Ehhh... not really. The stores more or less break even on console sales, and barely see a return on the games themselves. The big money-making sales for the stores are the accessories, which is why they keep on trying to force these damnedable "value packs" down our throats when a new console comes out.
It's the skin-of-your-teeth profit margins that keep you from seeing many "mom-and-pop" video game stores any more.
"All the ISPs need to do is write a little Perl script to parse it into a hosts file."
I don't mind the AG's office compiling this list for the personal use of the state's citizens. My problem with the law is that you used the word "need" in that statement. If an ISP wishes to offer site blocking to its customers based on this list, that's one thing, but requiring ISPs to do this is something else.
"Why must electric companies provide eletricity for people out in the country?
Why must TPC (The Phone Company, for those old movie fans out there) provide phone service to every house? "
The price of using eminent domain. Using land appropriated by the state means playing by the state's terms.
"Why must you have a Driver's License to use the public roads?"
The state owns the roads, and their use comes at the state's terms.
However, I'm pretty sure the State of Utah doesn't own the internet.
"If it isn't obvious from my examples, it's because the government is in the business of making people do things that the government thinks are necessary or desirable."
"Because we can" isn't justification for doing soemthing, especially when we're talking about the government doing something.
"Arguing that it is somehow wrong of the government to make you (or anyone else) do something is just silly - that's what governments are for."
Government in the United States is supposed to be instituted to secure the rights of the people. The powers granted to it are a means to that end, not to be used for any reason the state sees fit.
"That bold text wasn't random - it's emphasis, reflecting disbelief. After the last Shuttle debacle, which grounded the fleet for years (try saying that in your head at a higher volume),"
I can't speak for others, but I tend not to think in a Carl Sagan-esque voice.
"As for your completely uninformed take on utility of the arm/camera, here's a free clue:"
Note the use of the word "might" in your quote. In a more pertinent quote I found here, the ambiguity is cleared up:
Regardless, the RMS simply cannot be manouvered so the camera on the grappler end can see the underside from the proper angles to determine the depth of any damage. It simply lacks the joint structure and lengths to certain struts to allow for this.
"While you're unwrapping your various contortions to prove your preconceived notions about my post, you might offer an apology."
Why? Because your over-reliance on bold (as opposed to, say, italics) makes your post look more like an email selling "herbal Viagra" than something to be taken seriously? I tend not to apologize for other peoples' actions.
It's the principle. Why must the ISPs be required to do this to being with? If it's so easy, why doesn't the AG's office do this themselves and provide the capability to the state's citizens directly instead of passin the burden onto the ISPs?
You could say Nintendo should be in a similar position, working mostly with their back-catalog of intellectual property and such, and yet I don't see them sinking into the same problem that Disney is finding itself in.
OK, if your heavy sprinkling of random bold text wasn't enough to flag your post as a troll...
"Didn't they send up the last Shuttle without the space arm camera, which prevented them from examining the shuttle after the debris damaged the tiles?"
The Canadarm is designed to manipulate items in the cargo bay. Why would it be long enough and flexible enough to wrap around and look at the undercarriage of the orbiter?
Ever notice how tough it is to wrap your arm around and scratch your own back?
"publishing ONLY on Revolution will be a suicidal move."
I'm sure Nintendo would be interested to hear that since, by definition, all their titles will be Revolution exclusives (and not just for a few weeks).
"Many people already own monitors capable of at least 720p,"
My TV is bigger and is in the living room, where the seats are more comfortable.
"and current sales of HDTVs are at 25% of all new TV's sold."
How many television owners have purchased a TV in the past year? Or the past five years, for that matter? How do the sales of HDTVs compare to, say, RF modulators used to retrofit composite inputs into TVs even without that much?
When it comes to appliances, short-term sales don't tell you anything about what everybody is using because people don't buy appliances that often.
"In addition over the next year we are going to start seeing DVD players with HD resolution outputs."
Will they sell? Everybody is still replacing their VHS collection with NTSC DVDs. Would higher resolution be enough to justify starting all over again?
"I sure am not going to buy into an SD console and games at this point in time."
Is there any reason to believe you represent the majority of the gaming market, though?
Yet all those older Nintendo consoles also don't support HD. The N64 doesn't support RGB out of the box, and the NES didn't support stereo sound, let alone s-video. Why draw the line here, other than as flamebait?
"Using the experiences of high school as a benchmark for your entire life seems a really bass-ackwards thing to do. Almost nobody is, as a teenager, self-confident enough to choose a dating partner without regard to what your "friends" might say."
I hate to say it (believe me), but high school doesn't end, at least for 3/4 of the people out there. The same social bullshit that first manifests itself in high school sticks around for the rest of most peoples' lives.
If you're socially SOL in high school, you're pretty much SOL for the rest of your life, or at least until you become a totally different person.
I've gone through the guy's website, and all I see is a bitter/stalker-type person (come on, putting up pics of the women who've rejected him?) trying to justify his own bitterness through pseudo-logic that requires fitting all men and women into three or four narrowly-constrained generalizations.
