It's still a bad situation for Cisco. I remember a similar story about them several months ago that happened in California. When a company builds a reputation for dishonesty and ripping off their customers, other potential customers will stop even considering them as an option. Even if this type of news doesn't get the same type of attention as the latest high-profile murder case, Cisco's competitors are paying attention and this will become a part of their sales pitch.
It's not illegal to be an unethical crook.
Crook - someone who has committed a crime or has been legally convicted of a crime
Your point may be valid but your choice of words is not.
The script for most films could probably be written by, eh, a script.
If that's the case, what are you doing making posts on/.? Start hacking some Python and become a billionaire. Or maybe you should watch something other than Michael Bay films -- a script won't replicate the talent of Charlie Kaufman or William Goldman.
When it comes to the IP issue, it's neither taxation nor redistribution. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks aren't necessarily detrimental to the economy; I would argue that they all have value. It's the implementation that's all screwy in this country. Patents being applied to software, the copyright window constantly being expanded and nothing entering public domain anymore, the NFL claiming your can't disseminate information about their sporting events without approval, people trademarking stuff like 'Space Marine' and suing anyone who's used the phrase commercially. While the members of this IP caucus are wrong to glorify 'IP' the way they do and portray it as an absolute good, you're just as wrong to demonize it and portray it as an absolute bad.
This post makes little to no sense. It reminds me of TimeCube. Way to sprinkle in the correct phrases to get modded up. Maybe you had a point, but the only thing I got out of it is that people will mod up incoherent posts if they can catch just a single phrase or word that aligns with their worldview. Let's test out this theory:
FUCK COPYRIGHT!
Just so you know, I'm not accusing you of being an idiot or anything. I just think you failed to clarify and support your point.
I won't try to argue against your anecdote, though I'd like to point out that your experience is a single instance and I've heard other anecdotes that are contradictory. Different situations are different.
My major qualm was the AC's accusation of xenophobia where xenophobia wasn't present. It sickens me when people try to use political correctness as a trump card in a debate when it's really just a red herring.
So are you saying that you don't accept this argument, or are you just hanging out on a geek niche site to enlighten us to the vast truths unknown to the geek?
I'm really curious as to why you're hanging out on a 'news for nerds' site (and done so for years) if you don't consider yourself a geek.
As to your point:
It is not extortion if Nikon considers the Microsoft patents valid and a useful addition to their portfolio.
Imagine if Syd Field could patent the three-act structure. He would have owned Hollywood for the entirety of the patent's duration.
Woody Allen, with Annie Hall, could have patented the "romantic comedy." Maybe that would have been a good thing, as it would have saved us from all the horrible Annie Hall knock-offs that the 80s and 90s gave us (and continue to this day, but again, the patent would have expired).
Wow! Using your income as a tool for protest. You're so fucking cool! As if anyone gives a shit what you buy with your meager salary.
Wow! You're so fucking cool! Using/. posts to mock those who take a moral stand! As if anyone gives a shit about your apathy and lack of concern for matters of right and wrong.
People don't use their income as a tool for protest because they think they're going to change things. They do so because financially supporting unethical actions is unethical itself, whether the effect is great or small. Go back under your bridge.
Extortion doesn't necessarily have to be a big player threatening a small player. How does the age or size of Nikon change the fact that this is extortion? It doesn't change a thing, scale is irrelevant.
The patent system is broken, I'll agree with you there, but this is different from what any other company does regarding the patent system. This isn't exploiting a broken system, it's extortion.
If you want to defend H1B1 workers and dirt-cheap Indian code monkeys, perhaps you should make a logical argument.
I don't think the guy you're responding to had the most well thought out argument but your response did nothing to refute it. You accuse him of xenophobia when it's obvious that he wasn't talking about foreigners in general, he was talking about specific foreigner workers that are hired by American firms that are looking to cut costs. That doesn't mean that all foreigners are incompetent -- the assumption is that the most competent foreigners don't have to accept lower than deserved wages to undercut American workers. There's a reason the foreigners who undercut American jobs are willing to accept less money -- they're not worth as much.
emulate on an emulator. On your smartphone. Free and better.
And not allowed in the classroom settings that these things are mainly used. Too easy to switch to notes/google/more powerful apps.
