Sorry, but no, it's not sound at all, particularly when applied to life and death situations. We're not talking about some self-entitled "right" to own a big screen TV or a PS3, we're talking about human lives.
Other countries can manage a much better return on the dollar (or euro, yen, etc) for health care. If the US government is so terrible that it cannot do what other governments have already done, then maybe people should try to reform government instead of fighting health care reform?
And how many dollars is "zillions" anyway? Certainly significantly less than the "zillions" paid to transform Iraq from a secular dictatorship into a theocratic one...
Sorry, but this risk analysis just doesn't work out when put in numbers. The number of annual deaths attributed to smoking far outweighs the number of deaths in traffic.
And, again, you're comparing an activity with only sporadic useful purpose with an activity that has a predominantly useful purpose (i.e. people being able to go from A to B). In fact, no modern economy can exist without the latter.
But, okay, you can say: it's their choice, right? No, it's not. If they are hooked on a substance that's designed to be addictive, then they no longer have choice. Most smokers I've known actually want to quit, but they can't. Secondly, what choice do their children have? Why should one not care about the health of a fellow human being?
As we've seen in recent years: even something as "simple" as smoking ban in certain public places has resulted in measurable health benefits in the overall population. This translates into economic advantages, which is to everyone's benefit.
Talent is not in short supply, ethics are. Given that you dismiss my resentment of one of *the* most annoying activities as mere "personal bias" shows that you have neither.
I don't see experience with a gambling site to be an instant disqualifier. Maybe if that's the only kind of site you were involved in it would be, but if it's one of various projects, it shouldn't be big deal.
The only time a resume gets thrown into the trashcan right away is if I see "telemarketing" in any fashion that doesn't involve stopping them or hunting them down. It's something you try to hide, not something to put on your resume. I want someone with some brains.
Also, as an aside: try to avoid going into detail about any activities that are trivial compared to the job you're applying for. Some people seem to think that if they have a 10 page resume padded with irrelevant history, they'll look better. Nope, doesn't work.
I didn't specify a consultation fee. Rather, I suggested that a non-standard solution would result in a much better scenario for all involved. You can of course make assumptions and draw some kind of conclusion from that, but you're really just tearing down your own assumptions and making some snotty remark as though I am to blame for your flawed reasoning.
I also don't see why you feel the need to insult my intelligence. Do you feel that insecure about yourself? Is it really so hard to get the gist of my comment that you have to try to "own" me on some technicality? It's *your* assumptions that result in a ridiculous outcome, so don't blame me for your assumptions.
This is where dogmatic views and analogies really contrast with technological reality. Those security holes would have existed whether or not he abused them in some misguided and naive attempt at finding info about UFOs. This is clearly a very intelligent person whose skills are of immense value. He just wasn't mature enough to realize the consequences and he certainly wasn't paranoid enough to keep his mouth shut.
It makes no sense whatsoever to lock him up with dumbasses whose greatest accomplishment in life is learning that beating their girlfriends is a bad thing or that guns and drugs don't mix well. What a sad waste of talent.
No, instead, I say: let him pay that $700000, but let him do it in the form of consulting. And fire the idiots who made those security holes in the first place.
The primary message of the bible is that you should follow the religion, period.
It doesn't matter how decent, ethical or generous you are: if you don't follow the religion and the prescribed rituals, you will be punished forever and ever. To me, that seems a case of grossly mistaken priorities.
The bible cannot possibly be written by or endorsed by a massively intelligent entity with the power to create an entire universe and communicate with billions of people simultaneously.
Even if your assertion were true, it would still be a strange argument: there is no definition of religion that says it has to engage in charity work. Rather, it is a human value that is most definitely not unique to religions. Religions just try to gobble up universal human values and pass them off as their own.
So, my dear apathetic atheist, what have you done to confront systemic evil?
The "apathetic atheist" has confronted all religious beliefs. You only have "the balls" to stand up to a minority religion that is almost universally hated, the atheist has the balls to stand up against *all* religions and all supernatural beliefs. Religion is one of the oldest evils there is and it needs to be confronted.
