Okay... so the richest 10% of the nation are paying up to 1/3 of the taxes in this nation... I don't see the problem. If you have huge amounts of money, you *SHOULD* pay more taxes than anyone else. The amount of tax money taken out of a 2-million dollar-per year income *SHOULD LOGICALLY* be ALOT more than the portion taken out of a $150,000/year income.
People who are rich have *every* right to be rich... and the poor people have every right to try to become rich, but with wealth comes other obligations, such as higher taxes.
This article (though indeed over-the-top in some places), was extremely interesting, and I think illuminates some very crucial points, that tend to get brushed under the carpet in all the hullabaloo about the campaign itself...
I thought that the "Screenshots" page was pretty cool actually... It's sorta neat to try to go through them and try to relate them to pictures you seen, or video footage, verbal descriptions, etc. It'd be interesting to see like... WWI trench warfare as the soldiers go "over-the-top" of their trenches, or astronauts on the moon, and other memorable scenes.
That may be so, but how then does that make justification of illegal activities right? I'm not defending the record companies, here. I'm saying that people who have MP3's should stop pretending that they are so holier-than-thou. Read the end of my last post. Sure, record companies suck, but that doesnt make what we're doing any less illegal. Stop trying to justify it.
Welp, I'm the first to admit that I have ALOT of MP3's, and I'm also absolutely willing to admit that a good, if not overwhelming portion of them are indeed illegal. However, I think that any attempt to *JUSTIFY* things like Napster is foolish. Having MP3's of copyrighted material that you haven't purchased, irregardless of what your ultimate intentions are, is illegal. Unfortunately, Napster has turned a pretty minor issue into an all-out witch-hunt, with the music industry and various recording artists declaring Jihad against MP3, programs that facilitate trading of MP3's, and people who have MP3's. I think we've passed any point where the music industry and the illegal music scene can ever find any "common ground." There is no "solution" to how Napster has affected the music industry. Sure the record companies are dirty price-gougers, and sure a huge number of people end up purchasing the albums of MP3's they have, and sure lots of artists support MP3, but in the end, all there is to do is accept the fact, if we're playing the illegal music game, that we *ARE* breaking the law in most cases, and stop trying to justify our actions.
Alas, as we all know, science isn't really a "hot campaign topic," so Good George and Honest Al don't really give a rat's ass about it. What NASA needs to get more funding, is some sort of stunning discovery (so that they can whine about not having the funds to fully explore it) or something equivalent to the Cold War, where we've actually got some competition, and national pride is at stake. Maybe Bush, with his whole "expand the military" agenda will toss a few billion to NASA to promote some sort of "space defense" or something... who knows.
I'm not exactly sure by whom you mean "we." These sorts of viewpoints are widespread and have nothing to do with any sort of outdated, archaic mentality. It also has nothing to do with "close-mindedness," or anything like that... it has to do with fear. It has to do with the fact that people see this looming, and apparently growing problem, and can't find an obvious solution to it, and thus feel compelled to point fingers at the easiest thing that comes to mind, in this case violence in video games. It's a matter of people attempting, once again, to legislate morality, which is one of the biggest dangers that I feel this nation is facing. This decision was undoubtably backed by parents, because as parents, they feel that their children are being overexposed to certain things that they don't approve of, and have little control over.
I'm hardly supportive of this kind of legislation. Personally, I think it's one more step towards removing our Constitutional rights in the name of "family values" or some other meaningless phrase.
The upsetting part of all of this, isn't that people feel this way about violent video-games, especially in our society, with the sorts of twisted misconceptions people have about violence, but as you say, it's the fact that such a decision was upheld in the courts that upsets me. The government's job is to prevent this kind of biased legislation from ever being recorded as law, and in this case, they have failed us in their duty. Hopefully this will be taken to higher levels of appeal, and seen as the blind witch-hunting that it is.
You're pointing fingers, give up. If what you were saying was indeed true, after movies such as "Seven" there would be a rash of mutilation killings, etc. These sorts of movies appeal to what is already inside of us: violence. We're the product of millions of years of evolution, but at heart, we're still animals, and how do animals solve their problems? By fighting. The Romans had their Colosseum, the French had their Grand Guginol, we have our Hollywood. Is it violent? Yes. Is it decadent? Yes. Is it unique in the history of mankind? Certainly not.
