I see your sentiment, but also see it as rather cold and mercenary.
Yes, I enjoy my standard of living, and wouldn't want to raise other countries up at any great expense to that.
Conversely I like to see myself as a nice person, and would rather have everyone equal to us (in the raising up sense, not the lowering ourselves to their level sense). First and for most I don't want my country to be rich at anyones expense, this might lead to a loss in profits, but it is the ethical way to live, and ethics should always come above personal gain. Second any chance of helping other countries should be taken, as long as it does not overtly hurt us.
People here keep rallying around the idea of "competition = good", so why isn't helping international competition also a good thing? Do we fear that the U.S. can't compete?
Are kids who grew up here complaining about losing construction/landscaping and migrant farm jobs to immigration?
Short answer: Yes.
Long form: Yes, but not primarily kids, but unskilled adults who used to be able to make a living wage off of these jobs. Illegal labor pushes wages down (hence its existence), which limits the ability of unskilled laborers to live at any level of comfort. It also is used to break unions, taking away many of the protections needed for stability. To be blunt, and honest, my father who has been driving trucks for the last 50 years rejoiced when the tech firms started facing outsourcing as a major threat, he figured it was payback to the white collar Americans who sat by and cheared the death of the working class. I'm not quite that brash, but I would wish that we all would learn a lesson from this, the only people who will profit by the current scheme is the very rich.
The phrase "no one wants to do" is a fallacy. No one wants to do it because wages were pushed down by cheap labor. I'm sure if you restored construction jobs back to the respectable wage they were at until recently, you would have a flood of citizens offering their skills. It really doesn't matter if some guy in an office making 100k a year thinks construction is undesirable, what matters is some people NEED those jobs, money is tight in the middle and lower classes, especially in todays economy.
I really wish people would stop misusing the term "immigration", immigration is NOT the issue, and no one thinks it is, ILLEGAL immigration is the issue. Here in Phoenix the vocal proponents to illegal immigration have been trying to spin the issue to be one of "anti-immigration", when in fact it is just an issue of "anti-illegal-immigration", apples and oranges, since legal immigrants have the same rights and obligations as the rest of us citizens, taxes, social security, minimum wage laws, etc... Illegal immigrants get the free ride at the expense of everyone except business owners and significant stock holders.
Somewhat tangentially, I came up with a good fix to the whole problem, allow illegal immigrants the same rights as the rest of us, at the same costs to business owners. They need insurance, they need to pay taxes, etc... And their employers are held responsible for violations (just as they are for lapsing on the rights of citizens). To make this enforceable, amnesty and a monetary reward will be granted to all illegals who rat out their employers. More here.
Wow. Thank you for that. You must be the most hated/.er, btw.
I agree mostly. But some degree of corporation will always be necessary in the modern world. Sure it should be regulated to ensure it remains beneficial to its host society, and it should be taxed so it is forced to support the culture which allowed it to strive and be profitable.
On the other hand we, for some odd reason, have a double standard when it comes to corporations, we legally treat them as individuals, but also treat them as pure capitalist constructs. The boards and leaders of these corporations should be held culpable for their actions, as well as the corporate entity itself.
Oddly I think the libertarians have some degree of a point when they want the economy to be free from government. But I see this in a positive sense, corporations should be divorced from government in the same way religion ought to be, it has no influence over government, but government can still touch its harmful practices. Of course Mr. Gates likes immigration, he benefits from it, but due to our system he has more of a voice than you or me, or most other/.ers or lay public.
Oddly, to go back more OT, I think Mr. Gates is confused. I haven't seen much initiative to reduce legal immigration, and if there is it too is misguided since it is already well night impossible for skilled immigrants to come to the US, especially those from Europe, and other developed nations.
I've spent considerable time pondering the possible aesthetics of video games, and agree with you that any list of pure specs cannot lead to higher aesthetics. Tetris was simple in every possible criteria, but still could be seen as one of the more beautiful games ever, much like primitive cave paintings. Your last paragraph captures this perfectly.
That said, though, no one really has analyzed the aesthetics of games, and many people say that they cannot be aesthetic since they are A) mass produced for market, and B) interactive. I disagree with both of these premises, btw.
Obviously his idea of art revolves around complexity, and not the limitations of the medium. If he was a poet he would be Kerouac with massive free-flowing strings of consciousness, and his haiku would be as broken and unstructured as Kerouac's too. This is a relatively routine distinction in art, some people think that the limitations of a medium or style increases its merit, while others are too lazy, limited, of whatnot, to see the point. This is becoming more and more common in digital media, we're spoiled by ever increasing power, and have a hard time respecting even out current low limitations. Imagine this guy developing on a 8-bit system, or worse a text adventure!
I personally think that good are is a sort of metaphorical collaboration between the artist and the medium./. has been inundated with philosophers lately! I'm very happy that the esoteric crowd is ranting too!
Interesting points. I 99% agree, and where I don't I just have semantic problems. The ability to revoke previously bestowed power is a really good point, actually. Though at times I still struggle with the idea of "majority", since it still can be used to alienate minorities, though I guess there really is no way around this.
Here is my little niggle, I'm unclear on what you mean by "private affairs", since this can be interpreted in different ways. One person's private is another public (turn to most of our hot current issues for example). In other (non-western mainly) cultures the good of the public transcends individual good, meaning that private affairs are only protected until their is an effect on community. This is one complaint I have with much political thought, the line between private and public isn't as clear cut as most would have it.
t's an argument over whether they deserve to enjoy it, whether it is permissible to deny them such. And in that regard, the rights-as-social-constructs account fails miserably at giving any useful answers.
