Here's a line of questioning that should leave the religious right stammering:
I understand that you don't want your daughter having pre-marital sex. I understand that you teach those values in your home, and that you don't want her to get the message that pre-marital sex is okay. But let me ask you a few questions.
How do you know that your daughter is going to follow the guidelines you've laid down?
How do you know that her husband will be faithful to her?
How do you know that your daughter will never be sexually assaulted?
Even if her contact with this potentially fatal virus is caused by her own poor choices--rather than by events beyond her control--are you willing to deny her a vaccine that might keep her mistake from being a fatal one?
If you're worried about the "message" this vaccine is sending, is it really so hard to talk to your daughter about why this vaccine is important to her health, and why it shouldn't be seen as encouragement for pre-marital sex?
I guess that the last question is hardly rhetorical for a group of people who aren't comfortable even using the word "sex", or engaging their kids about any sexual topic more controversial than "Britney Spears really ought to wear more clothing."
How is this vaccine being forced on anyone? As far as I know, parents have the right to refuse the vaccine for their kids, and I doubt anyone is suggesting that kids can be kicked out of school for not getting the vaccine.
It's frustrating to me to see the vaccine manufacturer (which stands to reap boatloads of money) being so influential in these proposals to mandate the vaccine, and it's doubly frustrating that there is so little discussion about whether a $400/shot vaccine is the most effective use of our health dollars. But I don't sympathize at all with the idea that the government is forcing a decision on you, simply by making the vaccine "free and opt-out" rather than "expensive and opt-in".
Re:There will always be piracy
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DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You forgot a fourth reason, and the one which inspired this article in the first place:
4) The illegally obtained file is less restricted and more useful than its for-pay equivalent. In short, you're choosing between paying nothing for a better product and paying something for a more frustrating, restrictive product.
That's what they mean when they say, "DRM promotes piracy." If someone sells me an unencumbered file at a reasonable price, I'll accept it happily and move on. But if someone sells me a file that I'm allowed to play for a period no longer than five (5) years, on no more than two (2) authorized devices running our patented Music-N-Abled software... well, if I really, really feel that the artist deserves support, I might buy it before searching out an unencumbered file on BitTorrent. But either way, if I want it, I'm going to search out a file that does what I want, rather than waiting for the distributor to try and sell me the same product over and over again.
You seem to want to interpret the statement "DRM promotes piracy" in a completely different way, that makes DRM responsible for every instance of piracy. I'm going to chalk it up to poor reading comprehension.
Way to pummel that straw man. How many people do you really think looked at the title and imagined hordes of geeks stumbling, zombie-like, to their computers, their clicking mouses driven by some external force as they fired up their Bittorrent clients and stared in stark revulsion as their fingers typed "Christina Aguilera" into the search box?
Then your counterargument: people decide for themselves. Absolutely trite. Is it any less attractive for those wicked, naughty "social engineers" if people are using their free will? No, so long as imposing a rule makes it almost certain that more people will "freely choose" the preferred course of action.
Example: Say that as a "social engineer" (a sneering, insulting, and meaningless term) you plan two new communities. In the first, that there are vast swaths of tract housing, connected to distant shopping and business centers via wide, car-friendly roads. In the second, housing is more compact, business and shopping are within walking distance, biking and jogging paths are common, and roads are narrow and winding to discourage speeding. Obviously one is designed to encourage car travel, and the other to encourage walking and biking. The designs will probably work, not because you used your evil engineering skills to override the free will of the population, but because you looked at the way people make travel decisions, and designed the incentives accordingly.
So getting back to the article: The basic thrust is that DRM users are doing very poorly in designing incentives that would make people likely to choose their products. If they sold non-DRM'ed products, users would be treated to a better experience. By selling with DRM, they frustrate their customers, and make their pirated competition more attractive.
In short, people know what "causes" actually means, your objection is irrelevant and unenlightening, and I have no life whatsoever.
Re:Call me a stickler for language...
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DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 1
I stopped reading the moment you used the word "disincentivizing." Good thing you waited until the last sentence.
Crystal meth is manufactured here in the United States, by hard-working individual entrepreneurs. Meth labs are state-of-the-art examples of good old-fashioned American ingenuity and knowhow, often run by couples with families. It's difficult to run a successful meth manufacturing startup, especially in the face of burdensome government regulations, yet tens of thousands of people overcome the odds every year. In doing so, they provide the valuable product that millions of customers use to increase their personal productivity, turbocharging our national economy.
1) You have no evidence that the average person downloading Display Eater is warned of the potential damage beforehand. I've read the articles, and the comments so far. Nothing indicates that the users are guaranteed (or even likely) to be warned. The only warning comes from an independent software tracking/review site, which is certainly not the only way for people to discover the steaming pile o' radioactive crap that is Display Eater.
2) Say I own a grocery store, and I post a sign on the front door saying, "If you walk in here with muddy feet, I'll shoot your dog," and then follow up on the threat. Just because I warned you ahead of time doesn't matter; I'm still dishing out vigilante justice. If you think you can legitimize extralegal behavior simply by warning people ahead of time, your understanding of our legal system is... lacking. Or maybe you live in a country where they don't have one.
3) As I said before, there is no evidence that he warns the user, so most users will probably not be able to "take it into account". Even if there were, there are these pesky things called "consumer protection laws" that often say that the seller cannot do something, regardless of whether the buyer is warned that it is being done.
4) He has the right to disagree with piracy, and take any legal means to stop it. The means he is using are very likely illegal in the extreme.
