I wasn't very clear in how I stated that. I mentioned Netflix as a potential target of ISPs, it wasn't an assertion that they were a victim in the past. It just seems that they would be an ideal target to demand a "fast lane" fee out of once net neutrality is dropped. Google (for YouTube) would be another company that will probably be in the crosshairs of ISPs.
The problem is that even if there's some competition in the ISP market, as you point out, most markets don't have enough room to allow for several players to invest in infrastructure. Oligopolies aren't much better than monopolies. If there are three players in a market, it's unlikely that one will cease throttling to gain a competitive edge, because they're aware that they'll force the competition to follow and then everyone will have less. Why would they give up extorting Netflix, for example, when they don't have to?
Oligopolies don't have to collude in these circumstances. They will rely on simple game theory and all come to an unspoken agreement to screw the customers.
The reason they get away with the bald-faced lies is that a significant number of people are too stupid to know when they're being lied to. It's like when they spew anti-evolution rhetoric. If you spew a fallacious argument confidently, idiots won't be able to distinguish them from a sound ones.
And my warning stands — I will not stand passively aside, if you, Commie assholes, start moving this country in the wrong direction again. Long before the nightmare of Stalin and Kim, comes the devastation of Chavez — I will not let you do that.
What are you going to do? Invent a time machine and go back and assassinate FDR?
I think we've hit a brick wall. I could keep going but you just don't seem to get nuance, as evidenced by your claims of "proof" and your demands for "proof." That's not how empiricism works. You can show me evidence, I can show you evidence, but those who believe in proof are fools.
I guess that's true, but I'm not sure vertical integration is a bad thing if there's a diverse marketplace. Furthermore, in such a marketplace the market itself may discourage vertical integration as most firms have to be a pretty big player to make vertical integration cost effective.
It's a valid concern, though. I guess that's the challenge of economics. The only way to test a hypothesis is to do it and then you discover what the unintended consequences are. Politically, this type of experimentation is discouraged because no politician wants to admit they were wrong.
And yet, we are still richer than most of those Socialist paradises you listed.
For all your disdain for the collective and praise for the individual, I find it odd that you measure wealth based on GDP rather than the spending power and economic freedom of the poorest of the poor. Socialized medicine frees. Capitalist medicine makes one a slave to their own health. Market regulations free consumers from predatory lenders and inhumane working conditions.
I save citations for research papers and extreme claims. Nothing I claimed warranted such a waste of time. However, you may want to read more carefully before you waste your own time refuting something I didn't say (there's a huge difference between "one of the last to abolish slavery" and "the last").
The fact that you believe the U.S. is an example of a laissez-faire country demonstrates your ignorance. Have you ever heard of the U.S. Postal Service? Do you know what a grant is and how they have propped up higher education and are the main reason U.S. innovation was unsurpassed in the twentieth century? Social Security? Medicare? The who article is about the FCC, A REGULATORY AGENCY.
Laissez-faire is a myth. It's never existed and never will. Just like communism. All countries are socialist, they just have unique ways of structuring it. Your equivocation of all collectivism and the U.S.S.R. is a silly fallacy. That's why no serious intellectuals take Ayn Rand seriously.
I listed them because they're countries that implement heavy socialist policies and yet for the average citizen they're much better places to live.
are barely at the America's wealth
Wealth is relative. If you're talking about GDP then it would be a better comparison to look at the EU vs. the U.S. than individual countries in the EU. I think if you look at the poorest of the poor in those countries vs. the poorest of the poor in the U.S., you'll see a stark difference.
despite not maintaining a military worth a damn
How exactly is this relevant?
Collective ownership of the means of production — that's what it means. And every time you nationalize something — as the asshole above proposed — you get closer and closer towards that.
There's nothing inherently wrong with such an economic model. The problem with Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea are their totalitarian leaders. Sure, a totally centralized economy probably doesn't work well. China has learned that. But neither does the opposite extreme of laissez-faire. Some things work better when the government controls them and some things work better left to the free market. Some things work best on the free market yet highly scrutinized by government regulation. When you become an absolutist when it comes to economic models, you cease to search for pragmatic solutions. That's when economies tank.
