If crime is being reduced, can't the FBI (or rather, the DEA) claim the War on Drugs is being won? This would be silly, of course, but your points don't seem to follow. Youth crime is going down though, and schools are still safer than the home for kids. In fact, the media focus on certain things, like these violent attacks, is pernicious in the respect that it puts undue policy focus on what are minor social problems- the majority of violence done to children is perpetrated by adults. That's what needs major policy aid, but we just don't hear about it because it involves less spectacle.
Are you fucking kidding? They left a VIDEOTAPE for the police saying that this was exactly why they did it. Fame is certainly enjoyed in death: try Jesus! But that point is moot anyway- their original plan wasn't to die in the school anyway- they had much more elborate plans about escaping the school and hyjacking a plane. They hadn't even planned on going IN the school in the first place- the bombs in the lunchroom were supposed to go off, killing tons, and scaring the rest out of the building, where they'd be waiting. It's all in the soon to be released official report- parts of it got leaked to Salon.
I also think blaming video games is aweak scapegoat, but there's a serious problem in the statement that "we have to allow for pretend violence in order to let people release their pent-up frustrations at not getting to be violent." The problem is that the assumption it's based on, that acting out agression releases it like a teapot letting off steam, is utterly wrong. I'm not talking about talking to someone about your anger, but screaming at or about someone only makes one MORE angry. Kids that watch a boxing video are not more calm than kids who watch ballet- the boxing didn't help them release their aggressions- and it may have made them more riled up. Violence is not like an engine overheating, though it can feel that way. All available research (see Alfie Kohn at MIT for refernces) suggests that it is much more like a habit. But again- is Quake a violence habit? I don't think so- when I play I don't FEEL violent, and that's the key- how one interprets what one is doing. I feel sort of strategic, but the only anger i feel is towards my ISP for lousy ping tht causes me to walk off a ledge in Q3CTF4.
You can blame Columbine directly on the media's sensationalist culture- Harris and Klebold did it for the fame they KNEW it would bring them by the soap opera coverage the media would provide on their lives and actions.
The only reason you see an alarming trend in Americans seeking out scapegoats is the fact that you're young. It isn't just this decade, nor is it even just this culture. Making scapegoats is just a very human response to shocking and inexplicable events. Although we do have a very good idea about why Harris and Klebold killed- they left a videotape for the police telling why: they wanted to be famous.
There's an interesting sci-fi scenario that might be relevant here. Basically, in the future, medical health technology comes to dominate society. The rich try to live forever, the poor can't, and everyone is taxed on how healthy they can stay without spending medical money. You thought the gap between rich and poor was bad before... think about what this means. Social Darwinism back in force. Is this what we want when we think of a working human society?
I always wondered about Dean R. Koontz's "Lightning." In it, a Nazi travels FORWARD in time, then comes back with a bunch of future weapons and knowledge. This actually seems much more plausible. Any ideas? Complaints?
I think this is probably the best possibility for EARTHLIKE life. People have posited the style of life that might arise on Jupiter, but the likelyhood of intelligent life is much lower, because the gravity and atmosphere would preclude complex and thick bunches of cells neccesary, at least as we know it. If these planets are anything like Jupiter, they're likely to have moons- think of Io only without all the ice. Mix in some nice warm volcanic vents, and we got a very likely enviroment for life.
The ultimate solution, of course, is to develop a truly frictionless surface. That way, whenever you tried to walk on it, you'd immmediately fall flat on your ass and slide right off the frictionless platform. That would gradually teach people to just learn to stay put!
The "US" government? Who are they? Who is this monolithic force that people keep refering to? I can't believe how paranoid some people are. Not to mention how little people even understand about US constitional law. Certain Amendments, for instance, are basically null and void regardless- like the Ninth. Most people don't even understand that the Bill of Rights was useless against state laws before the Fourteenth Amendment and the incorporation doctrine. Personally, I don't see what gun control policy in the US has to do with encryption policy in England, but whatever... And just so all you foriegners know- the majority of US citizens are unbelievably ill-informed when it comes to any sort of policy or political issue. Not saying anyone's right here, but the opinion of "the US" people is not something you'd want to cite as good evidence for anything.