I didn't say there weren't situations that warranted that conclusion.
But that's not all you said. You said the kid was "born bad." By refusing to even engage that point, you're avoiding admitting the simple truth: there is no way you can know that.
Explain to me precisely how you know this. Explain to me how you know that there is nothing anyone anywhere could have done differently to change the personality that eventually developed in this kid.
Actually, don't bother starting. You can't. You're making at least one of a multitude of possible logical mistakes. Most likely, it's the one where the term "environment" is rigidly, narrowly defined as "parenting techniques". In fact, "environment" is far broader, and doesn't always boil down to "blame the parents".
It might have been something the kid was exposed to in utero. That could be something socially frowned upon, like alcohol, smoking, or drug use. It might be some chemicals his mother came into contact with. It could have been loud noises.
It might have been an unusual reaction to a seemingly normal environmental factor. Just an entirely hypothetical example: imagine if too much TV caused autism, but only in people with a certain genetic profile? You can't say that the child was "born autistic," because carrying the gene didn't doom the child to autism. Nor can you blame the environment by itself, because that environment poses no risk to people who don't carry the gene. Nature and nurture aren't just ratios; they interact in surprising ways.
When you say, "born bad," you're basically suggesting that there was no alternative set of environmental exposures that could have mitigated the kid's disorder. That's an unprovable hypothesis. Nor is it relevant to deciding what to do with the kid now. Even if it turned out that the kid was severely abused as a kid, that doesn't mean that counseling can undo the damage that was done to him.
You want to put the blame on the kid. I understand why that's tempting, and maybe that's the best place to put it. But trying to assign blame is really a distraction--one that the entire judicial system seems to get hung up on. The real question is, "Is there some avenue of treatment that would fix him? Or is the best outcome achieved by keeping him locked up?"
It sounds like you may be confusing evolutionary benefits on two levels: useful to the individual, and useful to society as a whole.
For example, it may be that a given set of behaviors is useful to an individual, but only within an environment where most people don't exhibit the behavior. For example, in the standard Prisoners' Dilemma game, say that a player carries an "always defect" gene (D). If everyone else he might be paired with carries the "always cooperate" gene (C), then he'll always receive a beneficial outcome. If everyone else also carries the C gene, though, then he'll always receive a negative outcome. The C gene can survive the existence of some number of D individuals, but when defectors reach a certain proportion of the population, the C gene becomes a definite liability, because the risk of being paired with a defector becomes too great.
With ASPD, society may function best when nobody has it, and couldn't function at all if everyone had it. But society may merely be coping with ASPD'ers, rather than actively benefitting from their behavior.
> Blindness is also potentially beneficial as it allows the brain to use the energy normally devoted to sight and apply it to other senses that may or may not be beneficial.
It sounds like you're simply making this bit up. While I'm sure there may be certain positive benefits to blindness, it seems that they are far outweighed by the negatives. Can you find a peer-reviewed paper making this case?
> Genetic defects are only defects because they are different than the current definition of normal.
Another interesting example is Tay-Sachs. While a double dose of the gene leads to swift death, some preliminary studies suggest that having a single dose of the "defective" gene grants a noticeable boost in IQ.
But don't make the mistake of implying that our definition of "normal" is arbitrary. Genetic defects usually are called such because they seriously break some important system in the body.
You need to RTFAABMC (RTFA A Bit More Carefully) yourself. A 49 year old homeless man could be described as many things, but "kid" is not one of them.
It sounds like the kid is a murderous bastard, but also an adept manipulator of the system you jump to criticize. This sounds like a singularly dangerous kid, who posed a real threat to the people around him, and who didn't get anything resembling the help he needed. Maybe he got a lot of attention from "the system", but not in the form that would be useful to him, because he was good at tricking that system into seeing him as something he was not. That's not a hard thing to do when the system is already overworked, and already faced with case after case of real child abuse.
So I'm annoyed by your conclusion, "they were too lenient, not too restrictive." As if a huge and complex social problem could be solved by simply turning a dial more towards the "restrictive" setting. The "real trouble" wasn't that the system refused to lock the kid away. The real trouble was that the system didn't know how to help him, and that it is laden with biases that are advantageous in some cases, but horribly wrong in this one. Maybe this kid is an impossible case, and removing him from the rest of society would have been the best thing. Or maybe some time in a specific environment could redeem him. But it sounds like your criticism of "permissive government policies"--ignoring the difficulty and thanklessness of the jobs that implement those policies--boil down to an anger at society for not giving up on kids quickly enough.
We need the system to be more intelligent, not just more harsh.
No, the "whole point" of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-as-in-speech encyclopedia. The "open for anyone to edit" policy is simply the means.
Anything posted with the intent of interfering with that goal (misleading information, spam links, etc.) is rightly called vandalism. Your mistake is in assuming that, because the same word is used, we're supposed to treat it as the same sort of property crime that occurs when a kid spraypaints a local McDonalds.
On a tangentially related note, I was looking to see if the libelous paragraphs could still be found in older versions of Zoeller's entry. I can't find them, but I did find this:
Zoeller is also notable for endorsing the Prosthipenis, a penile prosthetic for men whose genitals have been irreparably damaged, saying "it really turned my life around, I feel like a man again for the first time since that awful belt-sander accident".
Then Zoeller smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away. Then he turned and added, "or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve." In reference to the food, Zoeller was referring to the following year's Master's Club Champion's Dinner. The defending champion selects the menu. Incidentally, Woods chose collard greens, pigs feet, chitlin, grits, hams hock, ribs, watermelon, grape kool-aid, fried catfish, sweet potato pie, hush puppies, olde english to wash it all down.