It remains the magnet
Just because other countries have it worse off than the U.S. doesn't mean that vast improvement cannot be made. Lots of immigrants flock to France, too, and they also could improve things. I don't hold Venezuela as the standard to which my country ought to be judged. I look at the Scandinavian countries and wonder why, despite having so much less national wealth, their education system is so much better and their poor don't live in conditions that actually are comparable to Venezuela. Oh, yeah, because we spend like a third of our budget on that stupid military you're so impressed with.
Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea — you have your "worker's paradises" to move to.
And Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Canada. . .
Almost all infrastructure runs through the government anyway, no matter what country you live in. For someone who comes from a "Communism-destroyed" country, you have a poor grasp on what communism really is. You also shouldn't apply some bullshit golden age fallacy to America's past. This country was one of the last to abolish slavery. We had government sanctioned racial segregation until the 1960s. There are neighborhoods known as "food deserts" because you literally can't buy healthy food. I'm glad America's worked out for you, but it doesn't work out for everyone.
I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
Me too. This is the type of tax reform I could get behind. It would discourage large corporate mergers because, if the merger were to jump them up to a way higher tax bracket, it wouldn't make sense to merge.
Would you say the same about classic literature (I would, I'm just wondering if you see that your claim applies to it as well).
No, because what makes something a "classic" and what makes it "literature," by definition would mean that it's critically viewed as artistic, creative, and of high quality. Now, there are works that are considered classics that I find unworthy of the title—much of Thomas Hardy's work, or On the Road, for example—but I usually understand why classics are so widely admired.
Now, it must be noted that most novels—both past and present—are complete garbage and not worth the paper they're printed on. Ever since Charles Fenerty devised a way to make cheap paper out of wood pulp, there have been "penny dreadfuls" or "pulp fiction" or whatever. These books are crap and are very analogous to most comic books.
I don't judge people for reading trash fiction just as I don't judge people for reading comic books. It's good to have a hobby that one can enjoy. But it's all too common for people to take a healthy hobby and turn it into an unhealthy obsession.
There is an assertion, an assumption that these conventions are a celebration of art and creativity.
That's taking things a bit too seriously. There are very few Alan Moores in this world and a whole bunch of Stan Lees. When comics are artistic and creative, it's an anomaly. People don't go to conventions to celebrate creativity and art. They go to conventions to goo over collectible comics and buy useless junk and see celebrities and feel like their lonely hobby isn't quite so lonely.
Because the socialists are the ones with the really big death toll on their hands, and they're still given places of privilege in places like US institutions of higher education.
Just because some socialists have committed atrocities doesn't mean that socialism ought to be correlated with atrocities. Every first world nation, including the U.S., is a socialist country. That's just modern economics. Stalin wasn't a socialist ideologue. He appropriated these ideas in order to steal power from Trotsky, the actual socialist ideologue. The Chinese totalitarianism from Mao to the present day may utilize extreme socialist economic ideas, but that has nothing to do with the human rights abuses. The human rights abuses of these two countries are better explained by the history and culture of the two countries than an economic model. For instance, look at the Tzars and feudalism in Russia, or Confucianism in China.
Maybe the original point about the Chinese and Russians could be argued even if your silly equivocation regarding socialism is ignored, but I would still argue that Mao is not in power and neither is Stalin. I personally wouldn't want to live in either country, and I think they both could make vast improvements when it comes to human rights, but they're not comparable to Nazis. One of the core tenets of Nazi fascism was to exterminate or subjugate non-German races. That's why people have such a reflexive hatred for Nazism. It's irrelevant that Stalin caused more deaths. If there was some modern Stalinist cult, people would find it just as abhorrent (although that would be weird, as Stalin didn't really have a core ideology other than to retain power). People hate Nazism because it's an ideology of hatred. Everyone hates Stalin the historical figure, but there's no modern Stalinism that academics goo over as you imply.
Newsflash asshole, the Russians never left power. Or were you talking about the Chinese?
I love it when there's no way of knowing whether someone's being sarcastic, ironic, or just stupid. This comment made me laugh, whatever your intentions were.
I find it odd that theyâ(TM)re comparing domestic pets to wild relatives. The truly dumb domestic animals are livestock and horses. That their wild relatives are equally dumb is what made them so easy to domesticate in the first place.
When comparing the domestic vs. the wild, intelligence is the wrong comparison. Social ability and paedomorphesis are where the true comparisons can be made.
