonkey as it is (they don't write the scripts, obviously), and FF addons are used extensively by non-powerusers.
Anything that makes it easier to use broadens the potential user base. If it's easier for powerusers, it's easier for non-powerusers as well.
Captain Splended (673276) to spun (1352):
Now get off my lawn.
Never thought I'd see the day.
Stereotypes are natural, societal recognitions of patterns. They are certainly not perfect, but they exist because they are more often right than wrong.
To see where the comic book fan/manager stereotypes came from, go to a comic book store. To see where the D&D stereotypes come from, go hang out with D&D players for a while. They fit.
The stereotypes go way beyond that, too. Politicians use them, they call them "demographics". That's your "soccer mom", or "Nascar dad". You say those things, and an image imediately pops into your head of who they are talking about, because you know those types of people!
People can get too broad with stereotypes, but in those cases it's usually a protection mechanism. For example, young black men who wear very baggy clothes. Plenty are harmless, good people, but enough of them are hoodlums, thugs, or wannabe thugs that there is a strong stereotype against young black men who wear baggy clothes. Combine that with the fact that a great many of those who fit the stereotype are racist, and white people especially tend to stear clear.
There are plenty of stereotypes on the flip side of that coin that are just as bad, but the fact is stereotypes exist because people who like or do certain things tend to group together, and people who group together tend to act the same. Thus, a stereotype is born.
You've never been around small children for extended periods of time, have you?
Children by nature are extremely selfish. Parents have to work hard to get little kids to share. Seriously, try working at a daycare or something with kids from 2-4 years old. They tend to start getting better and more civil around 4 years old. Definitely a lot easier to reason with at that age, you simply can't reason with a 2-year old.
In my experience (I volunteered once a week at a daycare for about 6 years), those children who do share well at an early age have either been actively taught that by their parents from day 1, or they have a timid or mousey personality. In the case of timid children, they tend to have things demanded from them and taken rather than actively sharing with the other children.
Kids may play reasonably well together, but they certainly don't share well naturally. It's an unnatural thing that must be taught.
Yeah, well, they didn't convince me!
I got this one rock near my house, I've got a sledge hammer and a chisel, just in case. You know what I'm talking about. Personal defense.
Things just aren't the way they used to be.
Yes, such a number is truly a marvel, he's so old here Comic Book Guy seems like a new geek fad to him!
I will assume he was being existential with the comment, for only wisdom can come from such a low user number.
Now, to ponder the meaning of his words...
Why does it have to be all or nothing?
I'm not really sure where I fall on this, so I'm gonna stick with things as they are now, though they are certainly skewed against sexuality more than violence.
The literary question is a case-by-case question. Unless the judge said "No comic book can have literary value, therefore..." then all the ruling means is that -these- comic books don't have literary value. If they were straight up porn mangas depicting little children, I'd probably agree with him. But I don't know what mangas they were, I tend to stay away from stuff that looks like little kids. Some of the other stuff can be funny though, hehe. In any case it does ease the decisions against similar mangas in the future. That's just what caselaw does.
You do realise that muslim communities are exploading throughout the world, right? Look at how careful you have to be in Europe if you are going to poke fun at anything Islam related. You can make fun of Christians and others till the cows come home, put post a comic that shows a representation of Allah and you're lible to spark a holy civil war.
Not saying all or even a lot of muslims are terrorists or anything, but modern terrorists are muslim. That should say a little about the belief system - though not everything, other religions have had extremist problems in the past. It seems to be a very agressive and often violent religion if taken literally. Contrast with Christianity, Islam's closest cousin, if you are a literalist you can't be much more than a pacifist. It takes ignoring parts and doing some "interperative reading" to use it as a basis for things like The Crusades. It doesn't seem to take as much work as Islam, but to be fair all it takes for some people is "In the name of God!!" or "In the name of Allah!"
For your neocon cowboy/farmer (fwiw I don't think I've ever heard of a neocon cowboy or farmer, those guys tend to be old school, and if not they are probably liberal - yay handouts!) example, it would be more accurate if the neocons were attempting to infiltrate Iran and spread their neocon cowboy/farmer way of life, to convert the Iranians to neocon cowboy/farmers.
Look at it -that- way and tell me the neocon cowboys/farmers back home don't care about how the Iranian government may move to further their agenda.
Also meant to mention the simple fact that our court system moves slowly and carefuly. You can request a speedy trial and it must be granted (also in the bill of rights), but most don't, so it lumbers.
New laws can take years before they are tested, with the trickiest subjects having to go all the way to the SCOTUS.
Something related to the 5th amendment (it is the right to not incriminate yourself, the right to not speak, among others), however, would probably get tossed at the lowest level. In fact, laws like that tend not to get written, so all we end up with are tricky ones.