There's a rather long edit war revolving around this one.
Another ongoing debate: whether Zoeller's remarks about Tiger Woods were "racist", "controversial", "politically incorrect", "inappropriate", or "hilarious".
I'm curious why you felt compelled to set up Rails with Apache on your home systems. I've always found the pre-installed WebBrick server better for home development.
Inter-country comparisons are difficult, because there are so many possible hidden factors that might skew the results. While I'm very suspicious of the alleged link between vaccines and autism, you describe the study in such a way that it sounds like it proves nothing.
What "obvious tricks" did I use? When did I ever hide my true opinions about anything? I said the Iraqi occupation was harming our own interests, and I believe that. I said that keeping a huge nuclear stockpile is harming our own interests, and I believe that. I said that ratcheting down our military expenditures might make the world safer, and I believe that. I said that our unwillingness to let other countries choose to decide for themselves whether to experiment with socialism has been harmful to ourselves and to other countries, and I believe that as well.
But you seem to think you know my "real agenda." In your mind, I really object to these things in order to weaken the United States, to give "our enemies" leverage to take over the United States and turn it into a workers' paradise. No? Then what are these "real ideas" that I'm hiding? That capitalism is pure evil and communism is the ideal? Why would I use sham intellectualism to mask opinions I don't actually hold?
Now back off, or I'll be forced to stoop to your level and accuse you of secretly wanting to bear Sam Walton's love child.
I didn't suggest "unilateral disarmament". I suggested nuclear disarmament, which is an obligation we have under the NNPT (the same treaty we're using to brow-beat Iran). By violating the treaty ourselves, we undermine the goals of the treaty, and pave the way for a world full of nuclear nations with itchy trigger fingers. How we will be safer in such a world, I leave to you to explain.
As we reduce our own nuclear stockpile (and given the detterent power of the four or five nukes possessed by North Korea, we certainly don't need 10,000 for our own defense) we would simultaneously be using diplomatic and even military measures to keep other nations in compliance. Our abiding by the terms of the NNPT will make it harder for others not to abide by those terms, and put some moral force behind whatever actions we take to enforce it on others. Your hand-waving to the contrary, disarmament is very much in our own best interests.
As for whether we make the world more dangerous rather than less, the last time we left Europe more or less alone they started two World Wars. Your argument is not compelling.
Yeah, because Europe today is exactly the same as Europe of 100 years ago, and the United States' foreign policy today is exactly the same as it was 100 years ago. You're basically saying, "Look at all the wars we didn't start! It's non-responses like this that make me wonder if you even believe your own words.
Regarding Nicaragua: The United States funded a paramilitary force whose objective was the overthrow of the Sandinistas, and whose actions frequently qualified as "terrorism." The government being overthrown, while of a socialist flavor, did not seek to align itself with the Soviet Union or implement one-party rule, and held democratic elections.* The evidence for similar Soviet meddling is sparse, and mostly based on the claims of an important Soviet defector named Vasili Mitrokhin. Our support for the Somoza regime (basically a family of election-rigging dictators) was unconscionable, and it's pretty clear that the Sandistas had far more popular support and democratic character than the regime they overthrew. But U.S. foriegn policy is such that a dictator who does what we say is superior to an electorate that doesn't.
Regarding Saddam: while the people shredder may or may not have existed (and your uncritical acceptance of it certainly marks you as being as gullible as myself), nobody is denying that Saddam's rule was brutal and murderous. But I stand by my assertion that more Iraqis are dying right now than would have if we'd continued our policy of containment towards Hussein. His estimated body count ranges from 300,000-1,000,000** over the course of twenty years. Meanwhile, the Lancet report estimates 600,000 deaths arising after our invasion four years ago. So even without taking into account casualties from the first Gulf War or from the subsequent embargo, we're already approaching body count parity.
Of course, nobody actually wanted to see a civil war break out. It's just that our fearless leaders in the White House were so obsessed with making the invasion a reality, that they didn't listen to anyone who warned that it might be a possibility.
It must be comforting to the Iraqis to know that they're dying for freedom now.
I recognize your kind, too. You're simply an unapologetic proponent of what they call "American Exceptionalism". It's the simple belief that the United States is uniquely good in its character. When expressed as a foreign policy, it amounts to the claim that the U.S. is always noble in its intentions and goals, and usually laudable in its implementation.
The hallmarks of this ideology include a belief that it is downright heretical to judge the actions of the United States by any norms of international conduct, much less be held accountable to such norms. No matter that we happily use
If the U.S. were to do as you suggest, I'm sure that the "freeloading" countries would have to increase their military expenditures somewhat. But I'm doubtful that they'd be sorry to see us do it. For one thing, the military actions of the United States often make the world more dangerous, not less. For example, I don't see any action on our parts to get rid of our ten-thousand warhead nuclear arsenal, despite our promise to do so when we ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This calls into question the very premise of the treaty, and the questions grow louder when we provide technical support to countries like India, which possess the bomb in violation of the treaty.
More examples: in the eighties, the U.S. government decided that the Sandinistas of Nicaragua were puppets of the Soviets, and sought to overthrow them by funding the Contras. Tens of thousands dead because of Reagan and the domino theory. But at least we kept a foreign nation from choosing Communism-lite.
