If a "parasite" takes your freely given code, adds some modifications to it, then refuses to give you those modifications, your original code is still yours. He has stolen nothing. His modifications are his, and his along.
That's true, if the "freely given code" is BSD licensed, but largely irrelevant. Nobody said anything about stealing or ownership of modifications.
My point is that if he takes from the community without giving back to the community (which, under the BSD license, he has every legal right to do) he is a parasite (as opposed to a symbiote.)
Granted, by the same reasoning, anybody who uses GPL/BSD'd programs without contributing back to the community is also a parasite, but that's not too bad because that's part of the intent of the free software programmer(s). It's not ideal, but it's not bad. Likewise, the BSD license isn't ideal, but it's not by any means a "bad" license. It's tons better than the SCSL, IMO, but that's a different discussion altogether.
If that's the case though, then why does Stallman (arguably the foremost expert on the meaning of the GPL) say that he cannot prevent someone from releasing software that uses his code?
If I understand correctly, he's saying that he can't prevent somebody from releasing software that uses his code because that person can always release it under the GPL.
I agree that it wasn't worded as clearly as maybe it could have been.
Well when I think of Free [Speech], I think of something that I can do anything with. That's simply not the case with the GPL.
Actually, that's not the case with Free Speech either (at least in the USA, where I am.) There are lots of things I'm not allowed to say, such as "Fire!" whilst in a crowded theater. Depending on the locale, various slander laws may also restrict one's right to free speech.
In a sense, the BSD-GPL comparison is like the Truly Free Speech - Practically Free Speech comparison: the BSD license allows somebody to use the code in a manner that might be against the will or best interests of the programmer or society (e.g., use it in an otherwise proprietary, closed-source program, akin to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.) By prohibiting this, the GPL essentially forces any company desiring to use GPL'd code in a closed-source program to ask the original programmer for permission (via a new license, and akin to asking the theater/gov't/people in the theater if it's ok to shout "Fire!")
At this point, I prefer the GPL. I don't have a problem with forcing people to be nice.
If software Entrepeneurs are restricted by the GPL, then how does RedHat exist?
Exactly. It's not software entrepreneurs who are restricted by the GPL, it's software parasites - people or organizations who would take and modify without giving back.
>But being a skeptic and being required, by my own >beliefs, to maintain an open mind, eventually >forced me to reevaluate what I believed.
This touches on something that I've given a little thought to, but not enough: I am a Christian, and I have (somewhat aggressively) studied all sorts of skepticisms and proofs and whatnot, and even discounting my own personal experiences with God, I've had a hard time seeing how a person could objectively discount the existence of God. In my experience, few people with naturalist worldviews take their views to a logical conclusion... but perhaps more thought is required.
>Religion is not the source of all the violence >and hatred that's attributed to it, but the >uncritical frame of mind it encourages IS.
I don't think that religion *necessarily* encourages an uncritical frame of mind; in my religious experience, a consistent theme has been study: of my (our) views, of others' views, etc. This is not a symptom of blind acceptance.
Some people do accept blindly, and that, of course, is foolish, regardless of what it is that they believe in. Moreover, I think that secular powers/organizations/groups (the government, many special interest groups, etc.) are just as guilty of pushing beliefs without proof or thought as religious organizations are often thought to be. As a Christian, I feel perfectly safe endorsing scrutiny of my own beliefs because they do stand up under examination. (If I were a fraud, I would probably encourage ignorance and blind faith.) God is a rational God, and belief in him can (and should) be logically coherent.
>Show me a reason for attributing anything to an >invisible God, and I will change my view.
Surely you don't mean that literally? Here's a good reason: it's more reasonable to believe in the supernatural than to believe in stock physicalism (ie, all that exists is matter and energy and there is nothing supernatural) because a) the supernatural is impossible to disprove and b) physicalism doesn't account for some of the things that we observe about ourselves. The philosophical proofs and discussions about each of those are way too long for this forum, of course... if you're interested, email me and I'll see if there are any good summaries online.
Maybe that's not a sufficient reason, but it's a good one. Here's another good one: lots of smart, critical thinkers have believed in an invisible God; therefore, it's possible to believe in an invisible God without automatically becoming stupid or ignorant.
So basically what you're saying is that Electronic Democracy becomes viable when you restrict the electorate to those who have become educated on the issues. Hmm... not a bad idea, but it seems as if it's just begging to be abused. How do we determine if a person is aware enough to be an informed voter? Make them take a test? Make them solemnly swear, with right hand on the religious item of their choice?