It does highlight a major problem with our education system: the reason TI-84s cost so much is because they're required in so many high school math classes. As the summary states, they're antiquated and overpriced. Of course, the cost is negligible to middle class and well off families, so it's just one more factor that holds back those in poverty. Let's face it, there are a lot of bad parents out there who, given the choice between putting their child in a class that requires a $100 calculator and sticking them in Math-4-Dummies, they'll choose the latter.
It's a similar to the well known problem with textbooks.
In many ways this reminds me of the absurdly high price of a version of Microsoft Office. It could be sold at a profit at a fraction of the price it's currently at, but people 'need it' despite the fact that the functionality isn't unique or costly. Microsoft's lock-in is formats that don't play nice, Texas Instruments' lock-in is textbooks they've built relationships with and teachers who can't think outside the box.
Hopefully one day Sal Khan kills textbooks as we know them today and FOSS/ODF just flat out kills MS Office.
I was about to answer all of your questions, just to be snarky, but I'll just say this: There's an answer to each one, and the only answer that's extremely dated is the Sega one.
I think the main reason is you're talking about international products. The Wii, specifically, I remember Nintendo going with the name because it worked in any language. Asians would have a hard time with "Revolution," or they'd have to translate it and it would lack international consistency like 'Wii.' Not to mention that you can't sell a product called "Revolution" in China.
Likewise, a number is easier than branding the product Blue, Bleu, Azul, Blu, etc.
They also don't have to worry about trademarks and the like for code names.
I don't think you're understanding the analysis of the data. I did take in account that lead affects children much more than adults -- my argument was that there would be the same 15-20 year lag before the effects could be reflected in crime statistics. The thing is, once that 15-20 year time is accounted for, one would assume that crime would gradually fall as lead removable was a gradual process. Legalized abortion, however, was immediate. And the dip in the crime rate was sharp, and immediate, in that 15-20 years after Roe v. Wade.
I too question the validity of most large statistical analyses, especially when one is attempting to draw conclusions about society. But Levitt and Donohue are extremely thorough in their research and they do analyze many of your concerns. At this point, to address most of your retorts, I would just be quoting their research.
You'll notice that, as you should have concluded from my post above, that it's not just a matter of being poor. It's not just a matter of being unwanted. It's when those two problems overlap that a child becomes destined for a life of crime. Wealthy people have less abortions because 1) they can afford birth control/contraceptives 2) they tend to be more intelligent. Police corruption and selective enforcement is an issue, but we're talking about things like murder and assault. I don't think I need to pull up any statistics for you to believe that murder and assault occur on a much smaller scale among the wealthy than the poor.
Remember, the argument isn't that legalized abortion is the only factor responsible in reducing the crime rate. The argument is that legalized abortion was responsible for the massive dip in the crime rate during the 90s. Some of the ideas you mentioned can be dismissed off-hand. The 'war on drugs' was the cause of much violence violent crime and has been deemed a failure by anyone with half a brain, the winding down of the 60s cultural revolution can be dismissed because (and I probably should have specified) we're mainly looking at violent crime, not just crime (although both decreased, violent crime was deemed the more important statistic). It's questionable whether ADHD is a real mental disorder, and I haven't seen any indication that those diagnosed with either ADHD or autism commit violent crimes at a higher rate than anyone else.
The real question is what can we do to bring down the crime rate further, assuming we still feel it is unacceptably high.
It will remain an unanswered question if we reject the best explanations for crime with the most evidence because they're not politically correct or, in your case, because we make the claim that these things are unknowable. The problem with statistics is that they are often used without taking enough variables into account -- such as the lead/crime correlation. When they are used comprehensively, as in Levitt and Donohue's research, they can be enlightening.
I'm not disagreeing with the fact that exposure to lead does terrible things to one's brain. I just have yet to see evidence that it has a causal relationship with the overall crime rate. Levitt's research concerning abortion is extremely thorough and convincing. It certainly convinced me.
When it comes to lead and the 'article' (quotations b/c it's barely 100 words) cited, the only statistical factors taken into account are lead in gasoline, lead in people, and crime. While I think the correlation between lead in gasoline and lead in people is definitely a case of causality for obvious reasons, I don't see how that extends to crime.
Notice how levels of lead in people and levels of lead in gasoline go down together. If they were to overlay the crime rate on that graph it would certainly weaken the assertion -- during the entirety of that graph crime escalated and continued to do so until the mid/late 90s, when all of a sudden it dropped. What happened? Less unwanted children were born - when the post Roe vs. Wade children grew of age, that's when the crime rate plummeted. It was a sharp and direct fall in crime whereas the levels of lead in people diminished slowly.