"Maybe he was just trying to say that he likes you better than all of them. I mean, if he'd said "they look nice", how would you have taken that? He may very well have thought that you wanted him to point out why they were all worse choices than you. "
So why didn't he ask? I'm going to be single for the rest of my life, and even I know that the correct response for him in that situation is "Uh... what about it?" Perhaps parent didn't clarify enough, but it seemed that his first, reflexive reaction was to make a negative comment about the women in the pic.
"2,823 died in that attack. Thats very sad but damnit, its not even a drop in the ocean compared to other dangerous things. "
Yes, but those other dangerous things don't happen in nice, neat, media-friendly events. It's not that 3000 died, it's that 3000 died all at once on live TV. Coverage of it trumped last year's tsunami because there weren't cameras on the beaches watching the wave come in.
It's like the ol' nuclear power debates that happen from time to time here. Sure, coal kills many, many, many more people in a year than nuclear power kills in a decade, but when nuclear power goes wrong it goes wrong in one, single place where everybody can send their TV cameras.
"As a former member of Tehran's expatriot community"
Hrm. When last I checked, in order to be a "former expatriate," you have to go back and stop being an expatriate. So you'd be posting from within Iran.
Perhaps I'm being cynical/paranoid/whatever, but I'd have to take whatever someone posting in a public forum from within Iran about the Iranian government with a rather large grain of salt.
"Having people pledge alliegence to the Country they belong to is a bad thing?"
That "pledge of alliegence" by any other name is a formal loyalty oath. And while we don't allow minors to sign alone for themselves on contracts, this is the only exception where we not only allow them but expect them to take this oath.
Politicians swear an oath to the constitution. Soldiers swear an oath to the constitution. The rest of us, however, are expected to swear an oath to the national government ("the republic for which it stands").
"We rank in the hundreds of thousands, so if we create a community that is unified by one simple concept, even a whisper from us would deafen the politicos."
No, it wouldn't. "Hundreds of thousands" is in the neighborhoods of tenths of a percent when you live in a country of nearly 300,000,000. What you're trying to do is organize Slashdot into another lobbying/astroturf organization, exactly what most of us here are complaining about.
Slashdot Mirror
Ehhh... not really. The stores more or less break even on console sales, and barely see a return on the games themselves. The big money-making sales for the stores are the accessories, which is why they keep on trying to force these damnedable "value packs" down our throats when a new console comes out.
It's the skin-of-your-teeth profit margins that keep you from seeing many "mom-and-pop" video game stores any more.
"All the ISPs need to do is write a little Perl script to parse it into a hosts file."
I don't mind the AG's office compiling this list for the personal use of the state's citizens. My problem with the law is that you used the word "need" in that statement. If an ISP wishes to offer site blocking to its customers based on this list, that's one thing, but requiring ISPs to do this is something else.
In response to some of your specific points...
"Why must electric companies provide eletricity for people out in the country?
Why must TPC (The Phone Company, for those old movie fans out there) provide phone service to every house? "
The price of using eminent domain. Using land appropriated by the state means playing by the state's terms.
"Why must you have a Driver's License to use the public roads?"
The state owns the roads, and their use comes at the state's terms.
However, I'm pretty sure the State of Utah doesn't own the internet.
"If it isn't obvious from my examples, it's because the government is in the business of making people do things that the government thinks are necessary or desirable."
"Because we can" isn't justification for doing soemthing, especially when we're talking about the government doing something.
"Arguing that it is somehow wrong of the government to make you (or anyone else) do something is just silly - that's what governments are for."
Government in the United States is supposed to be instituted to secure the rights of the people. The powers granted to it are a means to that end, not to be used for any reason the state sees fit.
I can't speak for others, but I tend not to think in a Carl Sagan-esque voice.
"As for your completely uninformed take on utility of the arm/camera, here's a free clue:"
Note the use of the word "might" in your quote. In a more pertinent quote I found here, the ambiguity is cleared up: "While you're unwrapping your various contortions to prove your preconceived notions about my post, you might offer an apology."
Why? Because your over-reliance on bold (as opposed to, say, italics) makes your post look more like an email selling "herbal Viagra" than something to be taken seriously? I tend not to apologize for other peoples' actions.
"The problem here is that she is learning to follow step-by-step instructions - and not learning to abstract what is actually happening."
They don't want to. Why should they have to?
"What is the big deal?"
It's the principle. Why must the ISPs be required to do this to being with? If it's so easy, why doesn't the AG's office do this themselves and provide the capability to the state's citizens directly instead of passin the burden onto the ISPs?
You could say Nintendo should be in a similar position, working mostly with their back-catalog of intellectual property and such, and yet I don't see them sinking into the same problem that Disney is finding itself in.
That, or it means it kicks ass like Miyazaki's other works.
If it weren't for my "Don't buy stuff published by MPAA members" policy, I'd own at least Kiki's Delivery Service.
Was it the fans themselves, or that the fans let everyone know he didn't shower that morning?
OK, if your heavy sprinkling of random bold text wasn't enough to flag your post as a troll...
"Didn't they send up the last Shuttle without the space arm camera, which prevented them from examining the shuttle after the debris damaged the tiles?"
