You're right. What I did meant to say was, "...even back since...". The AOL era was just when people were starting to get personal home connections and our culture was starting to accommodate the internet more. I didn't mean that script kiddies started arising in that era.
Script kiddies have been around since the AOL days. Hell, I myself got a juvenile laugh out of punters (remember those? God, the AIM clients were so terrible back then) and other "progs".
Mostly I imagine the vast majority of this stuff nowadays is myspace-related. Probably kids trying to break into someone else's myspace page because they're little drama whores like that.
Having a touch screen of my own, when I first heard what the problem was like I immediately knew it was a touch screen issue.
It's possible that the machines were purposefully calibrated to make "Obama" votes be registered by the machine as "McCain. HOWEVER, this would also mean that the field for selecting McCain would be shifted as well away from what the on-screen display would indicate--perhaps even, depending on how the display was set up, off the actual display area, making it possible that McCain could have been impossible to select via touch screen!
This is not an effective way to rig the machines, and it's very unlikely it was done on purpose.
If censoring certain speech would make society more "stable", "sociable", and "low stress", would you accept that?
What about a police state of sorts?
What if, if it were determined, that having everyone's job picked out for them by the government and all wealth was shared equally, and freedom of speech was put under tight controls actually was THE best way to go about fulfilling these goals? Would you STILL support it? Granted, most people would be happy, but a few would very much not be.
There's a difference between the "common good" and helping people out, and having other people demand it of you, though; a lot of the left doesn't seem to understand that.
A problem of society in general is that people aren't giving enough and use their money to buy petty things, it's true. But I'm very uncomfortable with others telling me what I "owe" them.
Truthfully, no one is really against the common good, except maybe the true antisocial person, which is probably more apathetic to it than evil, and are really few and far between. Many people just hate the idea of OTHERS telling them what they need to supply to the "common good". Social consensus does not equal morality.
I'm not sure why your complaints are directed at libertarians (or liberals/phony libertarians? Your signature is confusing me!) All the libertarians--ALL OF THEM--scoff at the excuses you gave. Some libertarians are unfortunately the Social Darwinist type, as well, and think the homeless should "just get jobs" and don't understand the roots of homelessness. Many libertarians I know are also a bit dogmatic on issues such as free will and don't want to admit that people are machines and simply put some people just don't function as well as others and may need psychological help to fix whatever is contributing to their homelessness.
Not all libertarians are like that--libertarianism is, at its core, a political philosophy, like socialism or anarchism or similar, and generally it's rather consistent although I think many libertarians are rather dogmatic, almost utopian (although they are not true utopians and don't think of themselves as utopian) in nature towards how things will turn out. Quite strange, as they are often bent on economics and talk about (rightly, I feel) subjective value and things are often a system of tradeoffs.
All ideology aside, fruit fly research, like most scientific research, is valuable no matter where the funding comes from. No, I'm not making any argument on where it should come from, or that the ends justify the means. But many people do not have a great understanding of science, particularly evolution and comparative biology, and want these programs cut because their intuition tells them search on cow farts or fruit flies is useless and provides little help to humans. Not that there isn't useless research, but you often have to understand the field on some level to understand why the research is important and its implications.
This leads me back to Americans and science. Americans don't understand science. Just ask Joe Schmoe to explain evolution, you'll get a lot of stuttering and probably some mixed-up talk of fish growing legs or something. Which is quite sad, because all they really need is the basics of natural selection and individual variation to explain how evolution works. The fact that people don't understand evolution is exactly why things like fruit fly research is mocked, by the way--they don't understand that despite being vastly different creatures, there are often many things that can be extrapolated from vastly different species to humans or other creatures, despite hearing stories about fish being genetically engineered to glow in the dark from firefly genes, or such!
The true libertarians, not the Bill Maher type or the "South Park" type, are against all government funding based on the belief that democracy is inherently immoral and unjustified and, from that, taxes are generally tantamount to stealing, because libertarianism is based NOT on "the greater good" but on the individual being the base unit of morality and that no amount of social consensus justifies infringing on the individual's right to autonomy; they generally reject the utilitarian arguments (although, in my experience, tend to employ them when they feel the arguments are in their favor and tend to deny the existence of any downsides of a libertarian system) in favor of "natural rights" either in its original sense or as a personal/ethical/political code. Libertarianism does not mean "generally Republican on economic issues, generally liberal on social issues" although the term is starting to evolve more into that direction and judging by Bob Barr's Libertarian nomination, it appears the Libertarian Party has gone that route as well.