That's not to say that removing lead from our society didn't have hugely positive effects. It certainly did. But to suggest that the out of control crime of the 80s and 90s was the result of lead is just absurd. The vast majority of these crimes were committed by people born into poverty, unwanted by their parents, and after Roe vs. Wade significantly less people were born into poverty, and even less people were born unwanted by the parents. You may be able to find individual cases here and there where highly elevated lead levels in a child caused extreme mental impairment which led to them becoming criminals later in life, but I sincerely doubt this is what drove most people to crime.
Remember, before lead became highly controlled, aristocrats lived in houses with the same type of lead paint poor people did. But the poor, throughout history, regardless of whether there was lead or not, have committed more crimes than those well off. The poor are much more likely to have abortions. Being poor is the number one distinguishing factor that most criminals have in common.
Also, keep in mind that Levitt's research used Romania as a control group. This cannot be stressed enough. Even if there is evidence to support the lead theory, there is no way to create a control group (ethically) to validate that evidence. Levitt lucked into Romania banning abortions about the same time America legalized them. Maybe if you can convince the Chinese to give you crime statistics around factors that expose their workers to lead and crime statics around factories that don't expose their workers to lead (assuming they are similar socio-economically), then you might be able to build a case. I don't see that happening.
I highly recommend you read Levitt's work. Not only is it eye opening, it's also extremely interesting.
The difference is that the gameplay mechanics of a MMO are designed by psychologists specifically to be addicting. It's not physically possible to play sports for the amount of time one can play a video game. A person can go on a 24 hour Halo binge but they cannot go on a 24 hour soccer binge. I'm not arguing against risk, I'm arguing against doing something detrimental with the majority of one's free time. I drink alcohol, I get drunk. But I'll still argue against getting drunk every day, just like I'll argue against playing video games every day.
Also, you're missing one of the key points of my original post: Sports physically improve a person. They make exercise fun. They also have other benefits, some of which you mentioned, such as teamwork, socialization, and if you're really good at them a free education and maybe even a career.
There's a reason 'professional video gaming' never took off the way gamers hoped. People enjoy watching sports -- it's been this way at least since Rome (I could dig up some earlier examples but that's the easiest). Those who enjoy video games as spectators are a very small niche (and it's just weird if the game isn't strategy-driven, like Starcraft; I can understand the Korean obsession there, I can't understand why someone would enjoy watching someone else play an FPS).
I say that because there's little evidence to support the lead theory aside from a correlation that abortions also share. The difference is, the abortion theory is backed up by much more statistical evidence and even a control group (Romania banned abortions about the same time the U.S. legalized them -- crime in Romania skyrocketed about 15-20 years later and crime in the U.S. plummeted). The linked article explains this, which is why it has everything to do with the topic at hand. The research was done by Steven Levitt and published in a paper. He also wrote about it in the book Freakonomics. The documentary the poster above me mentions is based off this book.
My criticism of the original poster was that he didn't cite Levitt or Donohue, not that he didn't elaborate enough.
The video games/violence debate is extremely flawed from both angles. In this regard it reminds me of the nature/nurture arguments -- whenever someone takes a side one way or the other I'm convinced they're wrong. The problem with the 'video games cause violence' argument is that people are free to make choices of their own. The problem with the 'video games don't cause violence' argument is that the choices people make, especially among children, are influenced by environmental factors.
I'm critical of video gaming as a lifestyle. I have no problem with them as an occasional diversion, but playing for hours on end is like running a screensaver on your computer -- it's keeps things active enough to stay on, but nothing useful is happening. I've seen children who act violently, mimicking video games/tv/movies/etc., but that's not what really concerns me. What concerns me is that the children who play lots of video games have an extremely adverse reaction to any suggestion that they should read, do something constructive, or exercise. All too often these 'gamers' are confused for nerds (or geeks or whatever word you choose to use). They are not. They're morons and they'll remain morons as long as they spend the majority of their free time on XBox Live or the Playstation Network.
That's not to say I think video games are a scourge to society. They're no different than TV in this regard. The problem is parents who allow their children to plug into these diversions from actual life on an almost permanent basis. Many of my friends have children. The ones who limit video game/tv time and only offer it as a reward for doing constructive things have well adjusted children who are bright. The ones who let their kids zombify themselves in front of the boob tube have maladjusted morons for children who think an example of fine art is a Michael Bay film.