Then we come to our interdictions in the Middle East. Make no mistake, our actions there have primarily been targeted at ensuring access to oil for ourselves and (to a lesser extent) our allies. Have they made the world a safer place? Certainly more people have died in Iraq because of our meddling (from the first Gulf War, to the disastrous embargo, to our ill-conceived invasion in 2003) than Saddam could have possibly killed directly. Our invasion of Iraq on a flimsy pretense of WMDs has done nothing but provide encouragement to countries like Iran and North Korea in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. The message is loud and clear: If you don't have nukes, we'll pretend you do and invade. If you do have nukes, we'll negotiate. So get them while we're distracted with this Iraqi quagmire.
How much of these supposedly necessary military expenditures, which you see as properly shouldered by foreign governments, are actually necessary only as a result of our own extreme militarization? We spend as much on our military as the rest of the world combined, which forces other nations to spend more to protect their own interests, and our ham-handed, self-interested interventions have made the world less stable and less safe, requiring still more expenditures.
Nothing is perfect in this world, but as far as I can tell, socialist democracies do a better job of giving their people what they want. Capitalistic democracies seem to do better at giving the business elite what they want.
How about the "appeal to authority" fallacy? You're damning an entire approach to government, and all you have to offer is one liberterian economist's say-so.
Mises' main premise is that socialism cannot work because it is impossible for a socialist government to get all the information needed to make correct economic decisions. That's an important consideration, but hardly an ironclad law. First, socialism doesn't necessarily require a top-down, command-and-control approach to decision making. Second, there are a litany of examples of markets coming to obviously wrongheaded decisions. Finally, is socialism really any worse than the bastardized capitalism we have in the U.S., where corporations go running for government handouts and legislation to protect themselves from their own mistakes?
I'll make you a deal. I'll pay more attention to people like Mises, Hayek, and Friedman, if you'll brush up on Stiglitz, Keynes, and Krugman. But if your entire argument is "I've got a highly influential economist who says all of socialism is broken," then I leave you to your pseudointellectual name-dropping.
Why the preference? Especially in a country where there is an unfortunate amount of overlap between government and corporate power.
Next question: Why do you think that the government would have to have undue influence on the tone or content of Wikipedia? It's clearly possible to set up entities within the government that have a great deal of independence and autonomy, just as it is in corporations.
I don't particularly see public funding of Wikipedia as a great idea, but not for the reasons you cite.
I understand that. I mean, until the wonders of science include a salve that eases heartache while making you smell cinnamon-fresh. But "you'll get your heart broken and spend the next three months locked in your room, crying" is somewhat weaker leverage than, "you'll grow hair on your palms, your genitalia will fall off, and you'll die of syphillis in a Mexican brothel." Plus, the abstinence-only folks understand that kids are going to brush off such warnings with a non-chalant "I'm an exception," or "I'm unusually mature," or "Scott really, really does love me."
If the primary goal is to get kids to abstain from sexual behavior, then realistic, measured warnings won't cut it. Since you have to short-circuit a primary human drive, you have to counter with an appeal to another primary drive, the fear of death. I'm not condoning it, especially since I believe that the goal is to keep kids safe, not to keep them virgins. But I understand why they use the tactics they so often do.
I think we're all humor-impaired. The Internet manages to browbeat our sense of irony by exposing us to legions of people who sincerely, wholeheartedly believe all sorts of "you've got to be frakkin' kidding" ideas.
For the record, I wasn't describing anything that has personally happened to me. I was describing "stereotypical extreme stupid party behavior", self-consciously using the words "like" and "totally" in an attempt at humor.
You'll have to trust me when I say that it was kind of funny before I went and explained it to death.:)
People like that--people who outspokenly relish in the suffering and frustration they cause other gamers--are a major turn-off for many would-be multiplayers. Especially when they know that they'll probably never have the skill necessary to deliver some oh-so-satisfying payback.
From the time I was six, I was taught to be gracious when I won, or else people wouldn't want to play against me anymore. Judging from my multiplayer experiences, an entire generation of inept typists were never taught that lesson.
* Nobody in the party lives within 370 miles of you, so no matter how well you hit it off with a person, you can't follow up with a real life date or activity. * Unless you plan ahead, you get dumped into a "party" full of strangers, who all see you as either a bug to be squashed, or as an X factor who could screw up their team by your ego or incompetence. * Partygoers are 95% male, 80% egomaniacs, and 93% morons who spl lk ths wtf lol!!!!1
Face it. If multiplayer gaming is a party, it's a really bad one. Go to the ones where your best friend gets drunk and makes out with your girlfriend, and your girlfriend is all like, what's the big deal? and then that one hot chick goes around telling everybody, but only so that they'll talk about that instead of the fact that her ex is totally getting back together with his old ex from high school. Once you've got that sort of drama going, you'll find it's way more interesting than trying to climb some FPS kill ladder.
You're right. When I play a game and enjoy it, I think to myself, "Self, what would make this enjoyable experience complete for me? By jove, I've got it! Spending months and months getting my ass handed to me on a platter, game in, game out, until that sweet, miraculous day when I find myself winning almost as many games as I'm losing. Once I've spent thousands of hours honing the sacred craft that is this particular RTS/FSP, learning every technique to gain an edge over some random fifteen year old in Akron, Ohio, then--and only then--can I be happy and satisfied, knowing that I am... well, not the best, exactly, or even in the top twenty thousand, but at least far better than average. Plus it'll get me crazy laid."