You are correct, of course, to an extent. I think that there still can be entitlement within the social-construct framework, but this is still largely cultural. As an American I feel entitled to free speech, but other people have given up that right in interest of social cohesion. Accepting a normative framework makes it easy to judge this as wrong by confusing what we think we're entitled to, to what everyone IS entitled too.
I mean descriptive in a deeper sense than merely observing what rights we can be observed as having, but what is the unifying principle behind those rights. To use and idiotic prefix, what is our ur-right, we can then use that as a principle to determine how our current system is failing or succeeding to protect our rights in general. In America this ur-right could be seen as individuality and the attainment of the highest degree of self-sovereignty as possible, in other cultures this does not necessarily hold true though.
I do think some Kantian framework is implied for the most part though, as most declarations of universal rights follow that "as an ends" ideal. It is a good ideological framework, or place to start. Though I think each society and culture disagrees with the boundaries of these rights.
I always wondered, as a further tangent, what was the ethical implications of a democratic society voting to remove their democracy. Or freely removing freedom of speech.
of course, well... she is American so... take it with a grain of salt
Congrats, you just invalidated everything you possibly could say, and better you fit into the same class of people you were criticizing by propagating your own bigoted stereotype of a nationality.
Mexicans go to USA to do work that "not even blacks" like to do [with apologies to our fellow non-white friends]).
Yes, because hiring illegal immigrants keeps the wages down. I'm not going to debate this point, its tangential and too complex to get into here. What does this have to do with the issue at hand anyways?
I never claimed it wasn't problematic, though any assumption of rights will have some serious problems. A more Kantian version of rights has the serious flaw of being purely normative, and based on the idea that humans are primarily rational. I mostly brought up what I did because it seems a more valid model for the discussion, since it does factor in the role of the individual and government, something many non-socially prescribed systems fail to do.
Sometimes I think the continental philosophers have it right, where rights are based on individual autonomy, which is quasi-Kantian. Never utilize a person as a means towards and end, as it dehumanizes them and removes their identity as an individual. But we also, then, run into the problem that identity is to some extent socially constructed too. This is why I stay away from ethics, and political philosophy, and try to hide in philosophy of science and epistemology, it seems that a little more certainty is allowed.
In your opinion what would be a positive definition of "rights" (as distinct from ethics), I've noticed a lack of definitions in this whole thread.
As a student of philosophy, including political philosophy, I still don't see where anyone has answered where your rights actually come from. Saying the state, as you strawman into the mouth of liberals, or from God as said by the framers of the constitution are equally valid points, and equally unprovable. Your opinion is the latter, and some people's opinion is the former, woohoo still opinions.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and they generally stink.
I think a right is what you can convince others is a right. Rights are what you can defend. Governments exist as a social contract to create, AND protect those rights. I beleive this, like most political scientists, as a matter of convention, and not a matter of science, it is the most pragmatic theory on rights. Personally I follow J.S. Mill, your rights only exist as far as someone else's, and government, as social contract, exists to protect and define these boundaries. Generally (as seen in the formation of all modern democracies) this means the government is made as a powerful ally to those who are too weak to protect their own rights, which is actually inline with early communist philosophy (As in Marx and Lenin, Stalin subverted it). But, then again, this is just my (somewhat informed) opinion. When someone shows me actual documentation of a "god given", or "unalienable" right I'll hop over to that side in an instant. For now I must accept that a right is an arbitrary social construct lacking proof to the contrary.
By all means, if you think a right is being violated, defend it. By force, if necessary. If the offender backs down, congratulations, you have a new right.
Hm. You forgot something very important. Offering a competing definition of what a journalist is. Actually you completely forgot to back up your statement outside of some ambiguous and weak analogies.
So, now, I task you to actually defend your position. Looking around, the strongest definition I can find still amounts to "one who does journalism", basically journalism is dissemination of news, and people who do this are called journalists. Perhaps you need a boss to call you this for you to be this, which is a rather absurd statement in itself. But then what keep one from being their own boss, and THEN calling themself a journalist?
This is true. I pretty much had the same computer as I did from the days of double digit pentiums, but it just got upgraded to the point of being new roughly every socket revision, finally it started being a pain to upgrade, so I bought a Mac. Now after five years of not touching the inside of my computer I'm beginning to feel nostalgia (that and a strange hankering to add RAM without the use of strange tools, and a full day of work, or $1000 to Apple) for mucking about inside of computers again. Perhaps not as whole horse as I used to, but I'm pondering getting a hobby box again. I'm pretty sure its a cyclical trend, you over do it in your youth, give up, then realize that you made it into work, and accept it as a hobby.
To be more on topic, at 27, the C64 was my first entrance into computing. I loved that ratty beige keyboard, and the huge honking 300bd modem "card". Recently I was cleaning up clutter and rediscovered it, it really made me respect the leaps and bounds computers have made of the years, my floppy drive is not the size of a Volkswagen, and I don't need to place a full can of coke on top of my DVD drive to make it read properly.
Last time I booted it up, about five years ago, or so, it made me realize how much patience I've lost in the last 20 years. I put my floppy of SimCity, typed "load "sc",8,1" went and grabbed a cup of coffee, came back, typed "run", went out for a smoke, and came back and it was still loading. I used to be able to handle load times up to five minutes in stride, now we complain about games with load-times in the seconds. I notice this online too, I remember waiting for pages of ASCII (or better ANSI) to load up, a single line at a time on BBSs, and now I get impatient waiting 5 seconds for content.
How many kids learned to have a passion for computers from those heavy beige bricks? I remember the first time I mastered peek and poke, the pure glory of your first idiotic "goto 10" message.