When people claim that video games cause violence they're oversimplifying the issue -- however I can't disagree that children who are raised by video games moreso than their parents will be more prone to becoming violent adults than those who aren't. When people dismiss the idea that 'video games cause violence' that's not really what they're objecting to -- they're objecting to the very true assertion that playing video games extensively has a negative impact on an individual's life.
Sorry, this excuse just doesn't fly with me. If the company he's supposed to be in charge of is doing things like suing competitors without his permission or knowledge, then he's a failure as a CEO.
Jobs was still alive when the litigation started. . . if you had even read the first paragraph of the article you would know that (or if you had better reading comprehension skills, as your UID indicates you had a/. account when the lawsuit started and it was covered almost daily here for months).
Cook may not have agreed with initiating the lawsuit, but once it was started it's likely he saw going through with it as the best strategic option. The damage had already been done, the best he could hope for was to win. Kind of like the Iraq war. It was a stupid idea, but once we toppled their government there was no turning back.
Until you need to send a document to someone important, and you have to be sure it won't look "funny" when they open it up with Word.
Unless you're collaborating, PDF has been the proper way to do this since the 90s. You're correct that issues could be present, but your example is a poor one. LibreOffice can save in Word's format -- if you save it as.doc rather than.docx you'll almost never have a problem opening it in Word.
I'll throw you a bone: The problem is when someone sends you an ooxml file and you open it in LibreOffice (so much for that 'open' part), or when you have to deal with spreadsheets (Calc doesn't compare with Excel and there are many compatibility problems between the two).
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It's still a bad situation for Cisco. I remember a similar story about them several months ago that happened in California. When a company builds a reputation for dishonesty and ripping off their customers, other potential customers will stop even considering them as an option. Even if this type of news doesn't get the same type of attention as the latest high-profile murder case, Cisco's competitors are paying attention and this will become a part of their sales pitch.
It's not illegal to be an unethical crook.
Crook - someone who has committed a crime or has been legally convicted of a crime
Your point may be valid but your choice of words is not.
You should care about the state of infrastructure. If your bridge collapses, it will fall on your head!
The script for most films could probably be written by, eh, a script.
If that's the case, what are you doing making posts on /.? Start hacking some Python and become a billionaire. Or maybe you should watch something other than Michael Bay films -- a script won't replicate the talent of Charlie Kaufman or William Goldman.
When it comes to the IP issue, it's neither taxation nor redistribution. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks aren't necessarily detrimental to the economy; I would argue that they all have value. It's the implementation that's all screwy in this country. Patents being applied to software, the copyright window constantly being expanded and nothing entering public domain anymore, the NFL claiming your can't disseminate information about their sporting events without approval, people trademarking stuff like 'Space Marine' and suing anyone who's used the phrase commercially. While the members of this IP caucus are wrong to glorify 'IP' the way they do and portray it as an absolute good, you're just as wrong to demonize it and portray it as an absolute bad.
This post makes little to no sense. It reminds me of TimeCube. Way to sprinkle in the correct phrases to get modded up. Maybe you had a point, but the only thing I got out of it is that people will mod up incoherent posts if they can catch just a single phrase or word that aligns with their worldview. Let's test out this theory:
FUCK COPYRIGHT!
Just so you know, I'm not accusing you of being an idiot or anything. I just think you failed to clarify and support your point.
I won't try to argue against your anecdote, though I'd like to point out that your experience is a single instance and I've heard other anecdotes that are contradictory. Different situations are different.
My major qualm was the AC's accusation of xenophobia where xenophobia wasn't present. It sickens me when people try to use political correctness as a trump card in a debate when it's really just a red herring.
This is the argument the geek cannot accept.
So are you saying that you don't accept this argument, or are you just hanging out on a geek niche site to enlighten us to the vast truths unknown to the geek?
I'm really curious as to why you're hanging out on a 'news for nerds' site (and done so for years) if you don't consider yourself a geek.
As to your point:
It is not extortion if Nikon considers the Microsoft patents valid and a useful addition to their portfolio.
Exactly. This is extortion.
Imagine if Syd Field could patent the three-act structure. He would have owned Hollywood for the entirety of the patent's duration.