Now it is good that you have somehow given it a positive turn, but what you consider as your religion has very little to do with the bible. Human rights, particularly freedom of religion, directly conflicts with what religions want (e.g. see Ten Commandments). You can't read a bible and take anything literally, no, you have to use interpretations, symbolism and context. It rests entirely on your own interpretation, where anything you can think of is The Truth.
I do believe the term "atheist" is a misnomer, however. The term "naturalist" or "materialist" is much more fitting, since an atheist will usually reject *all* supernatural claims including astrology, numerology, etc. Anything that's nonsense and cannot be verified, basically.
If we look at what *all* religions have in common, it is that at their core, they deny the reality of death. Therefore, religious people should be called "athanatists":-)
Ehhh, I strongly take issue with your "stop being a hater" comment.
Have you ever considered that people may have very ethical reasons for strongly disliking religion? I for one strongly reject the concept that religions teach you that it doesn't matter how good or how ethical of a person you are: if you don't follow that religion, you will be punished in one way or another for eternity.
How can any thinking person accept that possibilities exist for violent criminals to go to Heaven, while the door is shut to completely harmless people who happened to either not be religious or follow the wrong religion.
And how can any one not be troubled by "gods" who go out of their way to be completely undetectable by any other means than our imagination?
I also reject the way religion is being taught in churches: it's one-way communication with endless repetition of a very small set of events that supposedly took place and that would NOT pass scrutiny in this day and age. Immaculate conception, uh-huh. How about a DNA test first?:-)
While I respect the right of people to follow nonsense, there is really no other word than "nonsense" to accurately describe death-denialism tripe.
That being said, Scientology is not like a regular religion at all. Simply put, it's the most expensive sci-fi book in the world, and not even a very good one at that.
If the choice is between two parties (not much of a choice, but ok), then observers from both parties can be present. It would be very difficult to engage in widespread intimidation and bribary while being directly observed at *thousands* of polling stations and NOT go undetected somehow.
That's a pretty interesting idea, but I don't think it's practical. Basically, it fails because it rests on the assumption that people will entirely honest.
Since only you know your own long string, there's nothing to stop you from claiming your string was not found and the election was rigged. Thus, you still end up with the original problem that a recount is impossible.
With paper ballots, you can verify the following phases very reliably:
1. Person submits exactly 1 ballot. 2. Each ballot by each person can be visually seen to be deposited in the box. 3. All ballots in the box can be (re)counted by any independent party.
It's a completely robust system. Sometimes you have to stick to ancient tech:-)
prshaw, you are not replying to me, but to a strawman argument that you yourself set up. The crux of my argument is that copyright law IS already being broken millions of times a day by many millions of people.
Let us review your false arguments:
so should we change the law to make it legal to go as fast as my car will go?
In the appropriate situation, definitely. This is already the case on the German autobahn. Almost all drivers will tend to drive a speed that they feel is appropriate and safe for the circumstance. If local authorities want to create a cash cow, they'll set the limit artificially low so that almost everyone will be "speeding".
Breaking into a house, pretty easy to go in and take anything you want. Let's make that legal too.
No, because you have to break a window or pick a lock to get in. This is not something most people are willing to do. Even a child can commit mass-scale copyright infringement worthy of fines ranging into the millions. Can you really compare this with a straight face?
Murder, how hard is it to buy a gun and kill someone?
Now you're being an idiot. I will explain why:
1. Committing murder very difficult to do for almost everyone: we have psychological locks built in.
2. Only a very small fraction of people who own guns commit murder; a very large fraction of people who own computers commit copyright infringement, knowingly or not. Heck, maybe you forwarded some funny image to your friends. Guilty.
3. It is very difficult to get away with murder. The majority of people who murder will receive punishment, even if it's decades after the fact.
4. The number of murders per day is significantly lower than the number of copyright infringements.
Where are we drawing the line on how easy something is to do and making it legal?
We don't. That is your own idiotic argument. If you're going to construct an idiotic argument and then tear it down with even more idiotic arguments, at least don't pretend you're responding to me.