Maybe just adding a little difficulty would do a good enough job of filtering voters who aren't passionate enough about any issues; I don't think that it's coincidence that states with larger voter turnout happen to be states that allow registration at the polls, but I'm not convinced that that's a good thing (even though on occasion I've been one of those last-minute people.)
Maybe we could increase voter education via some other means - e.g. offer a tax break for people who score above 50% on a politician awareness exam or something. The idea would be to give incentive without restricting existing rights, or something. I don't know if that would work.
I once knew a Satanist who told me that he liked playing AD&D because of all of the Satanic references. I never played it myself (giant robots are more my fare) so maybe he was just trying to seem more evil or something.
"You cannot rationally know about the validity of the nature and sacrifices of Christ." There is no method by which we can rationally know about the validity of any historical event. Except faith; but the thing about faith is that while each person believes that their beliefs are right, we can never prove it; we just have to wait and see. As far as I'm concerned, the plausibility of historical Christianity (the events of the Bible, etc.), coupled with personal experience, do more than appease my rational side - they garner its full support. Given the way the world seems to behave, Christianity is much more plausible than its many alternatives. For example, it is much easier for me to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing god like the Christian God than it is for me to believe in a flawed, imperfect being like Zeus. It is also much more plausible that an all-powerful god created the universe than that the universe magically sprang into existence by itself. "Futhermore, you cannot even know that the Christian worldview of sin and redemption correlates with the true nature of the universe" Philosophically, nobody can know anything - when we die we'll see who's right. I believe I'm right, and I believe that you believe you're right.:) "On all points, your salvation is a matter of faith." Faith does not have to contradict logic and plausibility. I have faith in a God who is all-powerful, and my observations about the world support, not contradict, that faith. YMMV. "If there was sufficient evidence to prove Christianity, then fulfilling the tenents of the religion would become trivial." Which is why there isn't "sufficient evidence to prove Christianity." Even if we assumed that it were possible to prove a historical event, God would ensure that Christianity was not the obvious solution for everybody because in effect, that would be unfairly limiting our choice. We must choose whether or not to follow God with the ultimate goal being a heavenly population who chose to go there (as opposed to being told to go there and obeying like robots.) "Without thought and examination, your strong faith can be discounted as blind acceptance, or swayed by other persuasive arguments. You may not be able to prove anything at all, but you can have a well thought out position and know why you believe what you do. " Exactly - every Christian (and, heck, non-Christian) should know what they believe and why they believe it. Perhaps the fact that we do and others don't makes us geeks.:) "However your philosophy discounts the role of objectivity that is so important in technological pursuits." No person is wholly objective, period. Pretending that one can examine the topic of religion without being influenced by one's environment and predispositions is foolish. "At its core, geekdom somewhat resembles the scientific method. You have to recognize what you don't know, figure out how to learn what you need to know, and have a grasp on the significance of what you have learned. By proclaiming that you know, you reject this methodology." I know my name. Do I reject the scientific method by claiming so? Furthermore, the scientific method isn't about knowledge, it's about best guesses based on experimentation. Faith isn't about guessing, it's about believing. It's hardly objectionable to confuse belief with knowledge; in everyday use the terms are interchangeable. "Its a thirst for knowledge, and the ability to independently acquire that knowledge that is the true spirit of geekdom." I would define geekdom a little differently. I define a geek as somebody who specializes in a nonstandard topic. By this definition, a rabid archaeologist is a geek, as is my friend who loves studying, learning about and expounding on the weather. Obviously it also includes computer geeks. Hm... my definition might have to have some further definition of "nonstandard topic" to clarify it. Sports, I would think, don't count as a nonstandard topic, but I'm not so sure about things like auto repair. (30 years ago, maybe, but today?) A lot of it depends on the setting (e.g., academics.)
"The problem with BO2K being 'open-source' is that crackers will NOT publish their modifications to the code."
What do you mean, they won't publish their modifications? They have to, according to the license, or else they're breaking the law!
:)
Re:Don't give up on Harmony just yet.
on
qt 2.0 released
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· Score: 1
>First and foremost the requirement that the Free >Edition is limited to use with the X Window >system is a wonderful idea.
No offense, but I think that that is a terrible idea. I'm contemplating a gui-based open source project and the ability to have a windows version would be a big plus.