Of course largely publicized cinematic events like movies may effect our collective consciousness, but to overexaggerate their effects is simply not in anyone's best interest. I've seen plenty of violent films, and I've listened to plenty of violent music, and I've played plenty of violent video games, and so have *COUNTLESS* other people, yet crimes inspired by these things are the exception rather than the rule, and we must remember that, no matter how much we might dislike the relatively few instances where an already unstable individual loses sight of the boundary between fantasy and reality and commits an act inspired by a movie, video game, song, etc.
If we are to expect people to act in a responsible fashion, then we must in turn, judge those actions responsibly.
Personally, I think this sort of stuff (i.e. "Your kids do stuff, and you get the shaft for it") is absolutely insane. I say this from personal experience.
I had pretty good parents. They weren't neglecting or abusive, they did their best to teach me what was right and wrong, etc., but of course, I *DID* do things that they warned me against, things that were indeed out of their control. I don't think that my parents should be held responsible if I go off and do something illegal. All this sort of mentality will promote is even more irresponsible behavior from children, who will begin to realise that buck will be passed onto someone else, so to speak. They won't need to be worried about their actions if someone else will be taking the heat for them.
And of course, not every delinquent child has, at its roots, horrible parents. Many do. Many do not. To steam ahead and punish all parents for the actions of their children is simply irresponsible, and this sort of precedent can be abused insanely: teachers held responsible for some punk who doesn't show up to class getting lousy grades and dropping out, the USPS held accountable when one of their employees snaps and starts shooting, the United States Armed Forces blamed when one deranged soldier rapes a girl off in some foreign land, etc.
To blame parents entirely for the failings of their children, as I see it, is just another instance of finger-pointing and searching for an easy way out.
I certainly hope this version is better than the last one I used (5.1 I think..).. Yeek that was an absolutely horrid office suite, with a shoddy interface and extremely slow on top of that.
I'll cross my fingers...
Of course it isn't "the Internet" or "video games" or whatever that "cause" kids, or anyone else for that matter, to go out and start shooting people. The fact of the matter is that we in America live in a violent culture. Our nation was created through blood, expanded through blood, and defended through blood. We use violence to acheive all sorts of goals: from stopping genocide in the former Yugoslavia to protesting the WTO in Seattle. That's not to say we're unique. Violence exists everywhere. Violence is simply a part of human nature and history. And of course, violence exists in the jungles of Asia and the plains of Africa, where television and the Internet simply don't exist, or haven't reached in large amounts, so obviously television, games, music, etc. don't *cause* our cultural mindset in regards to violence, they reflect it.
It's when politicians and activists turn violence into an excuse to start legislating what people can and cannot watch on television, play on their computers, etc., that we have a problem. Playing Doom or downloading the Anarchist's Cookbook are, of course, harmless acts. Millions upon millions of people each day do these things without a second thought, and exhibit absolutely no violent tendencies.
Politicians, though, love using the actions of a few to justify their own bias, or at least those of the lobbyist who's promising votes or money, and then try to project that bias onto the many. We all know the Internet is not innately harmful, and we all know video games don't cause killing. I think that, for the most part, the politicians know this too. Calling G.W. Bush "stupid" for blaming the Internet for violence is wrong. G.W. Bush is extremely smart for doing that. The stupid ones are the people who will vote for him because of such a bold-faced lie. And these people are just looking for an easy way out, a "simple solution" to a problem that they simply don't know how to solve. It's so much easier to point the finger at Quake and say, "Video-games made him do it!!!" than it is to point at society at large.
I guess the "Golden Rule" in this case, is that if someone is unstable enough to think that the Flak Cannon or Redeemer in Unreal Tournament is an accurate portrayal of real life, and is then inspired to go off and kill someone, or that the Internet is simply a repository for bomb-making instructions, then said person is pretty messed up in the head to begin with.
I'm not sure I understand any of this "WELL REDHAT 7.0 SHOULDNT HAVE HAD ANY BUGS IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!" stuff that's getting posted. *OF COURSE* it's going to have bugs. *NOBODY* can produce flawless software, especially when you're working on something as complex as a Linux distro.
Thankfully, we can all go download the latest RH distro for free, give it a try, and if we don't like it, than we can go back to using what we were before. This contrasts with having to go out and buy a buggy Microsoft (or any other commercial OS for that matter) operating system, and finding out that it doesn't work right, and then having to wait for "service packs" or whatever for those bugs to be fixed.
I'm not trying to say that Red Hat software is perfect, it's not, quite obviously, but expecting them to release absolutely flawless software is not only unrealistic, it's pretty arrogant as well.