If copyright law is so easily and repeatedly broken by tens to hundreds of millions of users, then that should be taken as a strong signal that this law is counter to the values of society and inherently anti-democratic.
Make the law fit reality, not the other way around.
How about using an actual scenario to back up your point instead of a hypothetical scenario you yourself made up?
As for the multiplier value: a reasonable value may be in the range of 1.10 to 2.00. What we're complaining about is that this value is in the range of 1000-10000.
Why is this value so extremely high? Because many other people are guilty for the same "crime" as well. How about this: if many tens to hundreds of millions of people are supposedly breaking a law, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the law?
The better question is: do we really need the RIAA???
Their irrelevant business model is built on artificial scarcity that could only work in a time where information carriers and distribution were the bottlenecks. Now with the internet and ridiculously large storage devices, this bottleneck has been eliminated entirely. So much in fact, that everyone can carry tens of thousands of songs - entire genres - in their pocket.
They need and deserve to fail. This is of course not easy, since they can go to court and refer to laws and acts that they themselves either wrote or lobbied for!
It is a very important fight and one that needs to be won. I say: give us all the information there is!
I should have made clear, I'm talking about the subject of the article, which is not video games made today, but possible incredibly vivid, detailed and immersive games of the future.
Okay, but by making your argument about hypothetical dangers and hypothetical games, you are reducing your argument to one that is merely speculative.
I assert that the majority of gamers are not interested in games that make them throw up or give them a PTSD.
To back this up, let us simulate your hypothetical game: go to one of the various websites with images of people who died in freak accidents. Then watch those for a few minutes while imagining that you did this to them. Can you do this without feeling you're about to throw up and feeling sad? If you can, then congrats, you're a psychopath.
How about not writing off our humanity instead of not writing off hypothetical dangers?
If this is your true opinion, then it's no wonder you're running into "glib" attitudes from people who aren't as clueless.
You mention a number of atrocities that each had *nothing* to do with video games. Instead, they had to do with ethnic tensions, economic inequality, unscrupulous politicians and - most importantly - a populace that believed that blaming everything on scapegoats would solve their problems. It looks like video games are your scapegoat.
Is there any indication that non-systematic murders are being committed by gamers? No, these are predominantly people with low violence thresholds, no education and a dysfunctional environment.
The ultimate virtual reality simulator is of course our own mind when we dream. So do you do the same things in real life as in your dreams? Probably not. This is because the mind knows when things are real and when they're not. I myself have never felt the need to hurt a person in real life, yet in GTA4 I went on killing sprees against fleeing civilians, blew up cop cars, hijacked all sorts of vehicles, etc. I imagine it's exactly the same for the many other millions of gamers.
There is also another major difference: inconvenience to your own person. Even IF you were completely desensitized, you would still know that there will be very negative consequences for you if you commit such acts, particularly pain and loss of freedom.
You know what desensitizes people? The news. When you keep hearing reports of X people being killed in a suicide attack, do you really have exactly the same feeling of shock as you had, say, 10 years ago? Heck, you can hear a report of hundreds of thousands of people drowning in a flood, followed by a report of how Britney Spears is doing and not lose sleep over it.
But hey, let's not be "glib" about discounting the dangers of news reporting!
In response to your concern over responses from people with lower incomes: I think this is rather unfounded given that webcams go for as little as $10-20. That is certainly minute compared to the cost of the computer and the internet connection itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but no, it's not sound at all, particularly when applied to life and death situations. We're not talking about some self-entitled "right" to own a big screen TV or a PS3, we're talking about human lives.
Other countries can manage a much better return on the dollar (or euro, yen, etc) for health care. If the US government is so terrible that it cannot do what other governments have already done, then maybe people should try to reform government instead of fighting health care reform?
And how many dollars is "zillions" anyway? Certainly significantly less than the "zillions" paid to transform Iraq from a secular dictatorship into a theocratic one...
Sorry, but this risk analysis just doesn't work out when put in numbers. The number of annual deaths attributed to smoking far outweighs the number of deaths in traffic.