Woody Allen, with Annie Hall, could have patented the "romantic comedy." Maybe that would have been a good thing, as it would have saved us from all the horrible Annie Hall knock-offs that the 80s and 90s gave us (and continue to this day, but again, the patent would have expired).
Of course, if Hollywood could patent story ideas, Disney would have patented 'anthropomorphic animated animals' almost a century ago, and patents would extend indefinitely because the U.S. Congress feels the need to protect Mickey Mouse.
If Microsoft manages to do to patents what Disney did to copyright, then the world is screwed.
Wow! Using your income as a tool for protest. You're so fucking cool! As if anyone gives a shit what you buy with your meager salary.
Wow! You're so fucking cool! Using /. posts to mock those who take a moral stand! As if anyone gives a shit about your apathy and lack of concern for matters of right and wrong.
People don't use their income as a tool for protest because they think they're going to change things. They do so because financially supporting unethical actions is unethical itself, whether the effect is great or small. Go back under your bridge.
Extortion doesn't necessarily have to be a big player threatening a small player. How does the age or size of Nikon change the fact that this is extortion? It doesn't change a thing, scale is irrelevant.
The patent system is broken, I'll agree with you there, but this is different from what any other company does regarding the patent system. This isn't exploiting a broken system, it's extortion.
If you want to defend H1B1 workers and dirt-cheap Indian code monkeys, perhaps you should make a logical argument.
I don't think the guy you're responding to had the most well thought out argument but your response did nothing to refute it. You accuse him of xenophobia when it's obvious that he wasn't talking about foreigners in general, he was talking about specific foreigner workers that are hired by American firms that are looking to cut costs. That doesn't mean that all foreigners are incompetent -- the assumption is that the most competent foreigners don't have to accept lower than deserved wages to undercut American workers. There's a reason the foreigners who undercut American jobs are willing to accept less money -- they're not worth as much.
Shame on the four mods who upvoted your post.
Azure - bright blue in color, like a cloudless sky
emulate on an emulator. On your smartphone. Free and better.
And not allowed in the classroom settings that these things are mainly used. Too easy to switch to notes/google/more powerful apps.
It does highlight a major problem with our education system: the reason TI-84s cost so much is because they're required in so many high school math classes. As the summary states, they're antiquated and overpriced. Of course, the cost is negligible to middle class and well off families, so it's just one more factor that holds back those in poverty. Let's face it, there are a lot of bad parents out there who, given the choice between putting their child in a class that requires a $100 calculator and sticking them in Math-4-Dummies, they'll choose the latter.
It's a similar to the well known problem with textbooks.
In many ways this reminds me of the absurdly high price of a version of Microsoft Office. It could be sold at a profit at a fraction of the price it's currently at, but people 'need it' despite the fact that the functionality isn't unique or costly. Microsoft's lock-in is formats that don't play nice, Texas Instruments' lock-in is textbooks they've built relationships with and teachers who can't think outside the box.
Hopefully one day Sal Khan kills textbooks as we know them today and FOSS/ODF just flat out kills MS Office.
I was about to answer all of your questions, just to be snarky, but I'll just say this: There's an answer to each one, and the only answer that's extremely dated is the Sega one.
I think the main reason is you're talking about international products. The Wii, specifically, I remember Nintendo going with the name because it worked in any language. Asians would have a hard time with "Revolution," or they'd have to translate it and it would lack international consistency like 'Wii.' Not to mention that you can't sell a product called "Revolution" in China.
Likewise, a number is easier than branding the product Blue, Bleu, Azul, Blu, etc.
They also don't have to worry about trademarks and the like for code names.
I don't think you're understanding the analysis of the data. I did take in account that lead affects children much more than adults -- my argument was that there would be the same 15-20 year lag before the effects could be reflected in crime statistics. The thing is, once that 15-20 year time is accounted for, one would assume that crime would gradually fall as lead removable was a gradual process. Legalized abortion, however, was immediate. And the dip in the crime rate was sharp, and immediate, in that 15-20 years after Roe v. Wade.
I too question the validity of most large statistical analyses, especially when one is attempting to draw conclusions about society. But Levitt and Donohue are extremely thorough in their research and they do analyze many of your concerns. At this point, to address most of your retorts, I would just be quoting their research.
Here is the full paper, you should find it interesting.