However, I was under the impression that the free-on-X-only requirement did not apply to version 2.0. The QPL says nothing about platform at all, and the QPL is the license for Qt 2. Am I missing something?
Replacing "abortion" with "genocide" in your justification for legalized abortion makes that justification sound silly:
"I'd rather have a trained and qualified doctor performing the genocide, than some [incompetant who is prone to failure and/or self-injury]."
If genocide is wrong (as I believe) then wishing for legalized genocide in order to protect the lives of the people who want to commit genocide is ridiculous. Allowing for safe genocide is not better than allowing for unsafe genocide. Likewise, the rightness or wrongness of abortion is independent from its implementation. It is silly to say that regardless of whether abortion is right or wrong, safe abortions are better than unsafe abortions.
The same is true of drugs. If (some types of) drug use is wrong, legalizing and institutionalizing it doesn't make it better. The question of its rightness or wrongness must be considered independently of its implementation.
I am interested in seeing what the viewpoint of folks like PETA will be. Logically, they should want to protect these animal-like pseudo-humans as much as they protect animals, but the same logic says that they should also try to protect the pseudo-humans called fetuses, which doesn't tend to be the case.
I would expect many Christians to be active in the "clone rights" movement in the same way that they were and are active in the antislavery, civil rights and pro-life movements. (In the eyes of these people, those three movements are very closely related.) Obviously there are going to be some wackos who call for exterminating clones, just the way they call for exterminating other races, but those people can hardly be called Christian.
>I hope the religious groups catch wind of this.. >It's always funny watching them react, trying to >delay the inevitable.
Huh? Religious people aren't ignorant, they simply have different beliefs. You might see some religious *leaders* react harshly in an attempt to drum up more support and donations for themselves, but educated, rational people will react in educated, rational ways, regardless of their religion.
If somebody isn't educated or rational then you can hardly blame their religion when they behave ignorantly or irrationally.
>Terms like "Republic" and "Empire" aside, the >movie really is just a civil war within the >Royal Family of that Galaxy. Choose your side; >you're still a thrall.
There are important differences between the sides; with one side, you're a thrall in a police state, while with the other, you're a thrall with local self-government. I personally don't care so much about self-government (I prefer benevolent government, and if you think they're the same, you're wrong) but I'd rather not live in a police state.
>Darth Vader committed genocide (twice, once >against the Jedi and once against the >inhabitants of Alderaan).
Not to quibble, but I don't think that you can call either of those genocide, and they are both different from what the nazis did in several significant ways:
The Vader-Jedi conflict is unlike the holocaust because the Jedi chose to be Jedi; it wasn't an accident of birth. Calling the extermination of the Jedi genocide would be like accusing cop-killers of genocide; it's bad stuff, but it's not trying to exterminate a race of people.
The destruction of Alderaan is unlike the holocaust because it was not done out of racial hatred (as far as we know); the citizens of Alderaan simply happened to be handy targets for a demonstration of the Death Star's main gun.
Remember, mass murder is not necessarily the same as genocide.
I took the statement that "there is no father" to mean that she didn't want to recognize a father or something. I don't think that Lucas was trying to say that there literally wasn't a father.
I was told that in order to run even simple programs like Notepad and Paint, it was necessary for a user to have write access to the entire registry. Is this incorrect?
I agree that American "culture" (actually, the set of mainstream cultures in the United States) has lots of problems and encourages all sorts of bad things, but I don't think that we can put the primary blame on it. Perhaps a little bit, but I don't believe that people are mindless automatons who are manipulated by their surroundings. People have been excluded, mentally and socially tortured, and made to feel worthless for as long as human beings have been social creatures. These 2 kids chose to go out and kill a bunch of their classmates. Yes, it would have been much nicer if their parents or friends or teachers or classmates or clergy (if they had any) would have intervened and somehow stopped this tragedy, but I still place the lion's share of the blame on the people who actually committed the crime.
Well, logically, if a person is pre-disposed to do the kind of violence that these kids did, constant exposure to violence through movies, games, or what have you does not make them *less* likely to go out and murder a couple dozen classmates.
I think that violent movies, etc. are kind of like guns: they don't force people to commit crimes, but they maybe make it easier for people who are already predisposed to commit crimes to do so.
For a personal example of the impact that violent movies, etc. can have on people, try going for something like 2 months without watching any violent TV shows, seeing any R-rated (or higher) movies, or playing violent video games, then go back and watch or play again. I did something like that once and was able to understand the horror that people like my mom feel when they see people shooting each other on television.