It's within the realm of possibility that they do sleep but some automatic functioning of wing-beating still occurs. Kind of like sleep-walking, except sleep-flying.
..but a story alone can't carry a game. Look at all the other MMOs and their quests. OK, so much of the story in MMOs is more background than anything else, but generally the quests, the actions you need to complete the quests, are rather dull and uninspiring (which is why I like that in WAR you can level up completely via PVP). Kill beavers until they drop a single beaver testicle until you have 10. Fight a spell caster that's AI amounts to casting the same spell on you over and over again. Go to some stupid place in the environment where you need to right click the object. And so on. Questing in MMOs by itself, IMO, is very, very boring. The real question is, will the gameplay be fresh and exciting enough to justify the expansiveness and the story line, and if so, how well will it interact in PVP?
Additionally, endgame: someone might not care to play the other classes, even if the story and game experience is different. They have a top-level character, they don't want to just give him up. Will there be good endgame? No good endgame can kill an MMO, just look at Age of Conan.
Ah, the old "teach both sides" canard. Great, great. Too bad you can have an infinite number of sides, and hey, who is to say that my explanation doesn't deserve equal time?
Great! Free copies of Spore for everyone with a wacky view on how species came about! Whooo-hooo! That's what free speech is all about! I personally believe that species come about by mutating in nuclear waste instead of natural selection; I'm eagerly awaiting my copy! Though I might not install it with the DRM attached...
Quit trying to karma whore by turning this into a free speech issue. That trick isn't working for the creationists and it's not going to work for you. Quite simply, Behe doesn't deserve a "fair and balanced" treatment because his views, under scrutiny, are not science and should not be treated as if they are a viable alternative view.
In seriousness, however, the reason it's not ID to Behe is probably because Jesus Christ himself isn't directly each and every creature in Spore.
In true seriousness, why would sending something to Behe have to do with "fair"? That implies Behe's side deserves fair representation. In my books, cranks do not deserve representation until they have actual science to back their claims up.
Ah, and you don't understand evolution, either, because evolution has nothing to do with a hierarchy of progress. It's ridiculous to claim that we are "more evolved than honeybees"; it shows that you don't understand evolution.
Evolution has no stages like "tribe" or "civilization". These are parts of human creation. Perhaps intelligent life forms may undergo similar stages. Perhaps they'll form differently based upon their behavioral characteristics. Either way, though, evolution has nothing to do with advancement or progress.
Hopefully "international governance" will make that sort of icky speech illegal. I can be dragged before an international court and stuck in an international prison for my rightist, inflammatory hate speech.
I agree in spirit that everyone should have an education, and that people should (voluntarily) make that happen, but I do not agree with the idea that it is a "right" in the sense that people have a right not to be murdered or so on. It's obvious where my political leanings are; however, I just think that these things people really should have just shouldn't be within the same scope as the entity that enforces the laws. I don't think the means justify the ends, even though I really and truly do agree with the ends. And before you accuse me of being some "make everything be business-related" person, no, I don't think profit has to or should be the driving force behind everything.
Philosophical differences aside, yes, I never said that there wouldn't be benefits. There would be. The risks are too great, however, and I already generally made my case against these giant governing bodies.
Also, let's think for a moment. What is one group, however large or small, wanted to rule themselves and break away from the monolithic government--the reason can be good or bad, it doesn't matter, because in the end it's the big government that decides and naturally it would always view it as a "bad" reason... does this big government come in to stop them? If so, then I'd say it pretty much violates any principle of autonomy and is probable sign of mob oppression on the few (or, at least, a very likely indication that it can easily exist in such a system), and if not, then one world government is impossible/wouldn't exist.
And I say, even listening to the majority is not a good thing. It's not inconceivable to imagine a situation, past, present, or future where the masses, through their own stupidity or bigotry, want to oppress harmless people for something stupid, perhaps "practicing witchcraft" in the past or something.
Nothing really works "well", not a democracy, not a republic, not a monarchy or dictatorship, highly unlikely even anarchy. Everything is a system of tradeoffs. This is why we cannot have one government and why we need separate countries with their own armies: at least there's a possibility of having somewhere to escape. Imagine if blacks on the underground railroad fleeing southern slavery had no Canada to escape to, for example. The world is a mess and putting complete faith in an organization to represent or help YOU is just a bad idea.
Well, if you sympathize the idea of a single world government or view it as possibly positive, just say so! No need to hide behind any ad hominems or guilt-by-associations!