Check out www.emusic.com... they have for-sale legal MP3's (perhaps some freebie singles, not sure), and an interesting assortment of genres... I've personally purchased a Painkiller album (Execution Ground), and an Ian Anderson album (The Secret Language of Birds) from emusic.com, if that gives you an idea of some of the more "out there" things that are available. Also, they have some cool special deals now and then... awhile ago, you got a free RaveMP MP3 player + earbud headphones + another pair of Sennheiser headphones for purchasing $25 worth of music or something...
Well, first off, I'll admit that i dont live in, or near SV, and frankly, I'm pretty glad. I live up here in Eugene, OR, a fairly small (comparted to SF, LA, Portland, etc.) liberal/progressive city. We're also seeing alot of these "internet startup" types migrating from the Bay Area to here, because it's "rustic" (compared to the Bay Area), and they're rich enough to afford housing here, which is pretty expensive. I had the (mis)fortune to talk to one of these types the other day, and he, and his friends, who'd migrated with him, were a group of the most pompus fucks I've ever had to suffer in my entire life. They blocked a street with their cars (all BMW's and SUV's) and whined and complained to a police officer when they were asked to move. It was pretty clear that they thought that they were superior to basically everyone around them.
Now, I suppose they're entitled to as much money as they can make, and attitudes like this have been common among the idle rich as long as rich people have existed, and I doubt we can really do anything about it except weather the storm and wait for the "dot.com ecommerce innovation revolution" to come to an end and we can all get on with our lives.
Absolutely agreed. Since it's obvious that we can't change Microsoft or its "innovative" business practices, we have to focus on someone who might be more responsive to our suggestions: i.e. web designers for corporations. If you're using a browser like Opera or Mozilla that doesn't "comply" with Microsoft's "standards" and "innovations," and you run across a website that looks all garbled or doesn't work correctly, send an email to the webmaster, tell them what's wrong, and let them know that if the problem persists, they'll no longer get your business. If a corporation receives enough threats of this kind, it's likely that the site may be redesigned to be more compliant to real standards that everyone can access.
i dont think i'll ever understand why these little asspunks find it necessary to extend their penii by proving how "leet" they are to their kid brother's girlfriend's 12 year old sister. these kind of games make everyone who knows the least thing about computers in generally look bad, and endangering lives is scraping the bottom of the barrel of already poor form. malicious cracking is and always will be a pasttime for common criminals. enough said.
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Okay... so the richest 10% of the nation are paying up to 1/3 of the taxes in this nation... I don't see the problem. If you have huge amounts of money, you *SHOULD* pay more taxes than anyone else. The amount of tax money taken out of a 2-million dollar-per year income *SHOULD LOGICALLY* be ALOT more than the portion taken out of a $150,000/year income.
People who are rich have *every* right to be rich... and the poor people have every right to try to become rich, but with wealth comes other obligations, such as higher taxes.
This article (though indeed over-the-top in some places), was extremely interesting, and I think illuminates some very crucial points, that tend to get brushed under the carpet in all the hullabaloo about the campaign itself...
*-----------*
I thought that the "Screenshots" page was pretty cool actually... It's sorta neat to try to go through them and try to relate them to pictures you seen, or video footage, verbal descriptions, etc. It'd be interesting to see like... WWI trench warfare as the soldiers go "over-the-top" of their trenches, or astronauts on the moon, and other memorable scenes.
That may be so, but how then does that make justification of illegal activities right? I'm not defending the record companies, here. I'm saying that people who have MP3's should stop pretending that they are so holier-than-thou. Read the end of my last post. Sure, record companies suck, but that doesnt make what we're doing any less illegal. Stop trying to justify it.
Welp, I'm the first to admit that I have ALOT of MP3's, and I'm also absolutely willing to admit that a good, if not overwhelming portion of them are indeed illegal. However, I think that any attempt to *JUSTIFY* things like Napster is foolish. Having MP3's of copyrighted material that you haven't purchased, irregardless of what your ultimate intentions are, is illegal. Unfortunately, Napster has turned a pretty minor issue into an all-out witch-hunt, with the music industry and various recording artists declaring Jihad against MP3, programs that facilitate trading of MP3's, and people who have MP3's. I think we've passed any point where the music industry and the illegal music scene can ever find any "common ground." There is no "solution" to how Napster has affected the music industry. Sure the record companies are dirty price-gougers, and sure a huge number of people end up purchasing the albums of MP3's they have, and sure lots of artists support MP3, but in the end, all there is to do is accept the fact, if we're playing the illegal music game, that we *ARE* breaking the law in most cases, and stop trying to justify our actions.