I find it strange that youâ(TM)re posting on/. when you donâ(TM)t find basic science useful nor interesting. Reading articles about scientific papers will almost always dumb down and miss the point of the original study. Neurology is one field where thereâ(TM)s a lot of research to be done, so studies like this actually have a lot of value (and the academic in me would argue that any study that expands human understanding of the world is worthwhile).
Journalists rarely understand the science they report on and even when they do, they have to frame the story in such a way that people will read it. Hence you get misleading and inaccurate headlines like, âoeDogs are smarter than cats.â Most people here, even when theyâ(TM)re pretending to argue in favor of their favorite pet, realize thatâ(TM)s not the point or conclusion of the actual study.
The west is not taking Russia and China serious in their work to undermine and destroy us.
Undermine, yes. Destroy? Hyperbole at its worst. Especially concerning the Chinese, who benefit so much from our relationship. I agree that we need to take foreign intelligence threats more seriously, but that doesn't mean we should return to Cold War mentalities where we dehumanize others, assuming that they want to see us reduced to a heap of rubble.
My point is that baby boomers could do much more with a high school diploma or an associate's degree. It was possible to build a resume from work experience alone whereas in today's job market it's extremely difficult to do anything without a B.A/B.S. My dad worked in IT and even though he had a degree, it was in philosophy and it never helped him find a job. He wasn't a star programmer or anything (who in IT is?), he was just a nerd who was into computers before many people were. There's no way he would have even been considered for such a job today.
I know several baby boomers who managed to do pretty well for themselves with just a high school education. Of my peers, the only ones I know who have done well economically have at least a Bachelor's. An associate's degree is probably equivalent to a baby boomer high school diploma.
My point didn't depend on knowing his experience—he made an argument for succeeding without a college degree based on a bygone era.
There's no incentive for someone, once convicted of a felony, to cease committing crimes when the only places that will hire them are Taco Bell and McDonald's. That's why our prison system doesn't reform people, it just makes them even worse criminals. The law should work the other way: it should be illegal to discriminate against people for past transgressions unless they clearly disqualify the individual, such as a child molester working at a daycare.
It would seem that something as basic as being an Uber driver should be available for most former criminals. I mean, I get the people who don't have drivers licenses are a problem, but why should you have a spotless record to be an Uber driver?
Are you genuinely asking a question or are you attempting to insinuate something? It's hardly shocking that a major German political party is socialist. Every first world country—including the U.S.—employs some socialist mechanisms. It's called the modern world.
You'll have thousands of commercial-quality Linux-only games before you have a Linux-only version of something even closely similar to Microsoft Exchange.
Unless someone pays for it. That's what made the Munich experiment so exciting: once those major tools are developed, there's no reason governments can't become untethered from proprietary software. LibreOffice is a perfect example of this. I used to use OpenOffice out of principle and I dealt with its shortcomings (and I used Excel because OpenOffice just didn't cut it when it came to spreadsheets). Now I use LibreOffice because I prefer it as a word processor and Calc has become functional.
the primary reason he wants Windows instead of a MacBook is gaming
If you want your kid to use the laptop for school and life, but he wants a PC primarily for gaming, the clear solution would be to get him a Mac. If there's one thing I regret about my teenage years, it's the hours I wasted away playing Starcraft. Get your kid a guitar, enroll him in sports, buy him books, get him a chemistry set. There are all sorts of intellectually stimulating activities that aren't a total waste of the human brain.
I know this opinion may not be popular here, but I firmly believe that there are two distinct types of behaviors that both receive the "nerd" label. One is a pursuit of intellectual interests while the other is an obsession with games and fantasies. While there are many individuals who represent an overlap of these two stereotypes to varying degrees, the former traits are commendable while the latter are not. The nerds portrayed in The Big Bang Theory, who fully embody both of these stereotypes, aren't realistic.
Video games, like casino games, are designed to be addictive. Teenagers are especially susceptible to this addiction. The most hilarious thing about the video game critics who try to demonstrate that video games lead to violence is that it doesn't matter. No studies are necessary to demonstrate that they're a waste of time—especially for children, who have such an aptitude for learning.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't very clear in how I stated that. I mentioned Netflix as a potential target of ISPs, it wasn't an assertion that they were a victim in the past. It just seems that they would be an ideal target to demand a "fast lane" fee out of once net neutrality is dropped. Google (for YouTube) would be another company that will probably be in the crosshairs of ISPs.