Gee, if people knew for certainty that only the really heinous things would be enforced, and that nothing shady or anathema to people's rights would happen, then sure, nobody would oppose it.
But this is fantasy land, utopian idealism. Saying "See, well, it's not supposed to work like that..." doesn't matter. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and all that. Just because it is *supposed* to work great and follow a certain protocol does not always mean it will. Hell, my country, the USA, does not even follow its own constitution.
There's always risks and tradeoffs involved. You could, for example, talk about the virtues of philosopher kings all day but until you show us one man who can truly be trusted to remain an enlightened, virtuous leader, I'll reject that based on what we know happens when unaccountable leaders are put into power.
Sometimes, you just have to accept that shit, bad shit, happens in the world, and no god or government will be able to save you, and if they have the power to, then instead of worrying about other people you'll have to worry about them instead. It sucks but sometimes the only realistic option you have is to watch your own back and take precautions. I got my wallet stolen out of my car (oops) last spring and if cameras and police officers were on every street corner the culprit could have been caught, but I'm not advocating cameras and policemen everywhere for a very good reason.
No, don't write me off as a NEW WORLD ORDER!!!! guy.
Interpol is dangerously close to a one-world-government type deal. If you're into "global democracy" and the entire world under one flag, then an international police on the internet is probably no big deal to you.
But if you're afraid of big, monolithic governments as much as I am, then you'll be deathly afraid of any international police body, as Internet Police isn't just a bad idea, it's also a very dangerous slippery slope to be treading on.
Still not convinced it's not a good idea? A lot of nations have insufferable politically-correct speech laws. Germany, for example; there they censor politically undesirable viewpoints (yes, Nazis, but if you believe that freedom of speech of the individual transcends whatever the masses may think...) and in Australia, they censor games like GTAIV and other 'socially undesirable' expression.
And maybe some people aren't bothered by that. Some people think, "hey, if some majority accepted that, then tough luck for the minority, democracy prevails!" but I am just not one of them and I'll never be comfortable with governments treading on individual freedom whether a single ruler or the many stepping on them.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. What I did meant to say was, "...even back since...". The AOL era was just when people were starting to get personal home connections and our culture was starting to accommodate the internet more. I didn't mean that script kiddies started arising in that era.
Script kiddies have been around since the AOL days. Hell, I myself got a juvenile laugh out of punters (remember those? God, the AIM clients were so terrible back then) and other "progs".
Mostly I imagine the vast majority of this stuff nowadays is myspace-related. Probably kids trying to break into someone else's myspace page because they're little drama whores like that.
Ah, but you forget, MMOs bring in the monthly fees and are thus VERY profitable.
Having a touch screen of my own, when I first heard what the problem was like I immediately knew it was a touch screen issue.
It's possible that the machines were purposefully calibrated to make "Obama" votes be registered by the machine as "McCain. HOWEVER, this would also mean that the field for selecting McCain would be shifted as well away from what the on-screen display would indicate--perhaps even, depending on how the display was set up, off the actual display area, making it possible that McCain could have been impossible to select via touch screen!
This is not an effective way to rig the machines, and it's very unlikely it was done on purpose.
If censoring certain speech would make society more "stable", "sociable", and "low stress", would you accept that?
What about a police state of sorts?
What if, if it were determined, that having everyone's job picked out for them by the government and all wealth was shared equally, and freedom of speech was put under tight controls actually was THE best way to go about fulfilling these goals? Would you STILL support it? Granted, most people would be happy, but a few would very much not be.
There's a difference between the "common good" and helping people out, and having other people demand it of you, though; a lot of the left doesn't seem to understand that.
A problem of society in general is that people aren't giving enough and use their money to buy petty things, it's true. But I'm very uncomfortable with others telling me what I "owe" them.
Truthfully, no one is really against the common good, except maybe the true antisocial person, which is probably more apathetic to it than evil, and are really few and far between. Many people just hate the idea of OTHERS telling them what they need to supply to the "common good". Social consensus does not equal morality.
I'm not sure why your complaints are directed at libertarians (or liberals/phony libertarians? Your signature is confusing me!) All the libertarians--ALL OF THEM--scoff at the excuses you gave. Some libertarians are unfortunately the Social Darwinist type, as well, and think the homeless should "just get jobs" and don't understand the roots of homelessness. Many libertarians I know are also a bit dogmatic on issues such as free will and don't want to admit that people are machines and simply put some people just don't function as well as others and may need psychological help to fix whatever is contributing to their homelessness.