Alas, as we all know, science isn't really a "hot campaign topic," so Good George and Honest Al don't really give a rat's ass about it. What NASA needs to get more funding, is some sort of stunning discovery (so that they can whine about not having the funds to fully explore it) or something equivalent to the Cold War, where we've actually got some competition, and national pride is at stake. Maybe Bush, with his whole "expand the military" agenda will toss a few billion to NASA to promote some sort of "space defense" or something... who knows.
I'm not exactly sure by whom you mean "we." These sorts of viewpoints are widespread and have nothing to do with any sort of outdated, archaic mentality. It also has nothing to do with "close-mindedness," or anything like that... it has to do with fear. It has to do with the fact that people see this looming, and apparently growing problem, and can't find an obvious solution to it, and thus feel compelled to point fingers at the easiest thing that comes to mind, in this case violence in video games. It's a matter of people attempting, once again, to legislate morality, which is one of the biggest dangers that I feel this nation is facing. This decision was undoubtably backed by parents, because as parents, they feel that their children are being overexposed to certain things that they don't approve of, and have little control over.
I'm hardly supportive of this kind of legislation. Personally, I think it's one more step towards removing our Constitutional rights in the name of "family values" or some other meaningless phrase.
The upsetting part of all of this, isn't that people feel this way about violent video-games, especially in our society, with the sorts of twisted misconceptions people have about violence, but as you say, it's the fact that such a decision was upheld in the courts that upsets me. The government's job is to prevent this kind of biased legislation from ever being recorded as law, and in this case, they have failed us in their duty. Hopefully this will be taken to higher levels of appeal, and seen as the blind witch-hunting that it is.
You're pointing fingers, give up. If what you were saying was indeed true, after movies such as "Seven" there would be a rash of mutilation killings, etc. These sorts of movies appeal to what is already inside of us: violence. We're the product of millions of years of evolution, but at heart, we're still animals, and how do animals solve their problems? By fighting. The Romans had their Colosseum, the French had their Grand Guginol, we have our Hollywood. Is it violent? Yes. Is it decadent? Yes. Is it unique in the history of mankind? Certainly not.
Of course largely publicized cinematic events like movies may effect our collective consciousness, but to overexaggerate their effects is simply not in anyone's best interest. I've seen plenty of violent films, and I've listened to plenty of violent music, and I've played plenty of violent video games, and so have *COUNTLESS* other people, yet crimes inspired by these things are the exception rather than the rule, and we must remember that, no matter how much we might dislike the relatively few instances where an already unstable individual loses sight of the boundary between fantasy and reality and commits an act inspired by a movie, video game, song, etc.
If we are to expect people to act in a responsible fashion, then we must in turn, judge those actions responsibly.
Personally, I think this sort of stuff (i.e. "Your kids do stuff, and you get the shaft for it") is absolutely insane. I say this from personal experience.
I had pretty good parents. They weren't neglecting or abusive, they did their best to teach me what was right and wrong, etc., but of course, I *DID* do things that they warned me against, things that were indeed out of their control. I don't think that my parents should be held responsible if I go off and do something illegal. All this sort of mentality will promote is even more irresponsible behavior from children, who will begin to realise that buck will be passed onto someone else, so to speak. They won't need to be worried about their actions if someone else will be taking the heat for them.
And of course, not every delinquent child has, at its roots, horrible parents. Many do. Many do not. To steam ahead and punish all parents for the actions of their children is simply irresponsible, and this sort of precedent can be abused insanely: teachers held responsible for some punk who doesn't show up to class getting lousy grades and dropping out, the USPS held accountable when one of their employees snaps and starts shooting, the United States Armed Forces blamed when one deranged soldier rapes a girl off in some foreign land, etc.
To blame parents entirely for the failings of their children, as I see it, is just another instance of finger-pointing and searching for an easy way out.
I certainly hope this version is better than the last one I used (5.1 I think..).. Yeek that was an absolutely horrid office suite, with a shoddy interface and extremely slow on top of that. I'll cross my fingers...
Of course it isn't "the Internet" or "video games" or whatever that "cause" kids, or anyone else for that matter, to go out and start shooting people. The fact of the matter is that we in America live in a violent culture. Our nation was created through blood, expanded through blood, and defended through blood. We use violence to acheive all sorts of goals: from stopping genocide in the former Yugoslavia to protesting the WTO in Seattle. That's not to say we're unique. Violence exists everywhere. Violence is simply a part of human nature and history. And of course, violence exists in the jungles of Asia and the plains of Africa, where television and the Internet simply don't exist, or haven't reached in large amounts, so obviously television, games, music, etc. don't *cause* our cultural mindset in regards to violence, they reflect it.