Again, before you go spouting off about what tech would be best for VR, you have to consider what you want the VR to do for you. I mean, if the focus is on interactivity, what exactly is the point of a large outdoor area? Sure it looks pretty and lives up to an ideal of a "virtual world", but pragmatically, you want the things you interact with to be at your fingertips, not thousands of virtual miles away. What interactive VR really needs is a good interface for immediate surroundings- traveling to different locations need not be a "see building in distance, walk for several hours to enter building" but rather "think of building, select it, teleport to location." A massive RPG, on the other hand, where aimless wandering and exploring is the whole point, would demand a more expansive terrian engine.
Pretty funny, but not totally far from the best solution. We're actually reasonably close to being able to decifer nerve impulses, so controling walking via a tap into the spine isn't such a pipe dream. But there are some serious drawbacks regardless. 1) Pattern generators. Walking is a standard "program" the nervous system can "run", meaning it CAN do so without sensory input, and we can measure it. The problem is, PGs also use various sensory input to do "error correction," which means we could get all sorts of addative errors and confusing screwups. 2) Without actually walking, how are we going to make it "feel" like walking? Reproducing sensory feelings is way harder than measuring standardized spine output. It would feel extremely uncomfortable to "walk" without the proprioceptive feeling of walking. 3) Related problem- how are we going to shut down the muscles without shutting down the proprioceptive nerves in the muscles, which would also exacerbate the problems of 1 and 2
In the beggining.... everything was HOT. Also, everything was very very small. In fact, it's theorized that as much as 10kg of matter was all that was necessary to start off the universe. Now, when things get so very very hot, hotter than any star, it turns out that the four fundamental forces are actually all one force- unified field as it were. The reason we see them as four different forces is that when things cool off, these four forces seem to us to "cystalize" along certain set dimensions. So, as we try to theorize all the way back to the big bang (which isn't quite as hard as it sounds- we can actually still "see" it in every direction we look) we have to figure out how these forces work as one. Elcotromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were figured out- hence the electroweak theory. The strong nuclear force was added to the equation recently, but not as conclusively. And the farthest back, the hardest, the very first to crystilize off, is the incredibly weak (yet infinately ranged) gravity. This isn't the only way to look at the problem of course- we also don't have a good match for gravity as a wave vs. particle, or even still a good resolution bout wave vs. particle. But getting gravity into the equation is going to be very very hard without some really powerful testing equipment. When you're trying to measure gravity in the same proxitimity as the other forces, its effects are so small as to be almost invisible with current levels of experimental error.
Sorry- "conservative" doesn't mean the same thing as "conservative" in the real world. I don't know that this court has any clear record on anti-trust cases and regardless, it is litterally a rule that if the outcome seems obvious- they'll rule something completely unexpected.
It really depends on what their chances in the Supreme Court ARE. I mean, there really isn't such a thing as "the government" that they're facing here. They'd be facing the conservative Rehnquist court.
It might be misleading to say that anyone can appeal to the Supreme Court. The Court can simply choose not to hear a case. There does not exist a "right" to have your case heard or even paid attention to.
As much as I think journalistic standards and ethics have jumped into the shitter recently, I should admit that online news sites have far more more fluffy and "throw-a-away" content than in the real world. It's just the nature of feeling you need to throw together a story immediately, since people will see it immediately (even faster than Tv). The really sad thing is that online journalists are, for some inexplicable reason, following the tradition of Tv reporters when it comes to sampling opinions and quoting "the peons" as they call us. HTML news reports are great places to lay out, or at least link to, really sophisticated, nuanced arguments, but instead we're still stuck with soundbytes in a medium currently without sound. There's also still this idea that "getting every side" means that you CANNOT go into depth on issues, or quote people who do, because then you have the potential for one side to look better than the other. "DOJ sucks" and "M$ sucks" are safe. And isn't that what news is all about?