Methinks I shouldn't have cranked the sarcasm up to 11. But when you've reached the ripe old age of 30, and the real life responsibilities pile on, you may find that you begin to lose patience with games that expect you to spend lots of time honing your skills. You may also find less and less attraction in subjecting yourself to the abuses of people who spend all their waking hours mastering something that you can only find a few hours a week for. Hell, you might even find that your real life pursuits bring you the sort of lasting satisfaction that makes successful gaming pale in comparison.
My point isn't to disparage your choice of hobbies, but simply to point out that hypercompetitive folks like yourself are something of an anomaly, even among gamers. A lot of us just want to participate in an epic yarn, where we beat the big boss and save the princess, and get a few hours of entertainment that don't seem like work. Multiplayer doesn't have universal appeal, and game publishers forget that fact at their peril.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a line of questioning that should leave the religious right stammering:
I understand that you don't want your daughter having pre-marital sex. I understand that you teach those values in your home, and that you don't want her to get the message that pre-marital sex is okay. But let me ask you a few questions.
How do you know that your daughter is going to follow the guidelines you've laid down?
How do you know that her husband will be faithful to her?
How do you know that your daughter will never be sexually assaulted?
Even if her contact with this potentially fatal virus is caused by her own poor choices--rather than by events beyond her control--are you willing to deny her a vaccine that might keep her mistake from being a fatal one?
If you're worried about the "message" this vaccine is sending, is it really so hard to talk to your daughter about why this vaccine is important to her health, and why it shouldn't be seen as encouragement for pre-marital sex?
I guess that the last question is hardly rhetorical for a group of people who aren't comfortable even using the word "sex", or engaging their kids about any sexual topic more controversial than "Britney Spears really ought to wear more clothing."
How is this vaccine being forced on anyone? As far as I know, parents have the right to refuse the vaccine for their kids, and I doubt anyone is suggesting that kids can be kicked out of school for not getting the vaccine.
It's frustrating to me to see the vaccine manufacturer (which stands to reap boatloads of money) being so influential in these proposals to mandate the vaccine, and it's doubly frustrating that there is so little discussion about whether a $400/shot vaccine is the most effective use of our health dollars. But I don't sympathize at all with the idea that the government is forcing a decision on you, simply by making the vaccine "free and opt-out" rather than "expensive and opt-in".
You forgot a fourth reason, and the one which inspired this article in the first place:
4) The illegally obtained file is less restricted and more useful than its for-pay equivalent. In short, you're choosing between paying nothing for a better product and paying something for a more frustrating, restrictive product.
That's what they mean when they say, "DRM promotes piracy." If someone sells me an unencumbered file at a reasonable price, I'll accept it happily and move on. But if someone sells me a file that I'm allowed to play for a period no longer than five (5) years, on no more than two (2) authorized devices running our patented Music-N-Abled software... well, if I really, really feel that the artist deserves support, I might buy it before searching out an unencumbered file on BitTorrent. But either way, if I want it, I'm going to search out a file that does what I want, rather than waiting for the distributor to try and sell me the same product over and over again.
You seem to want to interpret the statement "DRM promotes piracy" in a completely different way, that makes DRM responsible for every instance of piracy. I'm going to chalk it up to poor reading comprehension.
Way to pummel that straw man. How many people do you really think looked at the title and imagined hordes of geeks stumbling, zombie-like, to their computers, their clicking mouses driven by some external force as they fired up their Bittorrent clients and stared in stark revulsion as their fingers typed "Christina Aguilera" into the search box?
Then your counterargument: people decide for themselves. Absolutely trite. Is it any less attractive for those wicked, naughty "social engineers" if people are using their free will? No, so long as imposing a rule makes it almost certain that more people will "freely choose" the preferred course of action.
Example: Say that as a "social engineer" (a sneering, insulting, and meaningless term) you plan two new communities. In the first, that there are vast swaths of tract housing, connected to distant shopping and business centers via wide, car-friendly roads. In the second, housing is more compact, business and shopping are within walking distance, biking and jogging paths are common, and roads are narrow and winding to discourage speeding. Obviously one is designed to encourage car travel, and the other to encourage walking and biking. The designs will probably work, not because you used your evil engineering skills to override the free will of the population, but because you looked at the way people make travel decisions, and designed the incentives accordingly.
So getting back to the article: The basic thrust is that DRM users are doing very poorly in designing incentives that would make people likely to choose their products. If they sold non-DRM'ed products, users would be treated to a better experience. By selling with DRM, they frustrate their customers, and make their pirated competition more attractive.
In short, people know what "causes" actually means, your objection is irrelevant and unenlightening, and I have no life whatsoever.
I stopped reading the moment you used the word "disincentivizing." Good thing you waited until the last sentence.
Crystal meth is manufactured here in the United States, by hard-working individual entrepreneurs. Meth labs are state-of-the-art examples of good old-fashioned American ingenuity and knowhow, often run by couples with families. It's difficult to run a successful meth manufacturing startup, especially in the face of burdensome government regulations, yet tens of thousands of people overcome the odds every year. In doing so, they provide the valuable product that millions of customers use to increase their personal productivity, turbocharging our national economy.
Crystal meth: Buy American.
1) You have no evidence that the average person downloading Display Eater is warned of the potential damage beforehand. I've read the articles, and the comments so far. Nothing indicates that the users are guaranteed (or even likely) to be warned. The only warning comes from an independent software tracking/review site, which is certainly not the only way for people to discover the steaming pile o' radioactive crap that is Display Eater.