I find this new Commodore to be silly, just like Infrogames being "Atari". Its just a name, lord, it doesn't really capture any of the glory in itself, being just a hollow marketing gimmick. Stop it, and let dead nostalgia lie.
Conversely, schools can teach at the lowest possible level, alienating the brighter and quicker students. This leads to bored and problematic children who drag the whole system down somewhat. I'm guessing if an ideal education system taught each child according to their ability the incidence of "diseases" like ADD and ADHD would dramatically decrease, freeing up resources for actual education.
Another problem, as pointed out here previously, is the very structure of the school system, which was developed to make children good little cogs, but not thinkers. Remembering my own education I recall much time wasted on civilizing concepts ("black people are people too! Mexicans exist!"), and blatant propaganda ("The civil war was the war against slavery", "WWII was fought to free the Jews"), and less on actual education. Schools shouldn't waste their time with making children good Americans or giving moral education (both of which is the job of other sociological institutions).
I encountered another issue when I was in college. I was going to one of the top colleges for education (NAU), and knew several primary and secondary ed kids. The curriculum seemed to emphasize entertainment over education, learning should always be fun. I thought this was utter crap, I dare you to make algebra fun. Learning should be difficult, it means that the kid is being challenged. Sure, there should be some fun, but it shouldn't be the emphasis of our school systems.
Schools, also, shouldn't be frightened of pissing parents off. Our local standardized test (the AIMS)is designed to have a 96% pass rate, and teachers and parents are complaining that this isn't good enough, the test should be redesigned for a 99% pass rate. Then again when it was first introduced teachers didn't like it since a significant portion of them couldn't pass it themselves.
But then again I am one of the last Americans who think that discipline is a good thing.
From Arizona, that really says bad things about your local school system. Az is the flat worse state in the U.S. for education. As a child of the Arizona education system, I learned to spite the system. The first time rebellion ever actually came in handy. It's amazing if our children leave high school with greater than a 9th grade reading level, much less math or science skills.
My old high school class had a 60% drop out rate, and was the number one school for drug busts. And we're not talking about a ghetto school, but a solidly upper middle class demographic. Go Deer Valley!
these agencies just can't work, we need to end government regulation.
Er... Then we wouldn't have to worry about a corrupt government approving things like this, corporations could just do it on their own. Notice that this move probably came from the cattle lobby, meaning that the cattlemen wanted this. Without regulation they would have just done it, without even the defense of the increasingly broken regulatory process.
This, also, is not a mandate, meaning responsible beef people don't have to do it, only the irresponsible ones will. And probably, judging from our labeling laws, the consumer will never know.
If anything this is proof that we need to FIX our regulation scheme, make it sane and somewhat stronger. Corporate will, free from any intervention, would do things worse than this for the all mighty short-term profit. And we would never be the wiser, since labeling food as "this might lead to really nasty consequences 10 years down the road" would never be in the interest of the share-holders.
I fail to see the pro-free-market propaganda value in this little news item.
So... We shouldn't do anything at all to reduce the use of fossil fuels, which have a far greater impact on the (macro) environment, because of small possible effects on the (mirco) environment? Wind farms kill birds. Solar takes up valuable space in ecosystems, nuclear produces really nasty things that sit around for hundreds of thousands of years. Ergo we have two solutions, do nothing, or give up electricity.
But how long does it take for the other 20% to biodegrade?
Easy. 80% of the remaining 20% will degrade in a further 28 days, and 80% of THAT will degrade in another 28 days, ad naseam. Its like a half-life, but better!
A couple of gallons of oil (hydrocarbon or not) is indeed better than a couple tons of CO2 and various other nasties in the air, settling EVERYWHERE.
Yes, there would be small negatives, but it is a matter of degrees. Anything we do will have impact, the game is lessening that impact, not removing it totally. The only way to do that is to just die, and even that would have an impact with the couple billion corpses sitting around. Perhaps cold packing the human race and sending us into the sun, but even that would hurt the ozone, pump out god-knows-what, and require resources.
Sorry for sounding harsh, its late (early) and my bullshit tolerance is down.
Generally, when you have something offered up for sale, and someone finds a way to rip it off instead of paying for it, you don't think of that person as a "customer."
I think that this is overly simplistic. The RIAA is making a shit-ton of money still, and their profits are going up, but not at the rate which they'd like. A majority of this money is still coming from their age bracket, college age kids. I'm guessing a fare number of these kids pirated music too. I'm guessing a fare number of these students bought something they wouldn't have bought if they couldn't have downloaded it free, and gave it a twirl.
In college the amount of CDs I bought went up, sadly the RIAA didn't get a dime from me, though, since used record shops are so popular around college campuses, and most colleges are surrounded by local venues where you can still here good music (not the pap the RIAA wants us to buy), and buy a CD where you know most of the profits goes to help the artist, and not pay for lawyers.
The sad thing is that when you go look at places like Pirate Bay, and P2P networks, the most traded files are still RIAA pop pap. Which shoots some of my argument in the foot, most pirates are high school kids, using mommy and daddies DSL to get the newest Booby Spears CD for free since mommy and daddy won't give them the $16 (or more) to get it. In college, most of the people I knew were pirating new music (as in new to them, not just released). I wonder how many smaller bands are known just because of this?
In the end both sides are asses, and generally wrong. The RIAA should realize the fact that their business practices are bad, and thats why people aren't following them. This is/., the most free market/libertarian bastion on the 'net, but we still find ourselves defending a corporation who would be dead (of their own implicit addition) be dead without the government's intervention. Yes, it is illegal, but only because a corporation lobbied to make it so, a weak rational if ever there was one, it's illegal because of a buisness model to sluggish and unimaginative to cope with 20 year old technology. Let them die, perhaps someone will discover a fairer method of delivery that is good for the customers AND the content producers, and not just for some corporation.