To repeat one of my fav ideas, giving individuals copyright over their personal data would go a looong way towards solving the problem. Sounds good- what's the downside- I don't know much about copyright law- isn't that going to be tricky deciding what's yours and what's others? I'm all for me owning everything about me, from DNA to my slashdot comments.
They would probably have too much power and would end up blackmailing the industry. But since there would be competing watchdog groups, they could easily call each other out on such things. The IRS is so incompetant because there's no alternative- it's their way or the highway. Not so if there'a market that serves people's need for privacy. Unfortunately, it's clear it would be a big enough market to hold enough watchdogs to make it a useful market.
Not that I'm implying it's a good or bad thing, but there are plenty of regulatory agencies out there that operate off consumer money- via taxes. The fees are usually a bit over 25$ a year though...:)
How do you see corporations being reined in though? Europe is certainly not a good general example- their laws make their economies too brittle and stagnant, and their idea of government regulation may be too overbearing. But supposed watchdogs like TrusTe obviously aren't much good at this sort of thing. And the press? The giant media/home appliance conglomerates? No help there either. Corporations can make your life hell. I'm in favor of having a government sponsored industry of competing watchdogs. They would get to feed off corporate crime settlement money and compete for government subsidies (set by standard, not subject to politics), but there have to be several, so that its a working market. No direct government buerracracy, just true muckrakers who are free from corporate kowtows.
I doubt this'll happen for one reason: market value. Government will still be loathe to actually destroy what they see as a product's economic sale value. They'd much rather just keep Microsoft from profiting off their software. I mean, if M$ products were GPL'ed, what would happen to all the computer sotre owners with inventories of the stuff? It all drops in value, hurting them. That'll be a no no...
1. Can you produce a quote of ANY modern day Republican complaining about "blacks getting special privalages"? Uh... yes? Are you nuts? That's not only not a cheap shot, but it's also something many Republicans would proudly sign on to. And it's not an inherently bad position- there's certainly a case to be made there. Affirmitive Action debates are full of variations on that sentance, it's the very basis of the Anti-Affirmative action platform. I can list for sure several: Helms, Lott, Alexander- even D'Souza. You're the Knucklehead, trying to paint me off as a cheap shot. 2. Every consumer product can kill people, the cigarette companies are NOT negligent when everyone on the planet knows that smoking kills people. Since the 1950s cigarettes have had the nick name "Cancer Sticks". So? This sounds like an argument someone would have made in the 80s, before reading all the new case law, rulings, and revelations. The point is not just the cigarettes kill people, but that the cig companies a) buried this information wherever possible, sometimes illegally, and b) completely obscured the addictiveness of tobbacco for decades, and even deliberately used it to build their customer base.
you don't get it. "Capitalism" isn't an excuse for behavior that violates US law. And in any case, "if they suck, they will be gone soon" is exactly the problem with a monopoly: if they suck, they stick around anyway. Windows2000 will cost around 200 bucks, without tech support. Linux costs 0$, without tech support- If price were everything, it's economically a no brainer. But Linux really is less buggy and more stable than Windows as well. I run both. Ancedotal evidence isn't great, don't trust me- try it yourself. What holds OS's like Linux back? Industry support and FUD. Why can't they get it better and faster than they have? Monopoly. If all of that is true, then Microsoft is hurting everyone, whether you buy their software OR NOT, because they are stunting possible efficiency gains and new ways of putting software together. That's the issue.
It's always been an interesting idea floating around- corporations are granted the rights of individuals. Most people will agree that that's a bit quirky, and let's people shove blame from their own actions onto an abstract "corporation" that doesn't really exist. So, if murderers are killed for felony violations- why not corporations? The government can simply revoke their charter, taking away all special legal protections (Republican's bitch about homosexuals and blacks getting special privalages- but you should see some of the legal protections that corporations get!)- legaly destroying the "corporation" as it is. Of course, this is usually only suggested in cases like cigarrette companies and the like- corporations that have killed thousands through gross negilgence. Not that Microsoft has killed anyone though... have they?