2) Say I own a grocery store, and I post a sign on the front door saying, "If you walk in here with muddy feet, I'll shoot your dog," and then follow up on the threat. Just because I warned you ahead of time doesn't matter; I'm still dishing out vigilante justice. If you think you can legitimize extralegal behavior simply by warning people ahead of time, your understanding of our legal system is... lacking. Or maybe you live in a country where they don't have one.
3) As I said before, there is no evidence that he warns the user, so most users will probably not be able to "take it into account". Even if there were, there are these pesky things called "consumer protection laws" that often say that the seller cannot do something, regardless of whether the buyer is warned that it is being done.
4) He has the right to disagree with piracy, and take any legal means to stop it. The means he is using are very likely illegal in the extreme.
I didn't say there weren't situations that warranted that conclusion.
But that's not all you said. You said the kid was "born bad." By refusing to even engage that point, you're avoiding admitting the simple truth: there is no way you can know that.
Actually, don't bother starting. You can't. You're making at least one of a multitude of possible logical mistakes. Most likely, it's the one where the term "environment" is rigidly, narrowly defined as "parenting techniques". In fact, "environment" is far broader, and doesn't always boil down to "blame the parents".
It might have been something the kid was exposed to in utero. That could be something socially frowned upon, like alcohol, smoking, or drug use. It might be some chemicals his mother came into contact with. It could have been loud noises.
It might have been an unusual reaction to a seemingly normal environmental factor. Just an entirely hypothetical example: imagine if too much TV caused autism, but only in people with a certain genetic profile? You can't say that the child was "born autistic," because carrying the gene didn't doom the child to autism. Nor can you blame the environment by itself, because that environment poses no risk to people who don't carry the gene. Nature and nurture aren't just ratios; they interact in surprising ways.
When you say, "born bad," you're basically suggesting that there was no alternative set of environmental exposures that could have mitigated the kid's disorder. That's an unprovable hypothesis. Nor is it relevant to deciding what to do with the kid now. Even if it turned out that the kid was severely abused as a kid, that doesn't mean that counseling can undo the damage that was done to him.
You want to put the blame on the kid. I understand why that's tempting, and maybe that's the best place to put it. But trying to assign blame is really a distraction--one that the entire judicial system seems to get hung up on. The real question is, "Is there some avenue of treatment that would fix him? Or is the best outcome achieved by keeping him locked up?"
It sounds like you may be confusing evolutionary benefits on two levels: useful to the individual, and useful to society as a whole.
For example, it may be that a given set of behaviors is useful to an individual, but only within an environment where most people don't exhibit the behavior. For example, in the standard Prisoners' Dilemma game, say that a player carries an "always defect" gene (D). If everyone else he might be paired with carries the "always cooperate" gene (C), then he'll always receive a beneficial outcome. If everyone else also carries the C gene, though, then he'll always receive a negative outcome. The C gene can survive the existence of some number of D individuals, but when defectors reach a certain proportion of the population, the C gene becomes a definite liability, because the risk of being paired with a defector becomes too great.
With ASPD, society may function best when nobody has it, and couldn't function at all if everyone had it. But society may merely be coping with ASPD'ers, rather than actively benefitting from their behavior.
> Blindness is also potentially beneficial as it allows the brain to use the energy normally devoted to sight and apply it to other senses that may or may not be beneficial.
It sounds like you're simply making this bit up. While I'm sure there may be certain positive benefits to blindness, it seems that they are far outweighed by the negatives. Can you find a peer-reviewed paper making this case?
> Genetic defects are only defects because they are different than the current definition of normal.
Another interesting example is Tay-Sachs. While a double dose of the gene leads to swift death, some preliminary studies suggest that having a single dose of the "defective" gene grants a noticeable boost in IQ.
But don't make the mistake of implying that our definition of "normal" is arbitrary. Genetic defects usually are called such because they seriously break some important system in the body.
You need to RTFAABMC (RTFA A Bit More Carefully) yourself. A 49 year old homeless man could be described as many things, but "kid" is not one of them.
It sounds like the kid is a murderous bastard, but also an adept manipulator of the system you jump to criticize. This sounds like a singularly dangerous kid, who posed a real threat to the people around him, and who didn't get anything resembling the help he needed. Maybe he got a lot of attention from "the system", but not in the form that would be useful to him, because he was good at tricking that system into seeing him as something he was not. That's not a hard thing to do when the system is already overworked, and already faced with case after case of real child abuse.
So I'm annoyed by your conclusion, "they were too lenient, not too restrictive." As if a huge and complex social problem could be solved by simply turning a dial more towards the "restrictive" setting. The "real trouble" wasn't that the system refused to lock the kid away. The real trouble was that the system didn't know how to help him, and that it is laden with biases that are advantageous in some cases, but horribly wrong in this one. Maybe this kid is an impossible case, and removing him from the rest of society would have been the best thing. Or maybe some time in a specific environment could redeem him. But it sounds like your criticism of "permissive government policies"--ignoring the difficulty and thanklessness of the jobs that implement those policies--boil down to an anger at society for not giving up on kids quickly enough.
We need the system to be more intelligent, not just more harsh.
Anything posted with the intent of interfering with that goal (misleading information, spam links, etc.) is rightly called vandalism. Your mistake is in assuming that, because the same word is used, we're supposed to treat it as the same sort of property crime that occurs when a kid spraypaints a local McDonalds.
On a tangentially related note, I was looking to see if the libelous paragraphs could still be found in older versions of Zoeller's entry. I can't find them, but I did find this:
And this:There's a rather long edit war revolving around this one.