The Canadarm is designed to manipulate items in the cargo bay. Why would it be long enough and flexible enough to wrap around and look at the undercarriage of the orbiter?
Ever notice how tough it is to wrap your arm around and scratch your own back?
"publishing ONLY on Revolution will be a suicidal move."
I'm sure Nintendo would be interested to hear that since, by definition, all their titles will be Revolution exclusives (and not just for a few weeks).
"Many people already own monitors capable of at least 720p,"
My TV is bigger and is in the living room, where the seats are more comfortable.
"and current sales of HDTVs are at 25% of all new TV's sold."
How many television owners have purchased a TV in the past year? Or the past five years, for that matter? How do the sales of HDTVs compare to, say, RF modulators used to retrofit composite inputs into TVs even without that much?
When it comes to appliances, short-term sales don't tell you anything about what everybody is using because people don't buy appliances that often.
"In addition over the next year we are going to start seeing DVD players with HD resolution outputs."
Will they sell? Everybody is still replacing their VHS collection with NTSC DVDs. Would higher resolution be enough to justify starting all over again?
"I sure am not going to buy into an SD console and games at this point in time."
Is there any reason to believe you represent the majority of the gaming market, though?
Yet all those older Nintendo consoles also don't support HD. The N64 doesn't support RGB out of the box, and the NES didn't support stereo sound, let alone s-video. Why draw the line here, other than as flamebait?
"Using the experiences of high school as a benchmark for your entire life seems a really bass-ackwards thing to do. Almost nobody is, as a teenager, self-confident enough to choose a dating partner without regard to what your "friends" might say."
I hate to say it (believe me), but high school doesn't end, at least for 3/4 of the people out there. The same social bullshit that first manifests itself in high school sticks around for the rest of most peoples' lives.
If you're socially SOL in high school, you're pretty much SOL for the rest of your life, or at least until you become a totally different person.
I've gone through the guy's website, and all I see is a bitter/stalker-type person (come on, putting up pics of the women who've rejected him?) trying to justify his own bitterness through pseudo-logic that requires fitting all men and women into three or four narrowly-constrained generalizations.
"It began when the Romans, after conquering Scotland, asked "so, what do you guys do for fun around here?"
Um... no. Everybody knows that the answer would have been "Beat the living crap out of each other."
Really, golf only caught on over there because it was the only way they could hit things with a club and still be called "civilized."
"Maybe he was just trying to say that he likes you better than all of them. I mean, if he'd said "they look nice", how would you have taken that? He may very well have thought that you wanted him to point out why they were all worse choices than you. "
So why didn't he ask? I'm going to be single for the rest of my life, and even I know that the correct response for him in that situation is "Uh... what about it?" Perhaps parent didn't clarify enough, but it seemed that his first, reflexive reaction was to make a negative comment about the women in the pic.
"we don't sleep around"
We can't sleep around.
"we're generally good at the things we try"
We never have the opportunity to try (see previous rebuttal).
"we have *excellent* finger dexterity"
I've seen it suggested otherwise.
"most importantly, we have imagination!"
I've seen some of our Star Trek fan scripts. No, we don't.
"Amazingly, the Canadian recording industry, which previously praised the reforms, now says they aren't good enough"
It doesn't go too far enough!
"I started making noise a few years back about how awful cmd.exe is"
Now now, it's not that bad.... At least it's not command~1.com!
"2,823 died in that attack. Thats very sad but damnit, its not even a drop in the ocean compared to other dangerous things. "
Yes, but those other dangerous things don't happen in nice, neat, media-friendly events. It's not that 3000 died, it's that 3000 died all at once on live TV. Coverage of it trumped last year's tsunami because there weren't cameras on the beaches watching the wave come in.
It's like the ol' nuclear power debates that happen from time to time here. Sure, coal kills many, many, many more people in a year than nuclear power kills in a decade, but when nuclear power goes wrong it goes wrong in one, single place where everybody can send their TV cameras.
"As a former member of Tehran's expatriot community"
Hrm. When last I checked, in order to be a "former expatriate," you have to go back and stop being an expatriate. So you'd be posting from within Iran.
Perhaps I'm being cynical/paranoid/whatever, but I'd have to take whatever someone posting in a public forum from within Iran about the Iranian government with a rather large grain of salt.
"Having people pledge alliegence to the Country they belong to is a bad thing?"
That "pledge of alliegence" by any other name is a formal loyalty oath. And while we don't allow minors to sign alone for themselves on contracts, this is the only exception where we not only allow them but expect them to take this oath.
Politicians swear an oath to the constitution. Soldiers swear an oath to the constitution. The rest of us, however, are expected to swear an oath to the national government ("the republic for which it stands").
"We rank in the hundreds of thousands, so if we create a community that is unified by one simple concept, even a whisper from us would deafen the politicos."
No, it wouldn't. "Hundreds of thousands" is in the neighborhoods of tenths of a percent when you live in a country of nearly 300,000,000. What you're trying to do is organize Slashdot into another lobbying/astroturf organization, exactly what most of us here are complaining about.
Personally, I'd rather not sell out like that.