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That's true, if the "freely given code" is BSD licensed, but largely irrelevant. Nobody said anything about stealing or ownership of modifications.
My point is that if he takes from the community without giving back to the community (which, under the BSD license, he has every legal right to do) he is a parasite (as opposed to a symbiote.)
Granted, by the same reasoning, anybody who uses GPL/BSD'd programs without contributing back to the community is also a parasite, but that's not too bad because that's part of the intent of the free software programmer(s). It's not ideal, but it's not bad. Likewise, the BSD license isn't ideal, but it's not by any means a "bad" license. It's tons better than the SCSL, IMO, but that's a different discussion altogether.
If I understand correctly, he's saying that he can't prevent somebody from releasing software that uses his code because that person can always release it under the GPL.
I agree that it wasn't worded as clearly as maybe it could have been.
Actually, that's not the case with Free Speech either (at least in the USA, where I am.) There are lots of things I'm not allowed to say, such as "Fire!" whilst in a crowded theater. Depending on the locale, various slander laws may also restrict one's right to free speech.
In a sense, the BSD-GPL comparison is like the Truly Free Speech - Practically Free Speech comparison: the BSD license allows somebody to use the code in a manner that might be against the will or best interests of the programmer or society (e.g., use it in an otherwise proprietary, closed-source program, akin to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.) By prohibiting this, the GPL essentially forces any company desiring to use GPL'd code in a closed-source program to ask the original programmer for permission (via a new license, and akin to asking the theater/gov't/people in the theater if it's ok to shout "Fire!")
At this point, I prefer the GPL. I don't have a problem with forcing people to be nice.
Exactly. It's not software entrepreneurs who are restricted by the GPL, it's software parasites - people or organizations who would take and modify without giving back.
Maybe Roblimo wasn't sure if this story was accurate, and didn't want to look like an idiot by endorsing an idiot.
>But being a skeptic and being required, by my own
>beliefs, to maintain an open mind, eventually
>forced me to reevaluate what I believed.
This touches on something that I've given a little thought to, but not enough: I am a Christian, and I have (somewhat aggressively) studied all sorts of skepticisms and proofs and whatnot, and even discounting my own personal experiences with God, I've had a hard time seeing how a person could objectively discount the existence of God. In my experience, few people with naturalist worldviews take their views to a logical conclusion... but perhaps more thought is required.
>Religion is not the source of all the violence
>and hatred that's attributed to it, but the
>uncritical frame of mind it encourages IS.
I don't think that religion *necessarily* encourages an uncritical frame of mind; in my religious experience, a consistent theme has been study: of my (our) views, of others' views, etc. This is not a symptom of blind acceptance.
Some people do accept blindly, and that, of course, is foolish, regardless of what it is that they believe in. Moreover, I think that secular powers/organizations/groups (the government, many special interest groups, etc.) are just as guilty of pushing beliefs without proof or thought as religious organizations are often thought to be. As a Christian, I feel perfectly safe endorsing scrutiny of my own beliefs because they do stand up under examination. (If I were a fraud, I would probably encourage ignorance and blind faith.) God is a rational God, and belief in him can (and should) be logically coherent.
>Show me a reason for attributing anything to an
>invisible God, and I will change my view.
Surely you don't mean that literally? Here's a good reason: it's more reasonable to believe in the supernatural than to believe in stock physicalism (ie, all that exists is matter and energy and there is nothing supernatural) because a) the supernatural is impossible to disprove and b) physicalism doesn't account for some of the things that we observe about ourselves. The philosophical proofs and discussions about each of those are way too long for this forum, of course... if you're interested, email me and I'll see if there are any good summaries online.
Maybe that's not a sufficient reason, but it's a good one. Here's another good one: lots of smart, critical thinkers have believed in an invisible God; therefore, it's possible to believe in an invisible God without automatically becoming stupid or ignorant.
So basically what you're saying is that Electronic Democracy becomes viable when you restrict the electorate to those who have become educated on the issues. Hmm... not a bad idea, but it seems as if it's just begging to be abused. How do we determine if a person is aware enough to be an informed voter? Make them take a test? Make them solemnly swear, with right hand on the religious item of their choice?
Maybe just adding a little difficulty would do a good enough job of filtering voters who aren't passionate enough about any issues; I don't think that it's coincidence that states with larger voter turnout happen to be states that allow registration at the polls, but I'm not convinced that that's a good thing (even though on occasion I've been one of those last-minute people.)