Another ongoing debate: whether Zoeller's remarks about Tiger Woods were "racist", "controversial", "politically incorrect", "inappropriate", or "hilarious".
I hope they post the MP3zzzzz. :)
I'm curious why you felt compelled to set up Rails with Apache on your home systems. I've always found the pre-installed WebBrick server better for home development.
Inter-country comparisons are difficult, because there are so many possible hidden factors that might skew the results. While I'm very suspicious of the alleged link between vaccines and autism, you describe the study in such a way that it sounds like it proves nothing.
Linky?
What "obvious tricks" did I use? When did I ever hide my true opinions about anything? I said the Iraqi occupation was harming our own interests, and I believe that. I said that keeping a huge nuclear stockpile is harming our own interests, and I believe that. I said that ratcheting down our military expenditures might make the world safer, and I believe that. I said that our unwillingness to let other countries choose to decide for themselves whether to experiment with socialism has been harmful to ourselves and to other countries, and I believe that as well.
But you seem to think you know my "real agenda." In your mind, I really object to these things in order to weaken the United States, to give "our enemies" leverage to take over the United States and turn it into a workers' paradise. No? Then what are these "real ideas" that I'm hiding? That capitalism is pure evil and communism is the ideal? Why would I use sham intellectualism to mask opinions I don't actually hold?
Now back off, or I'll be forced to stoop to your level and accuse you of secretly wanting to bear Sam Walton's love child.
As we reduce our own nuclear stockpile (and given the detterent power of the four or five nukes possessed by North Korea, we certainly don't need 10,000 for our own defense) we would simultaneously be using diplomatic and even military measures to keep other nations in compliance. Our abiding by the terms of the NNPT will make it harder for others not to abide by those terms, and put some moral force behind whatever actions we take to enforce it on others. Your hand-waving to the contrary, disarmament is very much in our own best interests.
Yeah, because Europe today is exactly the same as Europe of 100 years ago, and the United States' foreign policy today is exactly the same as it was 100 years ago. You're basically saying, "Look at all the wars we didn't start! It's non-responses like this that make me wonder if you even believe your own words.
Regarding Nicaragua: The United States funded a paramilitary force whose objective was the overthrow of the Sandinistas, and whose actions frequently qualified as "terrorism." The government being overthrown, while of a socialist flavor, did not seek to align itself with the Soviet Union or implement one-party rule, and held democratic elections.* The evidence for similar Soviet meddling is sparse, and mostly based on the claims of an important Soviet defector named Vasili Mitrokhin. Our support for the Somoza regime (basically a family of election-rigging dictators) was unconscionable, and it's pretty clear that the Sandistas had far more popular support and democratic character than the regime they overthrew. But U.S. foriegn policy is such that a dictator who does what we say is superior to an electorate that doesn't.
Regarding Saddam: while the people shredder may or may not have existed (and your uncritical acceptance of it certainly marks you as being as gullible as myself), nobody is denying that Saddam's rule was brutal and murderous. But I stand by my assertion that more Iraqis are dying right now than would have if we'd continued our policy of containment towards Hussein. His estimated body count ranges from 300,000-1,000,000** over the course of twenty years. Meanwhile, the Lancet report estimates 600,000 deaths arising after our invasion four years ago. So even without taking into account casualties from the first Gulf War or from the subsequent embargo, we're already approaching body count parity.
Of course, nobody actually wanted to see a civil war break out. It's just that our fearless leaders in the White House were so obsessed with making the invasion a reality, that they didn't listen to anyone who warned that it might be a possibility.
It must be comforting to the Iraqis to know that they're dying for freedom now.
I recognize your kind, too. You're simply an unapologetic proponent of what they call "American Exceptionalism". It's the simple belief that the United States is uniquely good in its character. When expressed as a foreign policy, it amounts to the claim that the U.S. is always noble in its intentions and goals, and usually laudable in its implementation.
The hallmarks of this ideology include a belief that it is downright heretical to judge the actions of the United States by any norms of international conduct, much less be held accountable to such norms. No matter that we happily use
If the U.S. were to do as you suggest, I'm sure that the "freeloading" countries would have to increase their military expenditures somewhat. But I'm doubtful that they'd be sorry to see us do it. For one thing, the military actions of the United States often make the world more dangerous, not less. For example, I don't see any action on our parts to get rid of our ten-thousand warhead nuclear arsenal, despite our promise to do so when we ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This calls into question the very premise of the treaty, and the questions grow louder when we provide technical support to countries like India, which possess the bomb in violation of the treaty.
More examples: in the eighties, the U.S. government decided that the Sandinistas of Nicaragua were puppets of the Soviets, and sought to overthrow them by funding the Contras. Tens of thousands dead because of Reagan and the domino theory. But at least we kept a foreign nation from choosing Communism-lite.
Then we come to our interdictions in the Middle East. Make no mistake, our actions there have primarily been targeted at ensuring access to oil for ourselves and (to a lesser extent) our allies. Have they made the world a safer place? Certainly more people have died in Iraq because of our meddling (from the first Gulf War, to the disastrous embargo, to our ill-conceived invasion in 2003) than Saddam could have possibly killed directly. Our invasion of Iraq on a flimsy pretense of WMDs has done nothing but provide encouragement to countries like Iran and North Korea in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. The message is loud and clear: If you don't have nukes, we'll pretend you do and invade. If you do have nukes, we'll negotiate. So get them while we're distracted with this Iraqi quagmire.