The RIAA is blocking the only hope they have to remain viable in the modern age, online distribution. I feel no pity for them. I got side tracked, sorry. I rather hate this whole issue. But to paint good guys and bad guys is absurd. And to make it black and white is even sillier.
I love the logic in the box store. I went to a Staples to by a cheap calculator, it was a dollar, and they asked me if I wanted a $2 warranty on it, then looked at me blankly when I laughed at them, thinking it a joke.
Seriously though, they just closed the CompUSA down by my house (also in the valley, btw), I didn't think I'd miss it, but I oddly do. Its surprising how often I used to walk the block or so to that store to buy some small little part that suddenly failed. I was nice, there was a Best Buy, a CompUSA, and a EB all in the same strip-mall, meaning I could get all my little electronic fixes done with a short walk. Now the CompUSA went belly-up, the BestBuy moved acouple miles up I-17 to compete with Fry's, meaning the only electronics store in walking distance is Circuit City, which I swore I'd never enter again after they tried to rip my parents off.
I wasn't a fan of CompUSA, they service that was almost as bad as Fry's, but they did have the little crap I needed for quick fixes. I trusted their products more than Fry's, which has the worst record for PC hardware of any store I have ever been at. I once went through I streak of taking back an ASUS mobo 5 times, since each was just a defective repackage, and finally one of their PCUs fried it anyways. Even CompUSA's cheap Mad-Dog hardware worked better than name-brand Fry's bought hardware.
My only real complaint was the service. I spent more time hunting for employees than actually shopping there. That and their woe-full Apple section, with nothing but outdated hardware (I don't think I saw an Intel Mac there until almost 6mo's after they were released).
Which is why all computers in the future will be placed in VERY large isolated lead boxes 100 meters below the earths surface. As for quantum effects, we won't be able to open these boxes to see if they are functioning, thus they are in a state of super-position, therefore cannot actually fail.
the majority of the general public supports the actions), of which I hardly think the RIAA applies
I disagree, the majority of people are generally indifferent, if not somewhat apathetically sympathetic, you seem to insinuate wide-spread disapproval, but I have yet to see any evidence of this outside the more geeky corners of life.
And it is arguable that nationalism, as part of fascism, really requires a majority of people to support the actions, it just requires a large, violent and vocal minority, and an apathetic population. Also, to quibble, I never heard of nationalism having to do with majority approval, nationalism is more akin to "our state is the best". This still doesn't apply to the **AAs, granted, unless they used more jingoistic language "Our music is the heart of the great American motherland, and there are those who wish to subvert it with anti-American communist sympathies, these people must be crushed for the good of America!".
Yes, but I don't think its the console's fault, but the games that are being released for it. Looking through the recent issue of Game Informer, I managed to get excited about a ton of upcoming releases, but none of them were for the Wii, the only real Wii game featured was some cooking game. Quirky? I'm sure it will be, and quirky is good, but the Wii already has a glut of perky games, but none of the staples.
Perhaps when Fire Emblem, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Smash Bros. come out. It needs real games too, established genres. I do like looking like an idiot playing Wario Ware, but I'd also like some regular gaming action, I want a decent FPS, and some decent RPGs, and a good fighter. These are the first games I generally acquire for any console, and the games that keep me playing them. I still break out the "obsolete" consoles to play these types of games, the Wii is lacking them completely except for TP. Yes its a new console, and these will come, but this leads to another worry.
One thing I didn't here many people talking about is how the Wii lack of power will cause people to stop porting to it. Looking through that Game Informer you can see many multi-platformers coming out, but they're all PS3/360, with a conspicuous lack of Wii support. I'm going to have to buy a 360 to get my hot Conan action, and my steamy Star Wars force fix. Thinking about this, I guess the GC had the same problem, but it DID have the staple genres, even if light on the RPG front.
Anyone who goes through my post-history will notice that I was pimping the Wii pretty hard, but now I'm starting to worry.
Never had a problem with computers here in AZ. I've sat around in a 107-110F apartment, sans air conditioning, with nary a crash. I've sat around at Starbucks with my old iBook in 117 degree heat writing a couple time, granted only for the length of a cigarette, with no ill effects.
I have an old 8086 that ran find when it hit 122, and our AC crapped out, with no problems.
I think it has to be substantially hotter to really matter too much.
They should only be levied in order to pay for govt. services, no more or less.
This is not meant to be a troll, or flamebait, though it may be taken as such, but I feel obligated to ask "Why?" I've seen sentiments such as these bandied about on Slashdot pretty commonly, and no one ever really explains it. What is wrong with using taxes for punative, or behavior changing, reasons?
I'm not saying I personally think they should, or shouldn't be used in this way, I really don't have much of an opinion.
Curiously, couldn't punitive environmental taxation be seen "funding a government service", or at least future ones. The taxes could be seen as an offset for future expenses incurred by the effects of global warming (as caused by the taxed services). Again, I don't know if I buy this or not, it is a way of looking at it though.
There is a term for this (borrowed shamelessly from polisci) "The tyranny of the masses". Even if the majority of consumers wants to digest pap, unoriginal games, and idiotic sequels, there should still be niches for gamers who want to play something unique and creative. Yes, the average consumer is an idiot, most of us agree when looking at Hollywood, or in your local Gamestop), since 90% of whats out there is crap, profitable crap, but still crap. For every Katamari or Elebits there is 900,000 WWII clones, and 10,000,000 stealth shooters. People don't play creative games, because they are rare and thus people don't get to experience difference. Creative games are rare because no one buys them. The only people who can short circuit this are the developers and publishers. (Just like the indie film market created exposure, which creative desire, which created a larger market, which created more indie films). Nintendo is, though, the last show in town with exposure, PCs comes second.