Not all libertarians are like that--libertarianism is, at its core, a political philosophy, like socialism or anarchism or similar, and generally it's rather consistent although I think many libertarians are rather dogmatic, almost utopian (although they are not true utopians and don't think of themselves as utopian) in nature towards how things will turn out. Quite strange, as they are often bent on economics and talk about (rightly, I feel) subjective value and things are often a system of tradeoffs.
All ideology aside, fruit fly research, like most scientific research, is valuable no matter where the funding comes from. No, I'm not making any argument on where it should come from, or that the ends justify the means. But many people do not have a great understanding of science, particularly evolution and comparative biology, and want these programs cut because their intuition tells them search on cow farts or fruit flies is useless and provides little help to humans. Not that there isn't useless research, but you often have to understand the field on some level to understand why the research is important and its implications.
This leads me back to Americans and science. Americans don't understand science. Just ask Joe Schmoe to explain evolution, you'll get a lot of stuttering and probably some mixed-up talk of fish growing legs or something. Which is quite sad, because all they really need is the basics of natural selection and individual variation to explain how evolution works. The fact that people don't understand evolution is exactly why things like fruit fly research is mocked, by the way--they don't understand that despite being vastly different creatures, there are often many things that can be extrapolated from vastly different species to humans or other creatures, despite hearing stories about fish being genetically engineered to glow in the dark from firefly genes, or such!
The true libertarians, not the Bill Maher type or the "South Park" type, are against all government funding based on the belief that democracy is inherently immoral and unjustified and, from that, taxes are generally tantamount to stealing, because libertarianism is based NOT on "the greater good" but on the individual being the base unit of morality and that no amount of social consensus justifies infringing on the individual's right to autonomy; they generally reject the utilitarian arguments (although, in my experience, tend to employ them when they feel the arguments are in their favor and tend to deny the existence of any downsides of a libertarian system) in favor of "natural rights" either in its original sense or as a personal/ethical/political code. Libertarianism does not mean "generally Republican on economic issues, generally liberal on social issues" although the term is starting to evolve more into that direction and judging by Bob Barr's Libertarian nomination, it appears the Libertarian Party has gone that route as well.
It's within the realm of possibility that they do sleep but some automatic functioning of wing-beating still occurs. Kind of like sleep-walking, except sleep-flying.
..but a story alone can't carry a game. Look at all the other MMOs and their quests. OK, so much of the story in MMOs is more background than anything else, but generally the quests, the actions you need to complete the quests, are rather dull and uninspiring (which is why I like that in WAR you can level up completely via PVP). Kill beavers until they drop a single beaver testicle until you have 10. Fight a spell caster that's AI amounts to casting the same spell on you over and over again. Go to some stupid place in the environment where you need to right click the object. And so on. Questing in MMOs by itself, IMO, is very, very boring. The real question is, will the gameplay be fresh and exciting enough to justify the expansiveness and the story line, and if so, how well will it interact in PVP?
Additionally, endgame: someone might not care to play the other classes, even if the story and game experience is different. They have a top-level character, they don't want to just give him up. Will there be good endgame? No good endgame can kill an MMO, just look at Age of Conan.
Ah, the old "teach both sides" canard. Great, great. Too bad you can have an infinite number of sides, and hey, who is to say that my explanation doesn't deserve equal time?
Great! Free copies of Spore for everyone with a wacky view on how species came about! Whooo-hooo! That's what free speech is all about! I personally believe that species come about by mutating in nuclear waste instead of natural selection; I'm eagerly awaiting my copy! Though I might not install it with the DRM attached...
Quit trying to karma whore by turning this into a free speech issue. That trick isn't working for the creationists and it's not going to work for you. Quite simply, Behe doesn't deserve a "fair and balanced" treatment because his views, under scrutiny, are not science and should not be treated as if they are a viable alternative view.
In seriousness, however, the reason it's not ID to Behe is probably because Jesus Christ himself isn't directly each and every creature in Spore.
In true seriousness, why would sending something to Behe have to do with "fair"? That implies Behe's side deserves fair representation. In my books, cranks do not deserve representation until they have actual science to back their claims up.
Ah, and you don't understand evolution, either, because evolution has nothing to do with a hierarchy of progress. It's ridiculous to claim that we are "more evolved than honeybees"; it shows that you don't understand evolution.
Evolution has no stages like "tribe" or "civilization". These are parts of human creation. Perhaps intelligent life forms may undergo similar stages. Perhaps they'll form differently based upon their behavioral characteristics. Either way, though, evolution has nothing to do with advancement or progress.
Hole in the Wall education project?