And, again, you're comparing an activity with only sporadic useful purpose with an activity that has a predominantly useful purpose (i.e. people being able to go from A to B). In fact, no modern economy can exist without the latter.
But, okay, you can say: it's their choice, right? No, it's not. If they are hooked on a substance that's designed to be addictive, then they no longer have choice. Most smokers I've known actually want to quit, but they can't. Secondly, what choice do their children have? Why should one not care about the health of a fellow human being?
As we've seen in recent years: even something as "simple" as smoking ban in certain public places has resulted in measurable health benefits in the overall population. This translates into economic advantages, which is to everyone's benefit.
Are you really sure you agree that smoking is stupid and dangerous?
Perhaps you are a smoker?
You guys should really stop with the far-fetched car analogies: comparing an addictive drug to a useful transportation tool is just stupid.
Good way to turn a negative into a positive :-)
One of the underlying questions is: with the millions of hours of music we already made, what benefit does it bring us to have even more music?
If you're a 80's music fan, then you already have everything you need ;-)
And if you're smart, this information will not be found on your resume for both reasons I outlined in my post.
If you see nothing wrong with sharing that kind of information, then you just made the job of the reviewer a lot easier :-)
Talent is not in short supply, ethics are. Given that you dismiss my resentment of one of *the* most annoying activities as mere "personal bias" shows that you have neither.
So why are you bothering me then?
I don't want to deal with (former) telemarketers in any capacity and your "buddy" apparently doesn't want to deal with me.
Works for me :-)
I don't see experience with a gambling site to be an instant disqualifier. Maybe if that's the only kind of site you were involved in it would be, but if it's one of various projects, it shouldn't be big deal.
The only time a resume gets thrown into the trashcan right away is if I see "telemarketing" in any fashion that doesn't involve stopping them or hunting them down. It's something you try to hide, not something to put on your resume. I want someone with some brains.
Also, as an aside: try to avoid going into detail about any activities that are trivial compared to the job you're applying for. Some people seem to think that if they have a 10 page resume padded with irrelevant history, they'll look better. Nope, doesn't work.
I didn't specify a consultation fee. Rather, I suggested that a non-standard solution would result in a much better scenario for all involved. You can of course make assumptions and draw some kind of conclusion from that, but you're really just tearing down your own assumptions and making some snotty remark as though I am to blame for your flawed reasoning.
I also don't see why you feel the need to insult my intelligence. Do you feel that insecure about yourself? Is it really so hard to get the gist of my comment that you have to try to "own" me on some technicality? It's *your* assumptions that result in a ridiculous outcome, so don't blame me for your assumptions.
This is where dogmatic views and analogies really contrast with technological reality. Those security holes would have existed whether or not he abused them in some misguided and naive attempt at finding info about UFOs. This is clearly a very intelligent person whose skills are of immense value. He just wasn't mature enough to realize the consequences and he certainly wasn't paranoid enough to keep his mouth shut.
It makes no sense whatsoever to lock him up with dumbasses whose greatest accomplishment in life is learning that beating their girlfriends is a bad thing or that guns and drugs don't mix well. What a sad waste of talent.
No, instead, I say: let him pay that $700000, but let him do it in the form of consulting. And fire the idiots who made those security holes in the first place.
Well, to be fair, virgin birth *is* possible, simply by using IVF. No need for a sexual act with a man.
The primary message of the bible is that you should follow the religion, period.
It doesn't matter how decent, ethical or generous you are: if you don't follow the religion and the prescribed rituals, you will be punished forever and ever. To me, that seems a case of grossly mistaken priorities.
The bible cannot possibly be written by or endorsed by a massively intelligent entity with the power to create an entire universe and communicate with billions of people simultaneously.
MrKaos, it looks like you have a chip on your shoulder. I will respond to a number of your points that stood out.