It's when politicians and activists turn violence into an excuse to start legislating what people can and cannot watch on television, play on their computers, etc., that we have a problem. Playing Doom or downloading the Anarchist's Cookbook are, of course, harmless acts. Millions upon millions of people each day do these things without a second thought, and exhibit absolutely no violent tendencies.
Politicians, though, love using the actions of a few to justify their own bias, or at least those of the lobbyist who's promising votes or money, and then try to project that bias onto the many. We all know the Internet is not innately harmful, and we all know video games don't cause killing. I think that, for the most part, the politicians know this too. Calling G.W. Bush "stupid" for blaming the Internet for violence is wrong. G.W. Bush is extremely smart for doing that. The stupid ones are the people who will vote for him because of such a bold-faced lie. And these people are just looking for an easy way out, a "simple solution" to a problem that they simply don't know how to solve. It's so much easier to point the finger at Quake and say, "Video-games made him do it!!!" than it is to point at society at large.
I guess the "Golden Rule" in this case, is that if someone is unstable enough to think that the Flak Cannon or Redeemer in Unreal Tournament is an accurate portrayal of real life, and is then inspired to go off and kill someone, or that the Internet is simply a repository for bomb-making instructions, then said person is pretty messed up in the head to begin with.
I'm not sure I understand any of this "WELL REDHAT 7.0 SHOULDNT HAVE HAD ANY BUGS IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!" stuff that's getting posted. *OF COURSE* it's going to have bugs. *NOBODY* can produce flawless software, especially when you're working on something as complex as a Linux distro. Thankfully, we can all go download the latest RH distro for free, give it a try, and if we don't like it, than we can go back to using what we were before. This contrasts with having to go out and buy a buggy Microsoft (or any other commercial OS for that matter) operating system, and finding out that it doesn't work right, and then having to wait for "service packs" or whatever for those bugs to be fixed. I'm not trying to say that Red Hat software is perfect, it's not, quite obviously, but expecting them to release absolutely flawless software is not only unrealistic, it's pretty arrogant as well.
Check out www.emusic.com... they have for-sale legal MP3's (perhaps some freebie singles, not sure), and an interesting assortment of genres... I've personally purchased a Painkiller album (Execution Ground), and an Ian Anderson album (The Secret Language of Birds) from emusic.com, if that gives you an idea of some of the more "out there" things that are available. Also, they have some cool special deals now and then... awhile ago, you got a free RaveMP MP3 player + earbud headphones + another pair of Sennheiser headphones for purchasing $25 worth of music or something...
Well, first off, I'll admit that i dont live in, or near SV, and frankly, I'm pretty glad. I live up here in Eugene, OR, a fairly small (comparted to SF, LA, Portland, etc.) liberal/progressive city. We're also seeing alot of these "internet startup" types migrating from the Bay Area to here, because it's "rustic" (compared to the Bay Area), and they're rich enough to afford housing here, which is pretty expensive. I had the (mis)fortune to talk to one of these types the other day, and he, and his friends, who'd migrated with him, were a group of the most pompus fucks I've ever had to suffer in my entire life. They blocked a street with their cars (all BMW's and SUV's) and whined and complained to a police officer when they were asked to move. It was pretty clear that they thought that they were superior to basically everyone around them.
Now, I suppose they're entitled to as much money as they can make, and attitudes like this have been common among the idle rich as long as rich people have existed, and I doubt we can really do anything about it except weather the storm and wait for the "dot.com ecommerce innovation revolution" to come to an end and we can all get on with our lives.
Absolutely agreed. Since it's obvious that we can't change Microsoft or its "innovative" business practices, we have to focus on someone who might be more responsive to our suggestions: i.e. web designers for corporations. If you're using a browser like Opera or Mozilla that doesn't "comply" with Microsoft's "standards" and "innovations," and you run across a website that looks all garbled or doesn't work correctly, send an email to the webmaster, tell them what's wrong, and let them know that if the problem persists, they'll no longer get your business. If a corporation receives enough threats of this kind, it's likely that the site may be redesigned to be more compliant to real standards that everyone can access.
My spelling in the above post is about as deplorable as these hacker attacks.
i dont think i'll ever understand why these little asspunks find it necessary to extend their penii by proving how "leet" they are to their kid brother's girlfriend's 12 year old sister. these kind of games make everyone who knows the least thing about computers in generally look bad, and endangering lives is scraping the bottom of the barrel of already poor form. malicious cracking is and always will be a pasttime for common criminals. enough said.