Were they RIAA scum or scum the RIAA hired? They're lawyers and now politicians, so they're scum obviously, but let's keep things straight. If they only were paid to do the legal legwork for the RIAA suing college kids for sharing Brittney Spears songs, that's bad but only means they have no morals AKA they're lawyers, which we already knew.
If they were actually part of the RIAA that made the decision in the first place to claw at everyone who didn't fall in line, no matter how small the offense, then yes, this is worse.
Either there are a lot of people who believe so strongly in the free market that they're attacking you with their mod points for implying it can't solve absolutely everything, or there are a lot of pricks who live in mansions who are worried there is going to be a riot and you're going to burn them if you have enough karma.
I'm not sure which would be more out of touch with reality.
Yeah, because the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, War on Pirates don't give the gov't any excuses to trample on our rights as citizens in the name of national "security theatre".
Wait, was the sarcasm in my post not thick enough to notice, or are you being serious there?
Gee, thanks, I was just about to add my "correlation is not causation" to the pile, but you ruined it for me. Why you have to go and spoil my fun? We know most of the time we automatically shout it out, there is no implied correlation, and that pretty much everyone doing a statistical survey has had that very same mantra drilled into their heads from day one.
Oh yeah, and also it was very important that they keep the events there secret up until now. Some might ask why the hell you would need to keep it secret almost 50 years later, about a decade after the plane itself (not the prototype, the actual plane) was mothballed. But those people who would ask that are unamerican commie bastards.
Lying to the american public, drugging the pilot, forcing the civilians to sign a non-disclosure agreement... it's a good thing they kept this spy plane so secret. If the Kremlin had learned what our prototypes looked like at that point, the russian economy probably would have been much stronger, they never would have embarked on those economic reforms that backfired, and they eventually would have won the cold war.
Well, at least we're done with the ridiculous and pointless paranoia of the cold war. It would be terrible if our government were to get us into another "war" with a mostly imagined enemy in order to justify absurd spending on ridiculously overpowered and overpriced weapons, a bigger military, and a quieter citizenry, while stepping all over our god-given rights in the meantime and spying on us. Really dodged a bullet there.
Vice/tobacco taxes have been around for hundreds of years. If history is to repeat itself with games, we've got at least 100 years before they get to the point where you can no longer buy games. Kidding, of course it's more complex than that. Which is why I don't think that's a good example: there were many other factors driving the smoking tax. There's the anti-smoking religion that seems to have taken hold, and tobacco industries themselves were pretty criminal, that didn't help. If game companies know about and intentionally try to obfuscate a real link between videogame violence and real violence, then yes, that could spell obscene taxes on games.
But that brings us to the biggest difference: that tobacco causes health problems is pretty much undeniable. Videogames causing violence on the other hand is laughable at best.
Of course, both cases would be non issues if idiots learned to not try to legislate away things they didn't like that didn't directly affect them, that aren't any of their damn buisiness, but naturally they're not going to.
Either way, we do need to watch government, as there are definite interests who would be happy to outlaw all games that don't teach a bible lesson, and will if we let them. You and I only seem to disagree in how intentional and well organized it is.
I think "control" is giving the process a bit too much credit. I don't see it as being that planned out. This seems to be mostly going on at the state legislature level. Whether it's driven by elected state legislators who themselves foolishly believe that society needs saving from cheap violent videogames or if it's driven instead by elected state legislators who merely exploit those who think that way I don't know. But at the heart this is about moral grandstanding, not "control."
Example: FTA
In Louisiana, Rep. Robert Billiot (BILL-yot) proposed a one percent sales tax on televisions and video game equipment. Money from the tax would flow into a "No Child Left Indoors Fund" to pay for programs and activities to mitigate the effects of childhood obesity. The implication being that video games, not poor parenting, is somehow responsible for making kids fat.
He's not trying to "control" the little fat children, he's either badly deluded and actually thinks that videogames are making kids fat, and it's up to him to save them, or more likely, he's trying to ensure that he gets the "pro-family" stamp from the local religious community that butters his bread.