Slashdot Mirror
If crime is being reduced, can't the FBI (or rather, the DEA) claim the War on Drugs is being won? This would be silly, of course, but your points don't seem to follow. Youth crime is going down though, and schools are still safer than the home for kids. In fact, the media focus on certain things, like these violent attacks, is pernicious in the respect that it puts undue policy focus on what are minor social problems- the majority of violence done to children is perpetrated by adults. That's what needs major policy aid, but we just don't hear about it because it involves less spectacle.
Are you fucking kidding? They left a VIDEOTAPE for the police saying that this was exactly why they did it. Fame is certainly enjoyed in death: try Jesus! But that point is moot anyway- their original plan wasn't to die in the school anyway- they had much more elborate plans about escaping the school and hyjacking a plane. They hadn't even planned on going IN the school in the first place- the bombs in the lunchroom were supposed to go off, killing tons, and scaring the rest out of the building, where they'd be waiting. It's all in the soon to be released official report- parts of it got leaked to Salon.
I also think blaming video games is aweak scapegoat, but there's a serious problem in the statement that "we have to allow for pretend violence in order to let people release their pent-up frustrations at not getting to be violent."
The problem is that the assumption it's based on, that acting out agression releases it like a teapot letting off steam, is utterly wrong.
I'm not talking about talking to someone about your anger, but screaming at or about someone only makes one MORE angry. Kids that watch a boxing video are not more calm than kids who watch ballet- the boxing didn't help them release their aggressions- and it may have made them more riled up. Violence is not like an engine overheating, though it can feel that way. All available research (see Alfie Kohn at MIT for refernces) suggests that it is much more like a habit.
But again- is Quake a violence habit? I don't think so- when I play I don't FEEL violent, and that's the key- how one interprets what one is doing. I feel sort of strategic, but the only anger i feel is towards my ISP for lousy ping tht causes me to walk off a ledge in Q3CTF4.
You can blame Columbine directly on the media's sensationalist culture- Harris and Klebold did it for the fame they KNEW it would bring them by the soap opera coverage the media would provide on their lives and actions.
The only reason you see an alarming trend in Americans seeking out scapegoats is the fact that you're young. It isn't just this decade, nor is it even just this culture. Making scapegoats is just a very human response to shocking and inexplicable events. Although we do have a very good idea about why Harris and Klebold killed- they left a videotape for the police telling why: they wanted to be famous.
There's an interesting sci-fi scenario that might be relevant here. Basically, in the future, medical health technology comes to dominate society. The rich try to live forever, the poor can't, and everyone is taxed on how healthy they can stay without spending medical money. You thought the gap between rich and poor was bad before... think about what this means. Social Darwinism back in force. Is this what we want when we think of a working human society?
I always wondered about Dean R. Koontz's "Lightning." In it, a Nazi travels FORWARD in time, then comes back with a bunch of future weapons and knowledge. This actually seems much more plausible. Any ideas? Complaints?
I think this is probably the best possibility for EARTHLIKE life. People have posited the style of life that might arise on Jupiter, but the likelyhood of intelligent life is much lower, because the gravity and atmosphere would preclude complex and thick bunches of cells neccesary, at least as we know it. If these planets are anything like Jupiter, they're likely to have moons- think of Io only without all the ice. Mix in some nice warm volcanic vents, and we got a very likely enviroment for life.
The ultimate solution, of course, is to develop a truly frictionless surface. That way, whenever you tried to walk on it, you'd immmediately fall flat on your ass and slide right off the frictionless platform. That would gradually teach people to just learn to stay put!
The "US" government? Who are they? Who is this monolithic force that people keep refering to? I can't believe how paranoid some people are. Not to mention how little people even understand about US constitional law. Certain Amendments, for instance, are basically null and void regardless- like the Ninth. Most people don't even understand that the Bill of Rights was useless against state laws before the Fourteenth Amendment and the incorporation doctrine. Personally, I don't see what gun control policy in the US has to do with encryption policy in England, but whatever... And just so all you foriegners know- the majority of US citizens are unbelievably ill-informed when it comes to any sort of policy or political issue. Not saying anyone's right here, but the opinion of "the US" people is not something you'd want to cite as good evidence for anything.