I'm sick of the "nintendo only pops out sequels" myth. Yes, there are shared characters, and series. BUT, how much gameplay do these share with other games with "Mario" or "Donkey Kong"? Not much. They at least shake things up, unlike other popular series, such as the much beloved Halo series, which is the exact same game, going on 3 iterations now.
The minigame thing for the Wii is scary though. I love Wii Sports, Rabbids, and Wario, but 3 is enough for so close after launch, and perhaps another year. Sure, it is nice to be able to play a game for 10 minutes, and still get a good experience, and have something to break out at parties. But still...
As for adventure (classic, hunt the hotspot type), I rather doubt they will be big ever again. The audience is aging, and has less time on their hands, the younger folks don't have the patience to stare at a static screen for an hour, trying to figure out you need to shove the fence post into the giant evil space pumpkin, to kill her.
Slashdot Mirror
I see your sentiment, but also see it as rather cold and mercenary.
Yes, I enjoy my standard of living, and wouldn't want to raise other countries up at any great expense to that.
Conversely I like to see myself as a nice person, and would rather have everyone equal to us (in the raising up sense, not the lowering ourselves to their level sense). First and for most I don't want my country to be rich at anyones expense, this might lead to a loss in profits, but it is the ethical way to live, and ethics should always come above personal gain. Second any chance of helping other countries should be taken, as long as it does not overtly hurt us.
People here keep rallying around the idea of "competition = good", so why isn't helping international competition also a good thing? Do we fear that the U.S. can't compete?
Are kids who grew up here complaining about losing construction/landscaping and migrant farm jobs to immigration?
Short answer: Yes.
Long form: Yes, but not primarily kids, but unskilled adults who used to be able to make a living wage off of these jobs. Illegal labor pushes wages down (hence its existence), which limits the ability of unskilled laborers to live at any level of comfort. It also is used to break unions, taking away many of the protections needed for stability. To be blunt, and honest, my father who has been driving trucks for the last 50 years rejoiced when the tech firms started facing outsourcing as a major threat, he figured it was payback to the white collar Americans who sat by and cheared the death of the working class. I'm not quite that brash, but I would wish that we all would learn a lesson from this, the only people who will profit by the current scheme is the very rich.
The phrase "no one wants to do" is a fallacy. No one wants to do it because wages were pushed down by cheap labor. I'm sure if you restored construction jobs back to the respectable wage they were at until recently, you would have a flood of citizens offering their skills. It really doesn't matter if some guy in an office making 100k a year thinks construction is undesirable, what matters is some people NEED those jobs, money is tight in the middle and lower classes, especially in todays economy.
I really wish people would stop misusing the term "immigration", immigration is NOT the issue, and no one thinks it is, ILLEGAL immigration is the issue. Here in Phoenix the vocal proponents to illegal immigration have been trying to spin the issue to be one of "anti-immigration", when in fact it is just an issue of "anti-illegal-immigration", apples and oranges, since legal immigrants have the same rights and obligations as the rest of us citizens, taxes, social security, minimum wage laws, etc... Illegal immigrants get the free ride at the expense of everyone except business owners and significant stock holders.
Somewhat tangentially, I came up with a good fix to the whole problem, allow illegal immigrants the same rights as the rest of us, at the same costs to business owners. They need insurance, they need to pay taxes, etc... And their employers are held responsible for violations (just as they are for lapsing on the rights of citizens). To make this enforceable, amnesty and a monetary reward will be granted to all illegals who rat out their employers. More here.
Wow. Thank you for that. You must be the most hated /.er, btw.
/.ers or lay public.
I agree mostly. But some degree of corporation will always be necessary in the modern world. Sure it should be regulated to ensure it remains beneficial to its host society, and it should be taxed so it is forced to support the culture which allowed it to strive and be profitable.
On the other hand we, for some odd reason, have a double standard when it comes to corporations, we legally treat them as individuals, but also treat them as pure capitalist constructs. The boards and leaders of these corporations should be held culpable for their actions, as well as the corporate entity itself.
Oddly I think the libertarians have some degree of a point when they want the economy to be free from government. But I see this in a positive sense, corporations should be divorced from government in the same way religion ought to be, it has no influence over government, but government can still touch its harmful practices. Of course Mr. Gates likes immigration, he benefits from it, but due to our system he has more of a voice than you or me, or most other
Oddly, to go back more OT, I think Mr. Gates is confused. I haven't seen much initiative to reduce legal immigration, and if there is it too is misguided since it is already well night impossible for skilled immigrants to come to the US, especially those from Europe, and other developed nations.
I've spent considerable time pondering the possible aesthetics of video games, and agree with you that any list of pure specs cannot lead to higher aesthetics. Tetris was simple in every possible criteria, but still could be seen as one of the more beautiful games ever, much like primitive cave paintings. Your last paragraph captures this perfectly.
- interactive-art-aesthetic.htmls -as-art-revisited.html
/. has been inundated with philosophers lately! I'm very happy that the esoteric crowd is ranting too!
That said, though, no one really has analyzed the aesthetics of games, and many people say that they cannot be aesthetic since they are A) mass produced for market, and B) interactive. I disagree with both of these premises, btw.
Its late, and I'm lazy, so I'll just link to articles I wrote about this topic:
http://nonservium.blogspot.com/2006/09/prelude-to
http://nonservium.blogspot.com/2006/12/video-game
Yeah, self promotion AND laziness, I now embody the modern internet.