Nothing more I can say. That's pretty damn gay. Pretty damn gay...
Hopefully "international governance" will make that sort of icky speech illegal. I can be dragged before an international court and stuck in an international prison for my rightist, inflammatory hate speech.
I agree in spirit that everyone should have an education, and that people should (voluntarily) make that happen, but I do not agree with the idea that it is a "right" in the sense that people have a right not to be murdered or so on. It's obvious where my political leanings are; however, I just think that these things people really should have just shouldn't be within the same scope as the entity that enforces the laws. I don't think the means justify the ends, even though I really and truly do agree with the ends. And before you accuse me of being some "make everything be business-related" person, no, I don't think profit has to or should be the driving force behind everything.
Philosophical differences aside, yes, I never said that there wouldn't be benefits. There would be. The risks are too great, however, and I already generally made my case against these giant governing bodies.
Also, let's think for a moment. What is one group, however large or small, wanted to rule themselves and break away from the monolithic government--the reason can be good or bad, it doesn't matter, because in the end it's the big government that decides and naturally it would always view it as a "bad" reason... does this big government come in to stop them? If so, then I'd say it pretty much violates any principle of autonomy and is probable sign of mob oppression on the few (or, at least, a very likely indication that it can easily exist in such a system), and if not, then one world government is impossible/wouldn't exist.
Nevermind, wrong person.
And you say, "garbage in, garbage out". Since I was responding to your post, I'd suppose that it was your post that was the "garbage in?"
Do you have anything besides ad hominems?
And I say, even listening to the majority is not a good thing. It's not inconceivable to imagine a situation, past, present, or future where the masses, through their own stupidity or bigotry, want to oppress harmless people for something stupid, perhaps "practicing witchcraft" in the past or something.
Nothing really works "well", not a democracy, not a republic, not a monarchy or dictatorship, highly unlikely even anarchy. Everything is a system of tradeoffs. This is why we cannot have one government and why we need separate countries with their own armies: at least there's a possibility of having somewhere to escape. Imagine if blacks on the underground railroad fleeing southern slavery had no Canada to escape to, for example. The world is a mess and putting complete faith in an organization to represent or help YOU is just a bad idea.
Well, if you sympathize the idea of a single world government or view it as possibly positive, just say so! No need to hide behind any ad hominems or guilt-by-associations!
Gee, if people knew for certainty that only the really heinous things would be enforced, and that nothing shady or anathema to people's rights would happen, then sure, nobody would oppose it.
But this is fantasy land, utopian idealism. Saying "See, well, it's not supposed to work like that..." doesn't matter. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and all that. Just because it is *supposed* to work great and follow a certain protocol does not always mean it will. Hell, my country, the USA, does not even follow its own constitution.
There's always risks and tradeoffs involved. You could, for example, talk about the virtues of philosopher kings all day but until you show us one man who can truly be trusted to remain an enlightened, virtuous leader, I'll reject that based on what we know happens when unaccountable leaders are put into power.
Sometimes, you just have to accept that shit, bad shit, happens in the world, and no god or government will be able to save you, and if they have the power to, then instead of worrying about other people you'll have to worry about them instead. It sucks but sometimes the only realistic option you have is to watch your own back and take precautions. I got my wallet stolen out of my car (oops) last spring and if cameras and police officers were on every street corner the culprit could have been caught, but I'm not advocating cameras and policemen everywhere for a very good reason.
Replace "Interpol" with "InternetPol there, I mistyped.
No, don't write me off as a NEW WORLD ORDER!!!! guy.
Interpol is dangerously close to a one-world-government type deal. If you're into "global democracy" and the entire world under one flag, then an international police on the internet is probably no big deal to you.
But if you're afraid of big, monolithic governments as much as I am, then you'll be deathly afraid of any international police body, as Internet Police isn't just a bad idea, it's also a very dangerous slippery slope to be treading on.
Still not convinced it's not a good idea? A lot of nations have insufferable politically-correct speech laws. Germany, for example; there they censor politically undesirable viewpoints (yes, Nazis, but if you believe that freedom of speech of the individual transcends whatever the masses may think...) and in Australia, they censor games like GTAIV and other 'socially undesirable' expression.
And maybe some people aren't bothered by that. Some people think, "hey, if some majority accepted that, then tough luck for the minority, democracy prevails!" but I am just not one of them and I'll never be comfortable with governments treading on individual freedom whether a single ruler or the many stepping on them.
Fuck! Just when I was undoing her bra strap, things suddenly went Rick Astley! Fuck!