Maybe we could increase voter education via some other means - e.g. offer a tax break for people who score above 50% on a politician awareness exam or something. The idea would be to give incentive without restricting existing rights, or something. I don't know if that would work.
I once knew a Satanist who told me that he liked playing AD&D because of all of the Satanic references. I never played it myself (giant robots are more my fare) so maybe he was just trying to seem more evil or something.
"You cannot rationally know about the validity of the nature and sacrifices of Christ." There is no method by which we can rationally know about the validity of any historical event. Except faith; but the thing about faith is that while each person believes that their beliefs are right, we can never prove it; we just have to wait and see. As far as I'm concerned, the plausibility of historical Christianity (the events of the Bible, etc.), coupled with personal experience, do more than appease my rational side - they garner its full support. Given the way the world seems to behave, Christianity is much more plausible than its many alternatives. For example, it is much easier for me to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing god like the Christian God than it is for me to believe in a flawed, imperfect being like Zeus. It is also much more plausible that an all-powerful god created the universe than that the universe magically sprang into existence by itself. "Futhermore, you cannot even know that the Christian worldview of sin and redemption correlates with the true nature of the universe" Philosophically, nobody can know anything - when we die we'll see who's right. I believe I'm right, and I believe that you believe you're right. :) "On all points, your salvation is a matter of faith." Faith does not have to contradict logic and plausibility. I have faith in a God who is all-powerful, and my observations about the world support, not contradict, that faith. YMMV. "If there was sufficient evidence to prove Christianity, then fulfilling the tenents of the religion would become trivial." Which is why there isn't "sufficient evidence to prove Christianity." Even if we assumed that it were possible to prove a historical event, God would ensure that Christianity was not the obvious solution for everybody because in effect, that would be unfairly limiting our choice. We must choose whether or not to follow God with the ultimate goal being a heavenly population who chose to go there (as opposed to being told to go there and obeying like robots.) "Without thought and examination, your strong faith can be discounted as blind acceptance, or swayed by other persuasive arguments. You may not be able to prove anything at all, but you can have a well thought out position and know why you believe what you do. " Exactly - every Christian (and, heck, non-Christian) should know what they believe and why they believe it. Perhaps the fact that we do and others don't makes us geeks. :) "However your philosophy discounts the role of objectivity that is so important in technological pursuits." No person is wholly objective, period. Pretending that one can examine the topic of religion without being influenced by one's environment and predispositions is foolish. "At its core, geekdom somewhat resembles the scientific method. You have to recognize what you don't know, figure out how to learn what you need to know, and have a grasp on the significance of what you have learned. By proclaiming that you know, you reject this methodology." I know my name. Do I reject the scientific method by claiming so? Furthermore, the scientific method isn't about knowledge, it's about best guesses based on experimentation. Faith isn't about guessing, it's about believing. It's hardly objectionable to confuse belief with knowledge; in everyday use the terms are interchangeable. "Its a thirst for knowledge, and the ability to independently acquire that knowledge that is the true spirit of geekdom." I would define geekdom a little differently. I define a geek as somebody who specializes in a nonstandard topic. By this definition, a rabid archaeologist is a geek, as is my friend who loves studying, learning about and expounding on the weather. Obviously it also includes computer geeks. Hm... my definition might have to have some further definition of "nonstandard topic" to clarify it. Sports, I would think, don't count as a nonstandard topic, but I'm not so sure about things like auto repair. (30 years ago, maybe, but today?) A lot of it depends on the setting (e.g., academics.)
"The problem with BO2K being 'open-source' is that crackers will NOT publish their modifications to the code."
What do you mean, they won't publish their modifications? They have to, according to the license, or else they're breaking the law!
:)
>First and foremost the requirement that the Free
>Edition is limited to use with the X Window
>system is a wonderful idea.
No offense, but I think that that is a terrible idea. I'm contemplating a gui-based open source project and the ability to have a windows version would be a big plus.
However, I was under the impression that the free-on-X-only requirement did not apply to version 2.0. The QPL says nothing about platform at all, and the QPL is the license for Qt 2. Am I missing something?
Lots of adult human beings are parasites too. That doesn't make them less human. :)
Replacing "abortion" with "genocide" in your justification for legalized abortion makes that justification sound silly:
"I'd rather have a trained and qualified doctor performing the genocide, than some [incompetant who is prone to failure and/or self-injury]."