Obviously his idea of art revolves around complexity, and not the limitations of the medium. If he was a poet he would be Kerouac with massive free-flowing strings of consciousness, and his haiku would be as broken and unstructured as Kerouac's too. This is a relatively routine distinction in art, some people think that the limitations of a medium or style increases its merit, while others are too lazy, limited, of whatnot, to see the point. This is becoming more and more common in digital media, we're spoiled by ever increasing power, and have a hard time respecting even out current low limitations. Imagine this guy developing on a 8-bit system, or worse a text adventure!
I personally think that good are is a sort of metaphorical collaboration between the artist and the medium.
Interesting points. I 99% agree, and where I don't I just have semantic problems. The ability to revoke previously bestowed power is a really good point, actually. Though at times I still struggle with the idea of "majority", since it still can be used to alienate minorities, though I guess there really is no way around this.
Here is my little niggle, I'm unclear on what you mean by "private affairs", since this can be interpreted in different ways. One person's private is another public (turn to most of our hot current issues for example). In other (non-western mainly) cultures the good of the public transcends individual good, meaning that private affairs are only protected until their is an effect on community. This is one complaint I have with much political thought, the line between private and public isn't as clear cut as most would have it.
Good conversation btw!
t's an argument over whether they deserve to enjoy it, whether it is permissible to deny them such. And in that regard, the rights-as-social-constructs account fails miserably at giving any useful answers.
You are correct, of course, to an extent. I think that there still can be entitlement within the social-construct framework, but this is still largely cultural. As an American I feel entitled to free speech, but other people have given up that right in interest of social cohesion. Accepting a normative framework makes it easy to judge this as wrong by confusing what we think we're entitled to, to what everyone IS entitled too.
I mean descriptive in a deeper sense than merely observing what rights we can be observed as having, but what is the unifying principle behind those rights. To use and idiotic prefix, what is our ur-right, we can then use that as a principle to determine how our current system is failing or succeeding to protect our rights in general. In America this ur-right could be seen as individuality and the attainment of the highest degree of self-sovereignty as possible, in other cultures this does not necessarily hold true though.
I do think some Kantian framework is implied for the most part though, as most declarations of universal rights follow that "as an ends" ideal. It is a good ideological framework, or place to start. Though I think each society and culture disagrees with the boundaries of these rights.
I always wondered, as a further tangent, what was the ethical implications of a democratic society voting to remove their democracy. Or freely removing freedom of speech.
of course, well... she is American so... take it with a grain of salt
Congrats, you just invalidated everything you possibly could say, and better you fit into the same class of people you were criticizing by propagating your own bigoted stereotype of a nationality.
Mexicans go to USA to do work that "not even blacks" like to do [with apologies to our fellow non-white friends]).
Yes, because hiring illegal immigrants keeps the wages down. I'm not going to debate this point, its tangential and too complex to get into here. What does this have to do with the issue at hand anyways?
I never claimed it wasn't problematic, though any assumption of rights will have some serious problems. A more Kantian version of rights has the serious flaw of being purely normative, and based on the idea that humans are primarily rational. I mostly brought up what I did because it seems a more valid model for the discussion, since it does factor in the role of the individual and government, something many non-socially prescribed systems fail to do.
Sometimes I think the continental philosophers have it right, where rights are based on individual autonomy, which is quasi-Kantian. Never utilize a person as a means towards and end, as it dehumanizes them and removes their identity as an individual. But we also, then, run into the problem that identity is to some extent socially constructed too. This is why I stay away from ethics, and political philosophy, and try to hide in philosophy of science and epistemology, it seems that a little more certainty is allowed.
In your opinion what would be a positive definition of "rights" (as distinct from ethics), I've noticed a lack of definitions in this whole thread.
As a student of philosophy, including political philosophy, I still don't see where anyone has answered where your rights actually come from. Saying the state, as you strawman into the mouth of liberals, or from God as said by the framers of the constitution are equally valid points, and equally unprovable. Your opinion is the latter, and some people's opinion is the former, woohoo still opinions.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and they generally stink.
I think a right is what you can convince others is a right. Rights are what you can defend. Governments exist as a social contract to create, AND protect those rights. I beleive this, like most political scientists, as a matter of convention, and not a matter of science, it is the most pragmatic theory on rights. Personally I follow J.S. Mill, your rights only exist as far as someone else's, and government, as social contract, exists to protect and define these boundaries. Generally (as seen in the formation of all modern democracies) this means the government is made as a powerful ally to those who are too weak to protect their own rights, which is actually inline with early communist philosophy (As in Marx and Lenin, Stalin subverted it). But, then again, this is just my (somewhat informed) opinion. When someone shows me actual documentation of a "god given", or "unalienable" right I'll hop over to that side in an instant. For now I must accept that a right is an arbitrary social construct lacking proof to the contrary.
By all means, if you think a right is being violated, defend it. By force, if necessary. If the offender backs down, congratulations, you have a new right.
Hm. You forgot something very important. Offering a competing definition of what a journalist is. Actually you completely forgot to back up your statement outside of some ambiguous and weak analogies.
So, now, I task you to actually defend your position. Looking around, the strongest definition I can find still amounts to "one who does journalism", basically journalism is dissemination of news, and people who do this are called journalists. Perhaps you need a boss to call you this for you to be this, which is a rather absurd statement in itself. But then what keep one from being their own boss, and THEN calling themself a journalist?
This is true. I pretty much had the same computer as I did from the days of double digit pentiums, but it just got upgraded to the point of being new roughly every socket revision, finally it started being a pain to upgrade, so I bought a Mac. Now after five years of not touching the inside of my computer I'm beginning to feel nostalgia (that and a strange hankering to add RAM without the use of strange tools, and a full day of work, or $1000 to Apple) for mucking about inside of computers again. Perhaps not as whole horse as I used to, but I'm pondering getting a hobby box again. I'm pretty sure its a cyclical trend, you over do it in your youth, give up, then realize that you made it into work, and accept it as a hobby.
