The few of us left who actually give a shit about our civil liberties need to rise up, violently. Diplomacy failed a long time ago. We need to scare the shit out of these bastards.
Will that really work, or will it just lead to them turning the screws even tighter?
I'm betting the latter, especially since, as you point out, it would be the "few of us left who actually give a shit about our civil liberties" as opposed to a mass uprising.
Um... you do realize that this is an Evangelical game made by Christians, yes? The Christians are the good guys.
It's based on the bestselling Left Behind series, and the Christians in the game are fighting a defensive war against the forces of the anti-Christ.
Actually, there are cases of voluntary slavery in Roman times. Mainly educated Greeks who saw it as a way to earn Roman citizenship through manumission. (Not full citizenship mind you, but better than being a non-Roman.)
In this case, the educated Greek slave had certain expectations about their treatment during slavery, of course. Not that the Roman master was bound to respect them.
By the way, I understand the point your are trying to make here. It won't work.
It's sad that games have to be cut for the American market while European countries allow them to be kept intact. But that won't change even if we were to ignore the Constitution and allow them to be legally restricted from minors.
I think the problem here is like a story I once read. These scientists open a portal to an alternate universe that looks like a quaint Victorian version of our universe and they see a cute little Victorian family sitting down to a picnic. One guy thinks it looks so great that he jumps through. Well, the cute little Victorian family proceeds to gruesomely tear him apart and eat him.
I think Europeans looking at our country think that it is somehow analogous to their countries. They see people who basically look European, and speak English, and they think, "Oh, America is something like England." But no, much of our country is filled with ravening, insane monsters. Legally restricting games from minors would be the first step in pressuring stores to remove them from the shelves. Even though their contents was no worse than, say, The Girl Next Door or an episode of I Clauvdivs. Understand, there are parts of our country where contraceptives aren't stocked in pharmacies. There are types of contraceptives that are hard to get in the US.
Just ask Jesus Castillo, whether he could sell and adult comic book, from a roped off part of his store, to an adult without consequences.
Sorry for jumping on you about the Constitution thing, though I stand by what I said. Hey, you try living in here for a few years... it's the kind of thing you really have to experience for yourself over a period of time....
o/~ We'll hang Burt Cates to a sour apple tree, our
Americans get worked up over their constitution because...
.... are you with me here...
It's the law!
It's not a bunch of nice suggestions that we can take or leave as we feel like it, it's the law. It is possible to change it, but it isn't easy, and has been done very rarely. Sure Amendments are suggested, they mostly fail.
In other words, we are not talking about a holy document here, we are talking about the law. Oh, and at this point it is firmly settled law without even any wiggle room as far as interpretation, as precedent after precedent has come down on the side of not restricting video games of M rating or below. Anyone who tries to make a law to the contrary either knows they are breaking Constitutional law or just hasn't bothered to do any research on the matter.
What you are talking about is a revolution, the overturning of the American system of government and its replacement by one in which human rights are not held in such high regard. Which has more or less happened, with the Bush administration and his agreement with your opinions about the law (constitution included). However, I'm glad that in some cases judges actually still look at the law when making decisions, as old fashioned as that is.
Oh, and you are British. With a Queen. Who has the right to exercise her veto over legislation( yes, I know she hasn't exercised it... well ever in her life. And I know there's a theory that the reigning monarch only gets to exercise it one last time. However, you all haven't abolished your monarchy yet.).... oh, and an upper house of Parliament based on heredity.
Glass houses, stones throne.
(Love the House of Lords, incidentally, only part of your government that ever seems to do the right thing, lately.)
Oh, and legalized theft is the basis of all communist systems, and also a big part of socialist governments such as your own. Especially of luxuries like laptops.
Still, I will remember you if I'm feeling down on this 4th of July.
Okay now really what does any of that have to do with the fact that guy was making off-topic comments relating to a Bruce who has no relation to the Bruce who is making his final prediction?
The GP attributed a Thomas Friedman metaphor to Milton Friedman....
Which would seem to indicate that we need more on topic posts pointing out that The Lexus and the Olive Tree was a book by Thomas Friedman, not Milton... (if only to stop poor Milton Friedman from spinning in his grave.)
But that doesn't make for great Imperial poetry. In fact, by the end of that paragraph, with its African bunny rabbits, transparent wildebeest and brush-clearance program, poor old Mao is banging his head against the coffin-lid. Mao's corpse is praying to Marx, Stalin, and Kwan-Yin for one day back on Earth, just time enough to liquidate this Friedman, whose hack-work shames ideological poets everywhere. In fact, seismologists detect widespread vibrations as Imperial poets from Virgil to Kipling batter their coffin-lids, screaming in agony, as Friedman drones on.
-- John Dolan, "Do Fries Come with this Tripe?"
Years ago, I subscribed to a magazine called Maximum Linux. It was a fun magazine, with projects like builing an MP3 server for your car and the like. They even had coups like getting a former producer of Genesis games to allow them to include two ROMs of their games for free with an issue of the magazine that had an article about emulators and emulator software on the accompanying disk.