How much of these supposedly necessary military expenditures, which you see as properly shouldered by foreign governments, are actually necessary only as a result of our own extreme militarization? We spend as much on our military as the rest of the world combined, which forces other nations to spend more to protect their own interests, and our ham-handed, self-interested interventions have made the world less stable and less safe, requiring still more expenditures.
Nothing is perfect in this world, but as far as I can tell, socialist democracies do a better job of giving their people what they want. Capitalistic democracies seem to do better at giving the business elite what they want.
How about the "appeal to authority" fallacy? You're damning an entire approach to government, and all you have to offer is one liberterian economist's say-so.
Mises' main premise is that socialism cannot work because it is impossible for a socialist government to get all the information needed to make correct economic decisions. That's an important consideration, but hardly an ironclad law. First, socialism doesn't necessarily require a top-down, command-and-control approach to decision making. Second, there are a litany of examples of markets coming to obviously wrongheaded decisions. Finally, is socialism really any worse than the bastardized capitalism we have in the U.S., where corporations go running for government handouts and legislation to protect themselves from their own mistakes?
I'll make you a deal. I'll pay more attention to people like Mises, Hayek, and Friedman, if you'll brush up on Stiglitz, Keynes, and Krugman. But if your entire argument is "I've got a highly influential economist who says all of socialism is broken," then I leave you to your pseudointellectual name-dropping.
Why the preference? Especially in a country where there is an unfortunate amount of overlap between government and corporate power.
Next question: Why do you think that the government would have to have undue influence on the tone or content of Wikipedia? It's clearly possible to set up entities within the government that have a great deal of independence and autonomy, just as it is in corporations.
I don't particularly see public funding of Wikipedia as a great idea, but not for the reasons you cite.
I understand that. I mean, until the wonders of science include a salve that eases heartache while making you smell cinnamon-fresh. But "you'll get your heart broken and spend the next three months locked in your room, crying" is somewhat weaker leverage than, "you'll grow hair on your palms, your genitalia will fall off, and you'll die of syphillis in a Mexican brothel." Plus, the abstinence-only folks understand that kids are going to brush off such warnings with a non-chalant "I'm an exception," or "I'm unusually mature," or "Scott really, really does love me."
If the primary goal is to get kids to abstain from sexual behavior, then realistic, measured warnings won't cut it. Since you have to short-circuit a primary human drive, you have to counter with an appeal to another primary drive, the fear of death. I'm not condoning it, especially since I believe that the goal is to keep kids safe, not to keep them virgins. But I understand why they use the tactics they so often do.
I think we're all humor-impaired. The Internet manages to browbeat our sense of irony by exposing us to legions of people who sincerely, wholeheartedly believe all sorts of "you've got to be frakkin' kidding" ideas.
:)
For the record, I wasn't describing anything that has personally happened to me. I was describing "stereotypical extreme stupid party behavior", self-consciously using the words "like" and "totally" in an attempt at humor.
You'll have to trust me when I say that it was kind of funny before I went and explained it to death.
People like that--people who outspokenly relish in the suffering and frustration they cause other gamers--are a major turn-off for many would-be multiplayers. Especially when they know that they'll probably never have the skill necessary to deliver some oh-so-satisfying payback.
From the time I was six, I was taught to be gracious when I won, or else people wouldn't want to play against me anymore. Judging from my multiplayer experiences, an entire generation of inept typists were never taught that lesson.
Don't forget:
* Nobody in the party lives within 370 miles of you, so no matter how well you hit it off with a person, you can't follow up with a real life date or activity.
* Unless you plan ahead, you get dumped into a "party" full of strangers, who all see you as either a bug to be squashed, or as an X factor who could screw up their team by your ego or incompetence.
* Partygoers are 95% male, 80% egomaniacs, and 93% morons who spl lk ths wtf lol!!!!1
Face it. If multiplayer gaming is a party, it's a really bad one. Go to the ones where your best friend gets drunk and makes out with your girlfriend, and your girlfriend is all like, what's the big deal? and then that one hot chick goes around telling everybody, but only so that they'll talk about that instead of the fact that her ex is totally getting back together with his old ex from high school. Once you've got that sort of drama going, you'll find it's way more interesting than trying to climb some FPS kill ladder.
You're right. When I play a game and enjoy it, I think to myself, "Self, what would make this enjoyable experience complete for me? By jove, I've got it! Spending months and months getting my ass handed to me on a platter, game in, game out, until that sweet, miraculous day when I find myself winning almost as many games as I'm losing. Once I've spent thousands of hours honing the sacred craft that is this particular RTS/FSP, learning every technique to gain an edge over some random fifteen year old in Akron, Ohio, then--and only then--can I be happy and satisfied, knowing that I am... well, not the best, exactly, or even in the top twenty thousand, but at least far better than average. Plus it'll get me crazy laid."
Methinks I shouldn't have cranked the sarcasm up to 11. But when you've reached the ripe old age of 30, and the real life responsibilities pile on, you may find that you begin to lose patience with games that expect you to spend lots of time honing your skills. You may also find less and less attraction in subjecting yourself to the abuses of people who spend all their waking hours mastering something that you can only find a few hours a week for. Hell, you might even find that your real life pursuits bring you the sort of lasting satisfaction that makes successful gaming pale in comparison.
My point isn't to disparage your choice of hobbies, but simply to point out that hypercompetitive folks like yourself are something of an anomaly, even among gamers. A lot of us just want to participate in an epic yarn, where we beat the big boss and save the princess, and get a few hours of entertainment that don't seem like work. Multiplayer doesn't have universal appeal, and game publishers forget that fact at their peril.