When I see the Scientologists doing this *then* they can call themselves a religion,
Is google.com really so hard to find? Here, just took 10 seconds:
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/kelly-preston-hosts-scientology-charity-concert-in-uk-pr-81907.html
Even if your assertion were true, it would still be a strange argument: there is no definition of religion that says it has to engage in charity work. Rather, it is a human value that is most definitely not unique to religions. Religions just try to gobble up universal human values and pass them off as their own.
So, my dear apathetic atheist, what have you done to confront systemic evil?
The "apathetic atheist" has confronted all religious beliefs. You only have "the balls" to stand up to a minority religion that is almost universally hated, the atheist has the balls to stand up against *all* religions and all supernatural beliefs. Religion is one of the oldest evils there is and it needs to be confronted.
Now it is good that you have somehow given it a positive turn, but what you consider as your religion has very little to do with the bible. Human rights, particularly freedom of religion, directly conflicts with what religions want (e.g. see Ten Commandments). You can't read a bible and take anything literally, no, you have to use interpretations, symbolism and context. It rests entirely on your own interpretation, where anything you can think of is The Truth.
I do believe the term "atheist" is a misnomer, however. The term "naturalist" or "materialist" is much more fitting, since an atheist will usually reject *all* supernatural claims including astrology, numerology, etc. Anything that's nonsense and cannot be verified, basically.
If we look at what *all* religions have in common, it is that at their core, they deny the reality of death. Therefore, religious people should be called "athanatists" :-)
Ehhh, I strongly take issue with your "stop being a hater" comment.
Have you ever considered that people may have very ethical reasons for strongly disliking religion? I for one strongly reject the concept that religions teach you that it doesn't matter how good or how ethical of a person you are: if you don't follow that religion, you will be punished in one way or another for eternity.
How can any thinking person accept that possibilities exist for violent criminals to go to Heaven, while the door is shut to completely harmless people who happened to either not be religious or follow the wrong religion.
And how can any one not be troubled by "gods" who go out of their way to be completely undetectable by any other means than our imagination?
I also reject the way religion is being taught in churches: it's one-way communication with endless repetition of a very small set of events that supposedly took place and that would NOT pass scrutiny in this day and age. Immaculate conception, uh-huh. How about a DNA test first? :-)
While I respect the right of people to follow nonsense, there is really no other word than "nonsense" to accurately describe death-denialism tripe.
That being said, Scientology is not like a regular religion at all. Simply put, it's the most expensive sci-fi book in the world, and not even a very good one at that.
If the choice is between two parties (not much of a choice, but ok), then observers from both parties can be present. It would be very difficult to engage in widespread intimidation and bribary while being directly observed at *thousands* of polling stations and NOT go undetected somehow.
That's a pretty interesting idea, but I don't think it's practical. Basically, it fails because it rests on the assumption that people will entirely honest.
Since only you know your own long string, there's nothing to stop you from claiming your string was not found and the election was rigged. Thus, you still end up with the original problem that a recount is impossible.
With paper ballots, you can verify the following phases very reliably:
1. Person submits exactly 1 ballot.
2. Each ballot by each person can be visually seen to be deposited in the box.
3. All ballots in the box can be (re)counted by any independent party.
It's a completely robust system. Sometimes you have to stick to ancient tech :-)
prshaw, you are not replying to me, but to a strawman argument that you yourself set up. The crux of my argument is that copyright law IS already being broken millions of times a day by many millions of people.
Let us review your false arguments:
so should we change the law to make it legal to go as fast as my car will go?
In the appropriate situation, definitely. This is already the case on the German autobahn. Almost all drivers will tend to drive a speed that they feel is appropriate and safe for the circumstance. If local authorities want to create a cash cow, they'll set the limit artificially low so that almost everyone will be "speeding".
Breaking into a house, pretty easy to go in and take anything you want. Let's make that legal too.
No, because you have to break a window or pick a lock to get in. This is not something most people are willing to do. Even a child can commit mass-scale copyright infringement worthy of fines ranging into the millions. Can you really compare this with a straight face?
Murder, how hard is it to buy a gun and kill someone?