Well, obviously, this magazine ended up going under, and rather than refund my money, the publisher thought I might like a subscription to Wired. And what was in the first issue I got? An article that basically bashed Linux for not being effectively monetized or something.
I sent them a rather stern letter cancelling my subscription, and asking why they would think that someone who had been subscribing to a Linux hobbyist magazine would want a magazine like Wired. Fortunately, I got my refund.
This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.
Friedman doesn't seem to know that cattle herds aren't usually guided by bloodhounds. But the clumsiness of his metaphors is part of his job. He's here to threaten those who seem reluctant to join the herd. Who wants subtlety from a leg-breaker? The cruder the metaphor, the more frightening. Good poets don't make good goons. And Friedman is pure goon, brass-knuckled platitudes all the way. Like a Naked Gun voiceover, he lets his violent metaphors stampede where they will. One of the most ham-handed metaphorical panics is what happens to this "electronic herd." Within pages of its introduction, the "herd" is transformed from cattle to wildebeest, grazing the Savannah. Ah, but that's only the beginning.
See, this is why I don't like to argue with legal and constitutional scholars like yourself.
You've made a good point about why ignoring the supreme law of the land when we feel like it is a great idea, but ignoring laws that are less important is not.
You've really put me in my place. What a mind you have!
I don't understand, does this guy keep getting modded down because he's explaining what the actual laws say and not what people on Slashdot wish they would say?
The mods today remind me of my girlfriend when I tell her we can't afford something...
Oh, and since we're going to ignore the supreme law of the land, can I also ignore little laws that I don't feel should apply to me? For example, I'd really like a new laptop but I can't really afford it, I think I'll go steal one.
Of course, a lot of people who don't have a problem with ignoring the Constitution would have a problem with me ignoring some piddling local law against shoplifting. I'll never understand why that is.
I've know a lot of Vietnamese people, and I know even more Thais. Their grasp of the English language is generally not as good as most of the Indian people I've know. They are sincere, hardworking and intelligent, but there are large numbers of them that won't be able to communicate with the home office. (Mind you, if the French wanted to outsource, they'd have it made in the shade.)
The alternative would be to find other third world countries that used to be crushed under Albion's heel. I can think of Burma off hand, but I'm not sure if they are a viable option. I'm not sure what other countries fall into this category.
I think you make a mistake in thinking that Lincoln made appeals to anti-slavery sentiment as the basis for the Civil War. In fact, what he relied on was American nationalism, centered around the semi-mystical concept of the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation was a simple military tactic by which he hope to provoke an insurgency in the South where much of the population was enslaved (which is why the Emancipation Proclamation only encompassed rebel states and territories). Lincoln was not particularly against slavery. His solution to the problem of what to do with slaves in the post Civil War South were what we nowadays refer to as ethnic cleansing (shipping them out of the country).
There were genuine abolitionists of course, but the best ones tended to be considered radical nutcases by the mainstream political establishment of the day. After the war, the only way the Republicans could control the unruly South, aside from carpetbaggers, was to enfranchise the only part of the population that had no loyalty toward the Confederacy or the pre-War South, the recently freed slaves.
Actually, both Vonnegut and Heller were writing from bitter, bitter real life experience. So, their stories were fiction (I assume that Vonnegut was never kidnapped by extraterrestrials), but they had the ring of truth.
Oh, it is in poor taste, absolutely, but so is most soldier humor.
Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
It's not surprising why SEGA wasn't able to replicate that success.
SEGA died.
What we call SEGA these days is actually SEGA Sammy Holdings a different, and much more unsavory beast.
Development teams were merged, staff was let go, staff left rather than be a part of the new entity.
If Sonic represents the face of SEGA, then it is no wonder that he is a shambling, grotesque abomination lacking the spark of life that the old Sonic had.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm betting the latter, especially since, as you point out, it would be the "few of us left who actually give a shit about our civil liberties" as opposed to a mass uprising.
All this would show is that kids today are no different than kids of any other time period.
If you don't believe it I have two words that should cover it, Apache Chief.
Um... you do realize that this is an Evangelical game made by Christians, yes? The Christians are the good guys. It's based on the bestselling Left Behind series, and the Christians in the game are fighting a defensive war against the forces of the anti-Christ.
In this case, the educated Greek slave had certain expectations about their treatment during slavery, of course. Not that the Roman master was bound to respect them.
No, it's not a Japanese game.
If you are worshipping the demons, the game is Satanic.
If you are shooting at them, it is not.
However, one of my favorite RTSs allows me to play as the Soviet Union, and another allows me to command armies of demon worshiping psychos, so I'm all for tolerance.
It's sad that games have to be cut for the American market while European countries allow them to be kept intact. But that won't change even if we were to ignore the Constitution and allow them to be legally restricted from minors.