To be more on topic, at 27, the C64 was my first entrance into computing. I loved that ratty beige keyboard, and the huge honking 300bd modem "card". Recently I was cleaning up clutter and rediscovered it, it really made me respect the leaps and bounds computers have made of the years, my floppy drive is not the size of a Volkswagen, and I don't need to place a full can of coke on top of my DVD drive to make it read properly.
Last time I booted it up, about five years ago, or so, it made me realize how much patience I've lost in the last 20 years. I put my floppy of SimCity, typed "load "sc",8,1" went and grabbed a cup of coffee, came back, typed "run", went out for a smoke, and came back and it was still loading. I used to be able to handle load times up to five minutes in stride, now we complain about games with load-times in the seconds. I notice this online too, I remember waiting for pages of ASCII (or better ANSI) to load up, a single line at a time on BBSs, and now I get impatient waiting 5 seconds for content.
How many kids learned to have a passion for computers from those heavy beige bricks? I remember the first time I mastered peek and poke, the pure glory of your first idiotic "goto 10" message.
I find this new Commodore to be silly, just like Infrogames being "Atari". Its just a name, lord, it doesn't really capture any of the glory in itself, being just a hollow marketing gimmick. Stop it, and let dead nostalgia lie.
Conversely, schools can teach at the lowest possible level, alienating the brighter and quicker students. This leads to bored and problematic children who drag the whole system down somewhat. I'm guessing if an ideal education system taught each child according to their ability the incidence of "diseases" like ADD and ADHD would dramatically decrease, freeing up resources for actual education.
Another problem, as pointed out here previously, is the very structure of the school system, which was developed to make children good little cogs, but not thinkers. Remembering my own education I recall much time wasted on civilizing concepts ("black people are people too! Mexicans exist!"), and blatant propaganda ("The civil war was the war against slavery", "WWII was fought to free the Jews"), and less on actual education. Schools shouldn't waste their time with making children good Americans or giving moral education (both of which is the job of other sociological institutions).
I encountered another issue when I was in college. I was going to one of the top colleges for education (NAU), and knew several primary and secondary ed kids. The curriculum seemed to emphasize entertainment over education, learning should always be fun. I thought this was utter crap, I dare you to make algebra fun. Learning should be difficult, it means that the kid is being challenged. Sure, there should be some fun, but it shouldn't be the emphasis of our school systems.
Schools, also, shouldn't be frightened of pissing parents off. Our local standardized test (the AIMS)is designed to have a 96% pass rate, and teachers and parents are complaining that this isn't good enough, the test should be redesigned for a 99% pass rate. Then again when it was first introduced teachers didn't like it since a significant portion of them couldn't pass it themselves.
But then again I am one of the last Americans who think that discipline is a good thing.
From Arizona, that really says bad things about your local school system. Az is the flat worse state in the U.S. for education. As a child of the Arizona education system, I learned to spite the system. The first time rebellion ever actually came in handy. It's amazing if our children leave high school with greater than a 9th grade reading level, much less math or science skills.
My old high school class had a 60% drop out rate, and was the number one school for drug busts. And we're not talking about a ghetto school, but a solidly upper middle class demographic. Go Deer Valley!
these agencies just can't work, we need to end government regulation.
Er... Then we wouldn't have to worry about a corrupt government approving things like this, corporations could just do it on their own. Notice that this move probably came from the cattle lobby, meaning that the cattlemen wanted this. Without regulation they would have just done it, without even the defense of the increasingly broken regulatory process.
This, also, is not a mandate, meaning responsible beef people don't have to do it, only the irresponsible ones will. And probably, judging from our labeling laws, the consumer will never know.
If anything this is proof that we need to FIX our regulation scheme, make it sane and somewhat stronger. Corporate will, free from any intervention, would do things worse than this for the all mighty short-term profit. And we would never be the wiser, since labeling food as "this might lead to really nasty consequences 10 years down the road" would never be in the interest of the share-holders.
I fail to see the pro-free-market propaganda value in this little news item.
So... We shouldn't do anything at all to reduce the use of fossil fuels, which have a far greater impact on the (macro) environment, because of small possible effects on the (mirco) environment? Wind farms kill birds. Solar takes up valuable space in ecosystems, nuclear produces really nasty things that sit around for hundreds of thousands of years. Ergo we have two solutions, do nothing, or give up electricity.
But how long does it take for the other 20% to biodegrade?
Easy. 80% of the remaining 20% will degrade in a further 28 days, and 80% of THAT will degrade in another 28 days, ad naseam. Its like a half-life, but better!
A couple of gallons of oil (hydrocarbon or not) is indeed better than a couple tons of CO2 and various other nasties in the air, settling EVERYWHERE.
Yes, there would be small negatives, but it is a matter of degrees. Anything we do will have impact, the game is lessening that impact, not removing it totally. The only way to do that is to just die, and even that would have an impact with the couple billion corpses sitting around. Perhaps cold packing the human race and sending us into the sun, but even that would hurt the ozone, pump out god-knows-what, and require resources.
Sorry for sounding harsh, its late (early) and my bullshit tolerance is down.
I think that this is overly simplistic. The RIAA is making a shit-ton of money still, and their profits are going up, but not at the rate which they'd like. A majority of this money is still coming from their age bracket, college age kids. I'm guessing a fare number of these kids pirated music too. I'm guessing a fare number of these students bought something they wouldn't have bought if they couldn't have downloaded it free, and gave it a twirl.