Now you're being an idiot. I will explain why:
1. Committing murder very difficult to do for almost everyone: we have psychological locks built in.
2. Only a very small fraction of people who own guns commit murder; a very large fraction of people who own computers commit copyright infringement, knowingly or not. Heck, maybe you forwarded some funny image to your friends. Guilty.
3. It is very difficult to get away with murder. The majority of people who murder will receive punishment, even if it's decades after the fact.
4. The number of murders per day is significantly lower than the number of copyright infringements.
Where are we drawing the line on how easy something is to do and making it legal?
We don't. That is your own idiotic argument. If you're going to construct an idiotic argument and then tear it down with even more idiotic arguments, at least don't pretend you're responding to me.
If copyright law is so easily and repeatedly broken by tens to hundreds of millions of users, then that should be taken as a strong signal that this law is counter to the values of society and inherently anti-democratic.
Make the law fit reality, not the other way around.
How about using an actual scenario to back up your point instead of a hypothetical scenario you yourself made up?
As for the multiplier value: a reasonable value may be in the range of 1.10 to 2.00. What we're complaining about is that this value is in the range of 1000-10000.
Why is this value so extremely high? Because many other people are guilty for the same "crime" as well. How about this: if many tens to hundreds of millions of people are supposedly breaking a law, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the law?
What makes their business model irrelevant is that the advancements in technology makes them redundant middlemen.
The better question is: do we really need the RIAA???
Their irrelevant business model is built on artificial scarcity that could only work in a time where information carriers and distribution were the bottlenecks. Now with the internet and ridiculously large storage devices, this bottleneck has been eliminated entirely. So much in fact, that everyone can carry tens of thousands of songs - entire genres - in their pocket.
They need and deserve to fail. This is of course not easy, since they can go to court and refer to laws and acts that they themselves either wrote or lobbied for!
It is a very important fight and one that needs to be won. I say: give us all the information there is!
I should have made clear, I'm talking about the subject of the article, which is not video games made today, but possible incredibly vivid, detailed and immersive games of the future.
Okay, but by making your argument about hypothetical dangers and hypothetical games, you are reducing your argument to one that is merely speculative.
I assert that the majority of gamers are not interested in games that make them throw up or give them a PTSD.
To back this up, let us simulate your hypothetical game: go to one of the various websites with images of people who died in freak accidents. Then watch those for a few minutes while imagining that you did this to them. Can you do this without feeling you're about to throw up and feeling sad? If you can, then congrats, you're a psychopath.
How about not writing off our humanity instead of not writing off hypothetical dangers?
If this is your true opinion, then it's no wonder you're running into "glib" attitudes from people who aren't as clueless.
You mention a number of atrocities that each had *nothing* to do with video games. Instead, they had to do with ethnic tensions, economic inequality, unscrupulous politicians and - most importantly - a populace that believed that blaming everything on scapegoats would solve their problems. It looks like video games are your scapegoat.
Is there any indication that non-systematic murders are being committed by gamers? No, these are predominantly people with low violence thresholds, no education and a dysfunctional environment.
The ultimate virtual reality simulator is of course our own mind when we dream. So do you do the same things in real life as in your dreams? Probably not. This is because the mind knows when things are real and when they're not. I myself have never felt the need to hurt a person in real life, yet in GTA4 I went on killing sprees against fleeing civilians, blew up cop cars, hijacked all sorts of vehicles, etc. I imagine it's exactly the same for the many other millions of gamers.
There is also another major difference: inconvenience to your own person. Even IF you were completely desensitized, you would still know that there will be very negative consequences for you if you commit such acts, particularly pain and loss of freedom.
You know what desensitizes people? The news. When you keep hearing reports of X people being killed in a suicide attack, do you really have exactly the same feeling of shock as you had, say, 10 years ago? Heck, you can hear a report of hundreds of thousands of people drowning in a flood, followed by a report of how Britney Spears is doing and not lose sleep over it.
But hey, let's not be "glib" about discounting the dangers of news reporting!
In response to your concern over responses from people with lower incomes: I think this is rather unfounded given that webcams go for as little as $10-20. That is certainly minute compared to the cost of the computer and the internet connection itself.