I think the problem here is like a story I once read. These scientists open a portal to an alternate universe that looks like a quaint Victorian version of our universe and they see a cute little Victorian family sitting down to a picnic. One guy thinks it looks so great that he jumps through. Well, the cute little Victorian family proceeds to gruesomely tear him apart and eat him.
I think Europeans looking at our country think that it is somehow analogous to their countries. They see people who basically look European, and speak English, and they think, "Oh, America is something like England." But no, much of our country is filled with ravening, insane monsters. Legally restricting games from minors would be the first step in pressuring stores to remove them from the shelves. Even though their contents was no worse than, say, The Girl Next Door or an episode of I Clauvdivs. Understand, there are parts of our country where contraceptives aren't stocked in pharmacies. There are types of contraceptives that are hard to get in the US.
Just ask Jesus Castillo, whether he could sell and adult comic book, from a roped off part of his store, to an adult without consequences.
Sorry for jumping on you about the Constitution thing, though I stand by what I said. Hey, you try living in here for a few years... it's the kind of thing you really have to experience for yourself over a period of time....
o/~ We'll hang Burt Cates to a sour apple tree, our
Lord is marching on! Glory, glory, hallelujah o/~
It's the law!
It's not a bunch of nice suggestions that we can take or leave as we feel like it, it's the law. It is possible to change it, but it isn't easy, and has been done very rarely. Sure Amendments are suggested, they mostly fail.
In other words, we are not talking about a holy document here, we are talking about the law. Oh, and at this point it is firmly settled law without even any wiggle room as far as interpretation, as precedent after precedent has come down on the side of not restricting video games of M rating or below. Anyone who tries to make a law to the contrary either knows they are breaking Constitutional law or just hasn't bothered to do any research on the matter.
What you are talking about is a revolution, the overturning of the American system of government and its replacement by one in which human rights are not held in such high regard. Which has more or less happened, with the Bush administration and his agreement with your opinions about the law (constitution included). However, I'm glad that in some cases judges actually still look at the law when making decisions, as old fashioned as that is.
Oh, and you are British. With a Queen. Who has the right to exercise her veto over legislation( yes, I know she hasn't exercised it... well ever in her life. And I know there's a theory that the reigning monarch only gets to exercise it one last time. However, you all haven't abolished your monarchy yet.).... oh, and an upper house of Parliament based on heredity.
Glass houses, stones throne.
(Love the House of Lords, incidentally, only part of your government that ever seems to do the right thing, lately.)
Oh, and legalized theft is the basis of all communist systems, and also a big part of socialist governments such as your own. Especially of luxuries like laptops.
Still, I will remember you if I'm feeling down on this 4th of July.
Which would seem to indicate that we need more on topic posts pointing out that The Lexus and the Olive Tree was a book by Thomas Friedman, not Milton... (if only to stop poor Milton Friedman from spinning in his grave.)
Well, obviously, this magazine ended up going under, and rather than refund my money, the publisher thought I might like a subscription to Wired. And what was in the first issue I got? An article that basically bashed Linux for not being effectively monetized or something.
I sent them a rather stern letter cancelling my subscription, and asking why they would think that someone who had been subscribing to a Linux hobbyist magazine would want a magazine like Wired. Fortunately, I got my refund.
You've made a good point about why ignoring the supreme law of the land when we feel like it is a great idea, but ignoring laws that are less important is not.
You've really put me in my place. What a mind you have!
For professionally developed games, I recommend Ooga Booga... (Oh, and an import CD player and Shenmue II and Vampire Collection)...
Don't forget the VGA cable!
The mods today remind me of my girlfriend when I tell her we can't afford something...
Oh, and since we're going to ignore the supreme law of the land, can I also ignore little laws that I don't feel should apply to me? For example, I'd really like a new laptop but I can't really afford it, I think I'll go steal one.
Of course, a lot of people who don't have a problem with ignoring the Constitution would have a problem with me ignoring some piddling local law against shoplifting. I'll never understand why that is.
The alternative would be to find other third world countries that used to be crushed under Albion's heel. I can think of Burma off hand, but I'm not sure if they are a viable option. I'm not sure what other countries fall into this category.
There were genuine abolitionists of course, but the best ones tended to be considered radical nutcases by the mainstream political establishment of the day. After the war, the only way the Republicans could control the unruly South, aside from carpetbaggers, was to enfranchise the only part of the population that had no loyalty toward the Confederacy or the pre-War South, the recently freed slaves.
Oh, it is in poor taste, absolutely, but so is most soldier humor.
You didn't think Slaughterhouse 5, Catch 22, or Blackadder Goes Forth were funny?
"IED-like device" supposedly found near Cincinnati
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
Memorable Quotes from Office Space
SEGA died.
What we call SEGA these days is actually SEGA Sammy Holdings a different, and much more unsavory beast.
Development teams were merged, staff was let go, staff left rather than be a part of the new entity.
If Sonic represents the face of SEGA, then it is no wonder that he is a shambling, grotesque abomination lacking the spark of life that the old Sonic had.
Although, honestly, I don't see how a company which is "Realizing group synergies" can go wrong.