You'll notice that, as you should have concluded from my post above, that it's not just a matter of being poor. It's not just a matter of being unwanted. It's when those two problems overlap that a child becomes destined for a life of crime. Wealthy people have less abortions because 1) they can afford birth control/contraceptives 2) they tend to be more intelligent. Police corruption and selective enforcement is an issue, but we're talking about things like murder and assault. I don't think I need to pull up any statistics for you to believe that murder and assault occur on a much smaller scale among the wealthy than the poor.
Remember, the argument isn't that legalized abortion is the only factor responsible in reducing the crime rate. The argument is that legalized abortion was responsible for the massive dip in the crime rate during the 90s. Some of the ideas you mentioned can be dismissed off-hand. The 'war on drugs' was the cause of much violence violent crime and has been deemed a failure by anyone with half a brain, the winding down of the 60s cultural revolution can be dismissed because (and I probably should have specified) we're mainly looking at violent crime, not just crime (although both decreased, violent crime was deemed the more important statistic). It's questionable whether ADHD is a real mental disorder, and I haven't seen any indication that those diagnosed with either ADHD or autism commit violent crimes at a higher rate than anyone else.
The real question is what can we do to bring down the crime rate further, assuming we still feel it is unacceptably high.
It will remain an unanswered question if we reject the best explanations for crime with the most evidence because they're not politically correct or, in your case, because we make the claim that these things are unknowable. The problem with statistics is that they are often used without taking enough variables into account -- such as the lead/crime correlation. When they are used comprehensively, as in Levitt and Donohue's research, they can be enlightening.
I'm not disagreeing with the fact that exposure to lead does terrible things to one's brain. I just have yet to see evidence that it has a causal relationship with the overall crime rate. Levitt's research concerning abortion is extremely thorough and convincing. It certainly convinced me.
When it comes to lead and the 'article' (quotations b/c it's barely 100 words) cited, the only statistical factors taken into account are lead in gasoline, lead in people, and crime. While I think the correlation between lead in gasoline and lead in people is definitely a case of causality for obvious reasons, I don't see how that extends to crime.
Notice how levels of lead in people and levels of lead in gasoline go down together. If they were to overlay the crime rate on that graph it would certainly weaken the assertion -- during the entirety of that graph crime escalated and continued to do so until the mid/late 90s, when all of a sudden it dropped. What happened? Less unwanted children were born - when the post Roe vs. Wade children grew of age, that's when the crime rate plummeted. It was a sharp and direct fall in crime whereas the levels of lead in people diminished slowly.
That's not to say that removing lead from our society didn't have hugely positive effects. It certainly did. But to suggest that the out of control crime of the 80s and 90s was the result of lead is just absurd. The vast majority of these crimes were committed by people born into poverty, unwanted by their parents, and after Roe vs. Wade significantly less people were born into poverty, and even less people were born unwanted by the parents. You may be able to find individual cases here and there where highly elevated lead levels in a child caused extreme mental impairment which led to them becoming criminals later in life, but I sincerely doubt this is what drove most people to crime.
Remember, before lead became highly controlled, aristocrats lived in houses with the same type of lead paint poor people did. But the poor, throughout history, regardless of whether there was lead or not, have committed more crimes than those well off. The poor are much more likely to have abortions. Being poor is the number one distinguishing factor that most criminals have in common.
Also, keep in mind that Levitt's research used Romania as a control group. This cannot be stressed enough. Even if there is evidence to support the lead theory, there is no way to create a control group (ethically) to validate that evidence. Levitt lucked into Romania banning abortions about the same time America legalized them. Maybe if you can convince the Chinese to give you crime statistics around factors that expose their workers to lead and crime statics around factories that don't expose their workers to lead (assuming they are similar socio-economically), then you might be able to build a case. I don't see that happening.
I highly recommend you read Levitt's work. Not only is it eye opening, it's also extremely interesting.
I've been to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Been there, done that.
The difference is that the gameplay mechanics of a MMO are designed by psychologists specifically to be addicting. It's not physically possible to play sports for the amount of time one can play a video game. A person can go on a 24 hour Halo binge but they cannot go on a 24 hour soccer binge. I'm not arguing against risk, I'm arguing against doing something detrimental with the majority of one's free time. I drink alcohol, I get drunk. But I'll still argue against getting drunk every day, just like I'll argue against playing video games every day.