Violent videogames pacify the public, gamers aren't exactly known for being political dissidents. Maybe the recent data capping movement will push some gamers to become more politically active... but in general, no, not about control.
This is both depressing and heartening depending on how you look at it. Heartening that government still is too incompetent and poorly put together to make an effective conspiracy to cover up important truths, or even seperate you from your games. Depressing because government is still too incompetent and poorly put together to do much of anything else good either. Especially at the state legislative level.
Very few Orthodox Jews contribute money to Islamic terrorists. Jews are virtually all on the anti-genocide side.
I gathered he wasn't talking about Islamic terrorists. "Genocidal war" is pretty open to interpretation, and shieldwolf's posts often seem pretty out there to me. It could be that they were funding a Jewish organization that sheildwolf just considers to be advocating genocide.
For that matter, I'm not sure I would trust the results from the botnet even if I was the one who ordered it. The odds that they're going to fake say a protein structure that was good enough to fool the researcher who ordered it is fairly low in most scenarios I could think up, but they're not so low that I would risk ruining my academic career on it. If I were to use their services, publish the protein structure, and it were revealed to be false by other researchers, "It was the guys operating the botnet, not sure exactly who they are, but they seem to be based out of Russia" isn't going to erase the black stain, I'd still be working at McDonalds in a few months.
Ideally these guys renting the supercomputer are more trustworthy than the guys operating the botnets. Not a legal expert, so I'm honestly asking: if you give storm your money and they don't give you the services you pay for, what recourse do you have? Even if they were to, say, figure out the protein structure of your favorite protein, would they then just sell it to the highest bidder after you paid for it?
Could be amusing, Pfizer pays Storm a million dollars to determine the structure of a receptor important for cancer, the structure is determined and posted to 4chan...
I'd also wonder about the legal implications of giving NIH money or private investment money to whoever is operating Storm. Don't know if NIH themselves would know what the heck a botnet is, so maybe it's not currently against NIH funding rules, but I'd bet it would raise a few eyebrows.
Try sitting across from Sarah Palin, who keeps asking me if I'm going to run for president next year. I wanted to explain to her that not only was I not a politician, not a republican, and not old enough to be constitutionally eligible for presidency, but next year is not an election year. So I did. She said I wasn't thinking like a maverick.
...Buggy whip manufacturers say that loans to "internal combustion engine" companies inappropriately drives technology that is "not ready for prime time"
Good line, except the people making noise about this don't appear to be their competitors. Stoss doesn't work for detroit.
Oh, sorry, forgot the UK government only sponsors your religion when you are violent. If you are peaceful, you are on your own. Do your own damn PR!
Alternatively: happy Buddhists are already quite adept at manipulating Google, causing there to be no violent Buddhism, so they don't need government help!
Journalists learns which articles that draws the most comments and therefore are the most controversial. This means that they get an indication about what may be disturbing for people.
And there's no other way of measuring interest in a story that might be more accurate, say looking at which stories get the most clicks or moderated comments. Or taking a poll. Or just using your jounalistic insight to know that some people care deeply about issues of race and that fewer care about import tariffs.
And in controversial questions the availability of anonymous comments may be a life saver. It must be possible to express an opinion, at least in a polite way without revealing your identity.
It's not like any online comment system is completely non-anonymous. If you absolutely need to say something and absolutely can't reveal your identity, set up a hotmail/gmail/yahoo e-mail account, and then use that to set up an account on wherever you're posting. And be sure not to set your username as something identifying. Not 100% bulletproof, but if you're posting something that will make someone go to the trouble of getting through that to get your identity, the wall street journal's comment page might not be the best place for that. Maybe you'd want to contact a journalist directly.
Slashdot Mirror
Were they RIAA scum or scum the RIAA hired? They're lawyers and now politicians, so they're scum obviously, but let's keep things straight. If they only were paid to do the legal legwork for the RIAA suing college kids for sharing Brittney Spears songs, that's bad but only means they have no morals AKA they're lawyers, which we already knew.
If they were actually part of the RIAA that made the decision in the first place to claw at everyone who didn't fall in line, no matter how small the offense, then yes, this is worse.