If genocide is wrong (as I believe) then wishing for legalized genocide in order to protect the lives of the people who want to commit genocide is ridiculous. Allowing for safe genocide is not better than allowing for unsafe genocide. Likewise, the rightness or wrongness of abortion is independent from its implementation. It is silly to say that regardless of whether abortion is right or wrong, safe abortions are better than unsafe abortions.
The same is true of drugs. If (some types of) drug use is wrong, legalizing and institutionalizing it doesn't make it better. The question of its rightness or wrongness must be considered independently of its implementation.
I am interested in seeing what the viewpoint of folks like PETA will be. Logically, they should want to protect these animal-like pseudo-humans as much as they protect animals, but the same logic says that they should also try to protect the pseudo-humans called fetuses, which doesn't tend to be the case.
I would expect many Christians to be active in the "clone rights" movement in the same way that they were and are active in the antislavery, civil rights and pro-life movements. (In the eyes of these people, those three movements are very closely related.) Obviously there are going to be some wackos who call for exterminating clones, just the way they call for exterminating other races, but those people can hardly be called Christian.
>I hope the religious groups catch wind of this..
>It's always funny watching them react, trying to
>delay the inevitable.
Huh? Religious people aren't ignorant, they simply have different beliefs. You might see some religious *leaders* react harshly in an attempt to drum up more support and donations for themselves, but educated, rational people will react in educated, rational ways, regardless of their religion.
If somebody isn't educated or rational then you can hardly blame their religion when they behave ignorantly or irrationally.
>Terms like "Republic" and "Empire" aside, the
>movie really is just a civil war within the
>Royal Family of that Galaxy. Choose your side;
>you're still a thrall.
There are important differences between the sides; with one side, you're a thrall in a police state, while with the other, you're a thrall with local self-government. I personally don't care so much about self-government (I prefer benevolent government, and if you think they're the same, you're wrong) but I'd rather not live in a police state.
>Darth Vader committed genocide (twice, once
>against the Jedi and once against the
>inhabitants of Alderaan).
Not to quibble, but I don't think that you can call either of those genocide, and they are both different from what the nazis did in several
significant ways:
The Vader-Jedi conflict is unlike the holocaust because the Jedi chose to be Jedi; it wasn't an accident of birth. Calling the extermination of the Jedi genocide would be like accusing cop-killers of genocide; it's bad stuff, but it's not trying to exterminate a race of people.
The destruction of Alderaan is unlike the holocaust because it was not done out of racial hatred (as far as we know); the citizens of Alderaan simply happened to be handy targets for a demonstration of the Death Star's main gun.
Remember, mass murder is not necessarily the same as genocide.
>Yet he introduces a virgin birth?
I took the statement that "there is no father" to mean that she didn't want to recognize a father or something. I don't think that Lucas was trying to say that there literally wasn't a father.
I was told that in order to run even simple programs like Notepad and Paint, it was necessary for a user to have write access to the entire registry. Is this incorrect?
Tele-medicine + unreliable products = dead people.
I suspect (hope?) it will be a while before MS is involved in telemedicine.
"Maybe re-inventing the wheel is only sane thing when the wheel is square."
LOL! I think I may have to repeat that.
Who'd want to use a tool named after baby food?
:)
I agree that American "culture" (actually, the set of mainstream cultures in the United States) has lots of problems and encourages all sorts of bad things, but I don't think that we can put the primary blame on it. Perhaps a little bit, but I don't believe that people are mindless automatons who are manipulated by their surroundings. People have been excluded, mentally and socially tortured, and made to feel worthless for as long as human beings have been social creatures. These 2 kids chose to go out and kill a bunch of their classmates. Yes, it would have been much nicer if their parents or friends or teachers or classmates or clergy (if they had any) would have intervened and somehow stopped this tragedy, but I still place the lion's share of the blame on the people who actually committed the crime.
Well, logically, if a person is pre-disposed to do the kind of violence that these kids did, constant exposure to violence through movies, games, or what have you does not make them *less* likely to go out and murder a couple dozen classmates.
I think that violent movies, etc. are kind of like guns: they don't force people to commit crimes, but they maybe make it easier for people who are already predisposed to commit crimes to do so.
For a personal example of the impact that violent movies, etc. can have on people, try going for something like 2 months without watching any violent TV shows, seeing any R-rated (or higher) movies, or playing violent video games, then go back and watch or play again. I did something like that once and was able to understand the horror that people like my mom feel when they see people shooting each other on television.