Also, you're missing one of the key points of my original post: Sports physically improve a person. They make exercise fun. They also have other benefits, some of which you mentioned, such as teamwork, socialization, and if you're really good at them a free education and maybe even a career.
There's a reason 'professional video gaming' never took off the way gamers hoped. People enjoy watching sports -- it's been this way at least since Rome (I could dig up some earlier examples but that's the easiest). Those who enjoy video games as spectators are a very small niche (and it's just weird if the game isn't strategy-driven, like Starcraft; I can understand the Korean obsession there, I can't understand why someone would enjoy watching someone else play an FPS).
I say that because there's little evidence to support the lead theory aside from a correlation that abortions also share. The difference is, the abortion theory is backed up by much more statistical evidence and even a control group (Romania banned abortions about the same time the U.S. legalized them -- crime in Romania skyrocketed about 15-20 years later and crime in the U.S. plummeted). The linked article explains this, which is why it has everything to do with the topic at hand. The research was done by Steven Levitt and published in a paper. He also wrote about it in the book Freakonomics. The documentary the poster above me mentions is based off this book.
My criticism of the original poster was that he didn't cite Levitt or Donohue, not that he didn't elaborate enough.
The video games/violence debate is extremely flawed from both angles. In this regard it reminds me of the nature/nurture arguments -- whenever someone takes a side one way or the other I'm convinced they're wrong. The problem with the 'video games cause violence' argument is that people are free to make choices of their own. The problem with the 'video games don't cause violence' argument is that the choices people make, especially among children, are influenced by environmental factors.
I'm critical of video gaming as a lifestyle. I have no problem with them as an occasional diversion, but playing for hours on end is like running a screensaver on your computer -- it's keeps things active enough to stay on, but nothing useful is happening. I've seen children who act violently, mimicking video games/tv/movies/etc., but that's not what really concerns me. What concerns me is that the children who play lots of video games have an extremely adverse reaction to any suggestion that they should read, do something constructive, or exercise. All too often these 'gamers' are confused for nerds (or geeks or whatever word you choose to use). They are not. They're morons and they'll remain morons as long as they spend the majority of their free time on XBox Live or the Playstation Network.
That's not to say I think video games are a scourge to society. They're no different than TV in this regard. The problem is parents who allow their children to plug into these diversions from actual life on an almost permanent basis. Many of my friends have children. The ones who limit video game/tv time and only offer it as a reward for doing constructive things have well adjusted children who are bright. The ones who let their kids zombify themselves in front of the boob tube have maladjusted morons for children who think an example of fine art is a Michael Bay film.
When people claim that video games cause violence they're oversimplifying the issue -- however I can't disagree that children who are raised by video games moreso than their parents will be more prone to becoming violent adults than those who aren't. When people dismiss the idea that 'video games cause violence' that's not really what they're objecting to -- they're objecting to the very true assertion that playing video games extensively has a negative impact on an individual's life.
It's abortions and stronger morals that have allowed this reduction in violence.
This is much more likely than the lead theory, but you should include some evidence to back it up
There is always a way to end a conflict quickly.
Tell that to the Israelis and Palestinians, the British and Irish. . .
Once we toppled the Iraqi government we became morally responsible for maintaining the rule of law until the Iraqi government was fit to do so.
Sorry, this excuse just doesn't fly with me. If the company he's supposed to be in charge of is doing things like suing competitors without his permission or knowledge, then he's a failure as a CEO.
Jobs was still alive when the litigation started. . . if you had even read the first paragraph of the article you would know that (or if you had better reading comprehension skills, as your UID indicates you had a /. account when the lawsuit started and it was covered almost daily here for months).
Cook may not have agreed with initiating the lawsuit, but once it was started it's likely he saw going through with it as the best strategic option. The damage had already been done, the best he could hope for was to win. Kind of like the Iraq war. It was a stupid idea, but once we toppled their government there was no turning back.
Until you need to send a document to someone important, and you have to be sure it won't look "funny" when they open it up with Word.
Unless you're collaborating, PDF has been the proper way to do this since the 90s. You're correct that issues could be present, but your example is a poor one. LibreOffice can save in Word's format -- if you save it as .doc rather than .docx you'll almost never have a problem opening it in Word.
I'll throw you a bone: The problem is when someone sends you an ooxml file and you open it in LibreOffice (so much for that 'open' part), or when you have to deal with spreadsheets (Calc doesn't compare with Excel and there are many compatibility problems between the two).