Either there are a lot of people who believe so strongly in the free market that they're attacking you with their mod points for implying it can't solve absolutely everything, or there are a lot of pricks who live in mansions who are worried there is going to be a riot and you're going to burn them if you have enough karma.
I'm not sure which would be more out of touch with reality.
Yeah, because the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, War on Pirates don't give the gov't any excuses to trample on our rights as citizens in the name of national "security theatre".
Wait, was the sarcasm in my post not thick enough to notice, or are you being serious there?
Gee, thanks, I was just about to add my "correlation is not causation" to the pile, but you ruined it for me. Why you have to go and spoil my fun? We know most of the time we automatically shout it out, there is no implied correlation, and that pretty much everyone doing a statistical survey has had that very same mantra drilled into their heads from day one.
I wouldn't read an e-mail that was in German either.
Oh yeah, and also it was very important that they keep the events there secret up until now. Some might ask why the hell you would need to keep it secret almost 50 years later, about a decade after the plane itself (not the prototype, the actual plane) was mothballed. But those people who would ask that are unamerican commie bastards.
Lying to the american public, drugging the pilot, forcing the civilians to sign a non-disclosure agreement... it's a good thing they kept this spy plane so secret. If the Kremlin had learned what our prototypes looked like at that point, the russian economy probably would have been much stronger, they never would have embarked on those economic reforms that backfired, and they eventually would have won the cold war.
Well, at least we're done with the ridiculous and pointless paranoia of the cold war. It would be terrible if our government were to get us into another "war" with a mostly imagined enemy in order to justify absurd spending on ridiculously overpowered and overpriced weapons, a bigger military, and a quieter citizenry, while stepping all over our god-given rights in the meantime and spying on us. Really dodged a bullet there.
Yes but that's area 51. Area 51A might have aliens. Unfortunately, the location of area 51A is also classified.
Vice/tobacco taxes have been around for hundreds of years. If history is to repeat itself with games, we've got at least 100 years before they get to the point where you can no longer buy games. Kidding, of course it's more complex than that. Which is why I don't think that's a good example: there were many other factors driving the smoking tax. There's the anti-smoking religion that seems to have taken hold, and tobacco industries themselves were pretty criminal, that didn't help. If game companies know about and intentionally try to obfuscate a real link between videogame violence and real violence, then yes, that could spell obscene taxes on games.
But that brings us to the biggest difference: that tobacco causes health problems is pretty much undeniable. Videogames causing violence on the other hand is laughable at best.
Of course, both cases would be non issues if idiots learned to not try to legislate away things they didn't like that didn't directly affect them, that aren't any of their damn buisiness, but naturally they're not going to.
Either way, we do need to watch government, as there are definite interests who would be happy to outlaw all games that don't teach a bible lesson, and will if we let them. You and I only seem to disagree in how intentional and well organized it is.
I think "control" is giving the process a bit too much credit. I don't see it as being that planned out. This seems to be mostly going on at the state legislature level. Whether it's driven by elected state legislators who themselves foolishly believe that society needs saving from cheap violent videogames or if it's driven instead by elected state legislators who merely exploit those who think that way I don't know. But at the heart this is about moral grandstanding, not "control."
Example: FTA
In Louisiana, Rep. Robert Billiot (BILL-yot) proposed a one percent sales tax on televisions and video game equipment. Money from the tax would flow into a "No Child Left Indoors Fund" to pay for programs and activities to mitigate the effects of childhood obesity. The implication being that video games, not poor parenting, is somehow responsible for making kids fat.
He's not trying to "control" the little fat children, he's either badly deluded and actually thinks that videogames are making kids fat, and it's up to him to save them, or more likely, he's trying to ensure that he gets the "pro-family" stamp from the local religious community that butters his bread.
Violent videogames pacify the public, gamers aren't exactly known for being political dissidents. Maybe the recent data capping movement will push some gamers to become more politically active... but in general, no, not about control.
This is both depressing and heartening depending on how you look at it. Heartening that government still is too incompetent and poorly put together to make an effective conspiracy to cover up important truths, or even seperate you from your games. Depressing because government is still too incompetent and poorly put together to do much of anything else good either. Especially at the state legislative level.