Again, before you go spouting off about what tech would be best for VR, you have to consider what you want the VR to do for you. I mean, if the focus is on interactivity, what exactly is the point of a large outdoor area? Sure it looks pretty and lives up to an ideal of a "virtual world", but pragmatically, you want the things you interact with to be at your fingertips, not thousands of virtual miles away. What interactive VR really needs is a good interface for immediate surroundings- traveling to different locations need not be a "see building in distance, walk for several hours to enter building" but rather "think of building, select it, teleport to location." A massive RPG, on the other hand, where aimless wandering and exploring is the whole point, would demand a more expansive terrian engine.
Pretty funny, but not totally far from the best solution. We're actually reasonably close to being able to decifer nerve impulses, so controling walking via a tap into the spine isn't such a pipe dream. But there are some serious drawbacks regardless. 1) Pattern generators. Walking is a standard "program" the nervous system can "run", meaning it CAN do so without sensory input, and we can measure it. The problem is, PGs also use various sensory input to do "error correction," which means we could get all sorts of addative errors and confusing screwups. 2) Without actually walking, how are we going to make it "feel" like walking? Reproducing sensory feelings is way harder than measuring standardized spine output. It would feel extremely uncomfortable to "walk" without the proprioceptive feeling of walking. 3) Related problem- how are we going to shut down the muscles without shutting down the proprioceptive nerves in the muscles, which would also exacerbate the problems of 1 and 2
In the beggining.... everything was HOT. Also, everything was very very small. In fact, it's theorized that as much as 10kg of matter was all that was necessary to start off the universe. Now, when things get so very very hot, hotter than any star, it turns out that the four fundamental forces are actually all one force- unified field as it were. The reason we see them as four different forces is that when things cool off, these four forces seem to us to "cystalize" along certain set dimensions. So, as we try to theorize all the way back to the big bang (which isn't quite as hard as it sounds- we can actually still "see" it in every direction we look) we have to figure out how these forces work as one. Elcotromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were figured out- hence the electroweak theory. The strong nuclear force was added to the equation recently, but not as conclusively. And the farthest back, the hardest, the very first to crystilize off, is the incredibly weak (yet infinately ranged) gravity. This isn't the only way to look at the problem of course- we also don't have a good match for gravity as a wave vs. particle, or even still a good resolution bout wave vs. particle. But getting gravity into the equation is going to be very very hard without some really powerful testing equipment. When you're trying to measure gravity in the same proxitimity as the other forces, its effects are so small as to be almost invisible with current levels of experimental error.
Sorry- "conservative" doesn't mean the same thing as "conservative" in the real world. I don't know that this court has any clear record on anti-trust cases and regardless, it is litterally a rule that if the outcome seems obvious- they'll rule something completely unexpected.
It really depends on what their chances in the Supreme Court ARE. I mean, there really isn't such a thing as "the government" that they're facing here. They'd be facing the conservative Rehnquist court.
It might be misleading to say that anyone can appeal to the Supreme Court. The Court can simply choose not to hear a case. There does not exist a "right" to have your case heard or even paid attention to.
hmmm.... that's funny... you seem to be repeating what I just said about hypertext, and you speak as if you are disagreeing with me...
As much as I think journalistic standards and ethics have jumped into the shitter recently, I should admit that online news sites have far more more fluffy and "throw-a-away" content than in the real world. It's just the nature of feeling you need to throw together a story immediately, since people will see it immediately (even faster than Tv). The really sad thing is that online journalists are, for some inexplicable reason, following the tradition of Tv reporters when it comes to sampling opinions and quoting "the peons" as they call us. HTML news reports are great places to lay out, or at least link to, really sophisticated, nuanced arguments, but instead we're still stuck with soundbytes in a medium currently without sound. There's also still this idea that "getting every side" means that you CANNOT go into depth on issues, or quote people who do, because then you have the potential for one side to look better than the other. "DOJ sucks" and "M$ sucks" are safe. And isn't that what news is all about?