The problem is that even if there's some competition in the ISP market, as you point out, most markets don't have enough room to allow for several players to invest in infrastructure. Oligopolies aren't much better than monopolies. If there are three players in a market, it's unlikely that one will cease throttling to gain a competitive edge, because they're aware that they'll force the competition to follow and then everyone will have less. Why would they give up extorting Netflix, for example, when they don't have to?
Oligopolies don't have to collude in these circumstances. They will rely on simple game theory and all come to an unspoken agreement to screw the customers.
The reason they get away with the bald-faced lies is that a significant number of people are too stupid to know when they're being lied to. It's like when they spew anti-evolution rhetoric. If you spew a fallacious argument confidently, idiots won't be able to distinguish them from a sound ones.
At least with Trump it's not literal.
Way to put a positive spin on it. You can say, "at least he's not Stalin!" about pretty much anyone.
And my warning stands — I will not stand passively aside, if you, Commie assholes, start moving this country in the wrong direction again. Long before the nightmare of Stalin and Kim, comes the devastation of Chavez — I will not let you do that.
What are you going to do? Invent a time machine and go back and assassinate FDR?
I think we've hit a brick wall. I could keep going but you just don't seem to get nuance, as evidenced by your claims of "proof" and your demands for "proof." That's not how empiricism works. You can show me evidence, I can show you evidence, but those who believe in proof are fools.
I guess that's true, but I'm not sure vertical integration is a bad thing if there's a diverse marketplace. Furthermore, in such a marketplace the market itself may discourage vertical integration as most firms have to be a pretty big player to make vertical integration cost effective.
It's a valid concern, though. I guess that's the challenge of economics. The only way to test a hypothesis is to do it and then you discover what the unintended consequences are. Politically, this type of experimentation is discouraged because no politician wants to admit they were wrong.
And yet, we are still richer than most of those Socialist paradises you listed.
For all your disdain for the collective and praise for the individual, I find it odd that you measure wealth based on GDP rather than the spending power and economic freedom of the poorest of the poor. Socialized medicine frees. Capitalist medicine makes one a slave to their own health. Market regulations free consumers from predatory lenders and inhumane working conditions.
I save citations for research papers and extreme claims. Nothing I claimed warranted such a waste of time. However, you may want to read more carefully before you waste your own time refuting something I didn't say (there's a huge difference between "one of the last to abolish slavery" and "the last").
The fact that you believe the U.S. is an example of a laissez-faire country demonstrates your ignorance. Have you ever heard of the U.S. Postal Service? Do you know what a grant is and how they have propped up higher education and are the main reason U.S. innovation was unsurpassed in the twentieth century? Social Security? Medicare? The who article is about the FCC, A REGULATORY AGENCY.
Laissez-faire is a myth. It's never existed and never will. Just like communism. All countries are socialist, they just have unique ways of structuring it. Your equivocation of all collectivism and the U.S.S.R. is a silly fallacy. That's why no serious intellectuals take Ayn Rand seriously.
Not sure, why you listed these
I listed them because they're countries that implement heavy socialist policies and yet for the average citizen they're much better places to live.
are barely at the America's wealth
Wealth is relative. If you're talking about GDP then it would be a better comparison to look at the EU vs. the U.S. than individual countries in the EU. I think if you look at the poorest of the poor in those countries vs. the poorest of the poor in the U.S., you'll see a stark difference.
despite not maintaining a military worth a damn
How exactly is this relevant?
Collective ownership of the means of production — that's what it means. And every time you nationalize something — as the asshole above proposed — you get closer and closer towards that.
There's nothing inherently wrong with such an economic model. The problem with Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea are their totalitarian leaders. Sure, a totally centralized economy probably doesn't work well. China has learned that. But neither does the opposite extreme of laissez-faire. Some things work better when the government controls them and some things work better left to the free market. Some things work best on the free market yet highly scrutinized by government regulation. When you become an absolutist when it comes to economic models, you cease to search for pragmatic solutions. That's when economies tank.
It remains the magnet
Just because other countries have it worse off than the U.S. doesn't mean that vast improvement cannot be made. Lots of immigrants flock to France, too, and they also could improve things. I don't hold Venezuela as the standard to which my country ought to be judged. I look at the Scandinavian countries and wonder why, despite having so much less national wealth, their education system is so much better and their poor don't live in conditions that actually are comparable to Venezuela. Oh, yeah, because we spend like a third of our budget on that stupid military you're so impressed with.
Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea — you have your "worker's paradises" to move to.
And Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Canada. . .
Almost all infrastructure runs through the government anyway, no matter what country you live in. For someone who comes from a "Communism-destroyed" country, you have a poor grasp on what communism really is. You also shouldn't apply some bullshit golden age fallacy to America's past. This country was one of the last to abolish slavery. We had government sanctioned racial segregation until the 1960s. There are neighborhoods known as "food deserts" because you literally can't buy healthy food. I'm glad America's worked out for you, but it doesn't work out for everyone.
I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
Me too. This is the type of tax reform I could get behind. It would discourage large corporate mergers because, if the merger were to jump them up to a way higher tax bracket, it wouldn't make sense to merge.
Would you say the same about classic literature (I would, I'm just wondering if you see that your claim applies to it as well).
No, because what makes something a "classic" and what makes it "literature," by definition would mean that it's critically viewed as artistic, creative, and of high quality. Now, there are works that are considered classics that I find unworthy of the title—much of Thomas Hardy's work, or On the Road, for example—but I usually understand why classics are so widely admired.
Now, it must be noted that most novels—both past and present—are complete garbage and not worth the paper they're printed on. Ever since Charles Fenerty devised a way to make cheap paper out of wood pulp, there have been "penny dreadfuls" or "pulp fiction" or whatever. These books are crap and are very analogous to most comic books.
I don't judge people for reading trash fiction just as I don't judge people for reading comic books. It's good to have a hobby that one can enjoy. But it's all too common for people to take a healthy hobby and turn it into an unhealthy obsession.
Copycats should be ashamed.
Like 90% of comics are a formulaic copy.
There is an assertion, an assumption that these conventions are a celebration of art and creativity.
That's taking things a bit too seriously. There are very few Alan Moores in this world and a whole bunch of Stan Lees. When comics are artistic and creative, it's an anomaly. People don't go to conventions to celebrate creativity and art. They go to conventions to goo over collectible comics and buy useless junk and see celebrities and feel like their lonely hobby isn't quite so lonely.
Because the socialists are the ones with the really big death toll on their hands, and they're still given places of privilege in places like US institutions of higher education.
Just because some socialists have committed atrocities doesn't mean that socialism ought to be correlated with atrocities. Every first world nation, including the U.S., is a socialist country. That's just modern economics. Stalin wasn't a socialist ideologue. He appropriated these ideas in order to steal power from Trotsky, the actual socialist ideologue. The Chinese totalitarianism from Mao to the present day may utilize extreme socialist economic ideas, but that has nothing to do with the human rights abuses. The human rights abuses of these two countries are better explained by the history and culture of the two countries than an economic model. For instance, look at the Tzars and feudalism in Russia, or Confucianism in China.
Maybe the original point about the Chinese and Russians could be argued even if your silly equivocation regarding socialism is ignored, but I would still argue that Mao is not in power and neither is Stalin. I personally wouldn't want to live in either country, and I think they both could make vast improvements when it comes to human rights, but they're not comparable to Nazis. One of the core tenets of Nazi fascism was to exterminate or subjugate non-German races. That's why people have such a reflexive hatred for Nazism. It's irrelevant that Stalin caused more deaths. If there was some modern Stalinist cult, people would find it just as abhorrent (although that would be weird, as Stalin didn't really have a core ideology other than to retain power). People hate Nazism because it's an ideology of hatred. Everyone hates Stalin the historical figure, but there's no modern Stalinism that academics goo over as you imply.
Newsflash asshole, the Russians never left power. Or were you talking about the Chinese?
I love it when there's no way of knowing whether someone's being sarcastic, ironic, or just stupid. This comment made me laugh, whatever your intentions were.
If you live a miserable life but die with millions in the bank do you think you've "won" at life somehow?
We could call this the Ebenezer Scrooge Fallacy.
I find it odd that theyâ(TM)re comparing domestic pets to wild relatives. The truly dumb domestic animals are livestock and horses. That their wild relatives are equally dumb is what made them so easy to domesticate in the first place.
When comparing the domestic vs. the wild, intelligence is the wrong comparison. Social ability and paedomorphesis are where the true comparisons can be made.