Very few Orthodox Jews contribute money to Islamic terrorists. Jews are virtually all on the anti-genocide side.
I gathered he wasn't talking about Islamic terrorists. "Genocidal war" is pretty open to interpretation, and shieldwolf's posts often seem pretty out there to me. It could be that they were funding a Jewish organization that sheildwolf just considers to be advocating genocide.
For that matter, I'm not sure I would trust the results from the botnet even if I was the one who ordered it. The odds that they're going to fake say a protein structure that was good enough to fool the researcher who ordered it is fairly low in most scenarios I could think up, but they're not so low that I would risk ruining my academic career on it. If I were to use their services, publish the protein structure, and it were revealed to be false by other researchers, "It was the guys operating the botnet, not sure exactly who they are, but they seem to be based out of Russia" isn't going to erase the black stain, I'd still be working at McDonalds in a few months.
You want to talk about pressure to perform?
Not really, I find that talking about it only makes it worse.
Oops, TMFI?
Ideally these guys renting the supercomputer are more trustworthy than the guys operating the botnets. Not a legal expert, so I'm honestly asking: if you give storm your money and they don't give you the services you pay for, what recourse do you have? Even if they were to, say, figure out the protein structure of your favorite protein, would they then just sell it to the highest bidder after you paid for it?
Could be amusing, Pfizer pays Storm a million dollars to determine the structure of a receptor important for cancer, the structure is determined and posted to 4chan...
I'd also wonder about the legal implications of giving NIH money or private investment money to whoever is operating Storm. Don't know if NIH themselves would know what the heck a botnet is, so maybe it's not currently against NIH funding rules, but I'd bet it would raise a few eyebrows.
Try sitting across from Sarah Palin, who keeps asking me if I'm going to run for president next year. I wanted to explain to her that not only was I not a politician, not a republican, and not old enough to be constitutionally eligible for presidency, but next year is not an election year. So I did. She said I wasn't thinking like a maverick.
...Buggy whip manufacturers say that loans to "internal combustion engine" companies inappropriately drives technology that is "not ready for prime time"
Good line, except the people making noise about this don't appear to be their competitors. Stoss doesn't work for detroit.
Oh, sorry, forgot the UK government only sponsors your religion when you are violent. If you are peaceful, you are on your own. Do your own damn PR!
Alternatively: happy Buddhists are already quite adept at manipulating Google, causing there to be no violent Buddhism, so they don't need government help!
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace.
Religions don't kill people: people kill people.
Journalists learns which articles that draws the most comments and therefore are the most controversial. This means that they get an indication about what may be disturbing for people.
And there's no other way of measuring interest in a story that might be more accurate, say looking at which stories get the most clicks or moderated comments. Or taking a poll. Or just using your jounalistic insight to know that some people care deeply about issues of race and that fewer care about import tariffs.
And in controversial questions the availability of anonymous comments may be a life saver. It must be possible to express an opinion, at least in a polite way without revealing your identity.
It's not like any online comment system is completely non-anonymous. If you absolutely need to say something and absolutely can't reveal your identity, set up a hotmail/gmail/yahoo e-mail account, and then use that to set up an account on wherever you're posting. And be sure not to set your username as something identifying. Not 100% bulletproof, but if you're posting something that will make someone go to the trouble of getting through that to get your identity, the wall street journal's comment page might not be the best place for that. Maybe you'd want to contact a journalist directly.
Great posts are often lost at low ratings, and terrible posts get modded up.
Yes, all those AC posts which are apperantly great because they're racist and off-topic are lost!
Tweenbots: easily the most annoying robot ever.
Legal experts say the RIAA is full of shit. In other news, scientists say creationist claims are innacurate. In still other news, fire is hot.
From toothpaste to DE Filters to solar cells.
They can also apperantly clean up red tides
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/118946.php
Oblig snide comment about how most of these are not really oblig comments.
Obligatory observation that having the perspective that someone happens to have it worse still doesn't change the fact that these guys suck.