No...
To repeat one of my fav ideas, giving individuals copyright over their personal data would go a looong way towards solving the problem.
Sounds good- what's the downside- I don't know much about copyright law- isn't that going to be tricky deciding what's yours and what's others? I'm all for me owning everything about me, from DNA to my slashdot comments.
They would probably have too much power and would end up blackmailing the industry.
But since there would be competing watchdog groups, they could easily call each other out on such things. The IRS is so incompetant because there's no alternative- it's their way or the highway. Not so if there'a market that serves people's need for privacy. Unfortunately, it's clear it would be a big enough market to hold enough watchdogs to make it a useful market.
Not that I'm implying it's a good or bad thing, but there are plenty of regulatory agencies out there that operate off consumer money- via taxes. The fees are usually a bit over 25$ a year though... :)
How do you see corporations being reined in though? Europe is certainly not a good general example- their laws make their economies too brittle and stagnant, and their idea of government regulation may be too overbearing. But supposed watchdogs like TrusTe obviously aren't much good at this sort of thing. And the press? The giant media/home appliance conglomerates? No help there either. Corporations can make your life hell. I'm in favor of having a government sponsored industry of competing watchdogs. They would get to feed off corporate crime settlement money and compete for government subsidies (set by standard, not subject to politics), but there have to be several, so that its a working market. No direct government buerracracy, just true muckrakers who are free from corporate kowtows.
I doubt this'll happen for one reason: market value. Government will still be loathe to actually destroy what they see as a product's economic sale value. They'd much rather just keep Microsoft from profiting off their software. I mean, if M$ products were GPL'ed, what would happen to all the computer sotre owners with inventories of the stuff? It all drops in value, hurting them. That'll be a no no...
1. Can you produce a quote of ANY modern day Republican complaining about "blacks getting special privalages"?
Uh... yes? Are you nuts? That's not only not a cheap shot, but it's also something many Republicans would proudly sign on to. And it's not an inherently bad position- there's certainly a case to be made there. Affirmitive Action debates are full of variations on that sentance, it's the very basis of the Anti-Affirmative action platform. I can list for sure several: Helms, Lott, Alexander- even D'Souza. You're the Knucklehead, trying to paint me off as a cheap shot.
2. Every consumer product can kill people, the cigarette companies are NOT negligent when everyone on the planet knows that smoking kills people. Since the 1950s cigarettes have had the nick name "Cancer Sticks".
So? This sounds like an argument someone would have made in the 80s, before reading all the new case law, rulings, and revelations. The point is not just the cigarettes kill people, but that the cig companies a) buried this information wherever possible, sometimes illegally, and b) completely obscured the addictiveness of tobbacco for decades, and even deliberately used it to build their customer base.
you don't get it. "Capitalism" isn't an excuse for behavior that violates US law. And in any case, "if they suck, they will be gone soon" is exactly the problem with a monopoly: if they suck, they stick around anyway.
Windows2000 will cost around 200 bucks, without tech support. Linux costs 0$, without tech support- If price were everything, it's economically a no brainer. But Linux really is less buggy and more stable than Windows as well. I run both. Ancedotal evidence isn't great, don't trust me- try it yourself. What holds OS's like Linux back? Industry support and FUD. Why can't they get it better and faster than they have? Monopoly. If all of that is true, then Microsoft is hurting everyone, whether you buy their software OR NOT, because they are stunting possible efficiency gains and new ways of putting software together. That's the issue.
It's always been an interesting idea floating around- corporations are granted the rights of individuals. Most people will agree that that's a bit quirky, and let's people shove blame from their own actions onto an abstract "corporation" that doesn't really exist. So, if murderers are killed for felony violations- why not corporations? The government can simply revoke their charter, taking away all special legal protections (Republican's bitch about homosexuals and blacks getting special privalages- but you should see some of the legal protections that corporations get!)- legaly destroying the "corporation" as it is. Of course, this is usually only suggested in cases like cigarrette companies and the like- corporations that have killed thousands through gross negilgence. Not that Microsoft has killed anyone though... have they?