I find it strange that youâ(TM)re posting on /. when you donâ(TM)t find basic science useful nor interesting. Reading articles about scientific papers will almost always dumb down and miss the point of the original study. Neurology is one field where thereâ(TM)s a lot of research to be done, so studies like this actually have a lot of value (and the academic in me would argue that any study that expands human understanding of the world is worthwhile).
Journalists rarely understand the science they report on and even when they do, they have to frame the story in such a way that people will read it. Hence you get misleading and inaccurate headlines like, âoeDogs are smarter than cats.â Most people here, even when theyâ(TM)re pretending to argue in favor of their favorite pet, realize thatâ(TM)s not the point or conclusion of the actual study.
The west is not taking Russia and China serious in their work to undermine and destroy us.
Undermine, yes. Destroy? Hyperbole at its worst. Especially concerning the Chinese, who benefit so much from our relationship. I agree that we need to take foreign intelligence threats more seriously, but that doesn't mean we should return to Cold War mentalities where we dehumanize others, assuming that they want to see us reduced to a heap of rubble.
My point is that baby boomers could do much more with a high school diploma or an associate's degree. It was possible to build a resume from work experience alone whereas in today's job market it's extremely difficult to do anything without a B.A/B.S. My dad worked in IT and even though he had a degree, it was in philosophy and it never helped him find a job. He wasn't a star programmer or anything (who in IT is?), he was just a nerd who was into computers before many people were. There's no way he would have even been considered for such a job today.
I know several baby boomers who managed to do pretty well for themselves with just a high school education. Of my peers, the only ones I know who have done well economically have at least a Bachelor's. An associate's degree is probably equivalent to a baby boomer high school diploma.
My point didn't depend on knowing his experience—he made an argument for succeeding without a college degree based on a bygone era.
tech schools are better then college for ready to work skills. To bad they got roped in to the college system and got an bad rap.
The nice part about a traditional college is that, regardless of what you may get your degree in, English 101 is required.
Sorry old man, your experience isn't relevant to the current economy. I have to tell my parents this all the time.
There's no incentive for someone, once convicted of a felony, to cease committing crimes when the only places that will hire them are Taco Bell and McDonald's. That's why our prison system doesn't reform people, it just makes them even worse criminals. The law should work the other way: it should be illegal to discriminate against people for past transgressions unless they clearly disqualify the individual, such as a child molester working at a daycare.
It would seem that something as basic as being an Uber driver should be available for most former criminals. I mean, I get the people who don't have drivers licenses are a problem, but why should you have a spotless record to be an Uber driver?
Are you genuinely asking a question or are you attempting to insinuate something? It's hardly shocking that a major German political party is socialist. Every first world country—including the U.S.—employs some socialist mechanisms. It's called the modern world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You'll have thousands of commercial-quality Linux-only games before you have a Linux-only version of something even closely similar to Microsoft Exchange.
Unless someone pays for it. That's what made the Munich experiment so exciting: once those major tools are developed, there's no reason governments can't become untethered from proprietary software. LibreOffice is a perfect example of this. I used to use OpenOffice out of principle and I dealt with its shortcomings (and I used Excel because OpenOffice just didn't cut it when it came to spreadsheets). Now I use LibreOffice because I prefer it as a word processor and Calc has become functional.
Someone just needs to get the ball rolling.
the primary reason he wants Windows instead of a MacBook is gaming
If you want your kid to use the laptop for school and life, but he wants a PC primarily for gaming, the clear solution would be to get him a Mac. If there's one thing I regret about my teenage years, it's the hours I wasted away playing Starcraft. Get your kid a guitar, enroll him in sports, buy him books, get him a chemistry set. There are all sorts of intellectually stimulating activities that aren't a total waste of the human brain.
I know this opinion may not be popular here, but I firmly believe that there are two distinct types of behaviors that both receive the "nerd" label. One is a pursuit of intellectual interests while the other is an obsession with games and fantasies. While there are many individuals who represent an overlap of these two stereotypes to varying degrees, the former traits are commendable while the latter are not. The nerds portrayed in The Big Bang Theory, who fully embody both of these stereotypes, aren't realistic.
Video games, like casino games, are designed to be addictive. Teenagers are especially susceptible to this addiction. The most hilarious thing about the video game critics who try to demonstrate that video games lead to violence is that it doesn't matter. No studies are necessary to demonstrate that they're a waste of time—especially for children, who have such an aptitude for learning.