In college the amount of CDs I bought went up, sadly the RIAA didn't get a dime from me, though, since used record shops are so popular around college campuses, and most colleges are surrounded by local venues where you can still here good music (not the pap the RIAA wants us to buy), and buy a CD where you know most of the profits goes to help the artist, and not pay for lawyers.
The sad thing is that when you go look at places like Pirate Bay, and P2P networks, the most traded files are still RIAA pop pap. Which shoots some of my argument in the foot, most pirates are high school kids, using mommy and daddies DSL to get the newest Booby Spears CD for free since mommy and daddy won't give them the $16 (or more) to get it. In college, most of the people I knew were pirating new music (as in new to them, not just released). I wonder how many smaller bands are known just because of this?
In the end both sides are asses, and generally wrong. The RIAA should realize the fact that their business practices are bad, and thats why people aren't following them. This is
The RIAA is blocking the only hope they have to remain viable in the modern age, online distribution. I feel no pity for them. I got side tracked, sorry. I rather hate this whole issue. But to paint good guys and bad guys is absurd. And to make it black and white is even sillier.
I love the logic in the box store. I went to a Staples to by a cheap calculator, it was a dollar, and they asked me if I wanted a $2 warranty on it, then looked at me blankly when I laughed at them, thinking it a joke.
Seriously though, they just closed the CompUSA down by my house (also in the valley, btw), I didn't think I'd miss it, but I oddly do. Its surprising how often I used to walk the block or so to that store to buy some small little part that suddenly failed. I was nice, there was a Best Buy, a CompUSA, and a EB all in the same strip-mall, meaning I could get all my little electronic fixes done with a short walk. Now the CompUSA went belly-up, the BestBuy moved acouple miles up I-17 to compete with Fry's, meaning the only electronics store in walking distance is Circuit City, which I swore I'd never enter again after they tried to rip my parents off.
I wasn't a fan of CompUSA, they service that was almost as bad as Fry's, but they did have the little crap I needed for quick fixes. I trusted their products more than Fry's, which has the worst record for PC hardware of any store I have ever been at. I once went through I streak of taking back an ASUS mobo 5 times, since each was just a defective repackage, and finally one of their PCUs fried it anyways. Even CompUSA's cheap Mad-Dog hardware worked better than name-brand Fry's bought hardware.
My only real complaint was the service. I spent more time hunting for employees than actually shopping there. That and their woe-full Apple section, with nothing but outdated hardware (I don't think I saw an Intel Mac there until almost 6mo's after they were released).
Which is why all computers in the future will be placed in VERY large isolated lead boxes 100 meters below the earths surface. As for quantum effects, we won't be able to open these boxes to see if they are functioning, thus they are in a state of super-position, therefore cannot actually fail.
L. Ron, is that you?
the majority of the general public supports the actions), of which I hardly think the RIAA applies
I disagree, the majority of people are generally indifferent, if not somewhat apathetically sympathetic, you seem to insinuate wide-spread disapproval, but I have yet to see any evidence of this outside the more geeky corners of life.
And it is arguable that nationalism, as part of fascism, really requires a majority of people to support the actions, it just requires a large, violent and vocal minority, and an apathetic population. Also, to quibble, I never heard of nationalism having to do with majority approval, nationalism is more akin to "our state is the best". This still doesn't apply to the **AAs, granted, unless they used more jingoistic language "Our music is the heart of the great American motherland, and there are those who wish to subvert it with anti-American communist sympathies, these people must be crushed for the good of America!".
Yes, but I don't think its the console's fault, but the games that are being released for it. Looking through the recent issue of Game Informer, I managed to get excited about a ton of upcoming releases, but none of them were for the Wii, the only real Wii game featured was some cooking game. Quirky? I'm sure it will be, and quirky is good, but the Wii already has a glut of perky games, but none of the staples.
Perhaps when Fire Emblem, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Smash Bros. come out. It needs real games too, established genres. I do like looking like an idiot playing Wario Ware, but I'd also like some regular gaming action, I want a decent FPS, and some decent RPGs, and a good fighter. These are the first games I generally acquire for any console, and the games that keep me playing them. I still break out the "obsolete" consoles to play these types of games, the Wii is lacking them completely except for TP. Yes its a new console, and these will come, but this leads to another worry.
One thing I didn't here many people talking about is how the Wii lack of power will cause people to stop porting to it. Looking through that Game Informer you can see many multi-platformers coming out, but they're all PS3/360, with a conspicuous lack of Wii support. I'm going to have to buy a 360 to get my hot Conan action, and my steamy Star Wars force fix. Thinking about this, I guess the GC had the same problem, but it DID have the staple genres, even if light on the RPG front.
Anyone who goes through my post-history will notice that I was pimping the Wii pretty hard, but now I'm starting to worry.
Never had a problem with computers here in AZ. I've sat around in a 107-110F apartment, sans air conditioning, with nary a crash. I've sat around at Starbucks with my old iBook in 117 degree heat writing a couple time, granted only for the length of a cigarette, with no ill effects.
I have an old 8086 that ran find when it hit 122, and our AC crapped out, with no problems.
I think it has to be substantially hotter to really matter too much.
They should only be levied in order to pay for govt. services, no more or less.
This is not meant to be a troll, or flamebait, though it may be taken as such, but I feel obligated to ask "Why?" I've seen sentiments such as these bandied about on Slashdot pretty commonly, and no one ever really explains it. What is wrong with using taxes for punative, or behavior changing, reasons?
I'm not saying I personally think they should, or shouldn't be used in this way, I really don't have much of an opinion.
Curiously, couldn't punitive environmental taxation be seen "funding a government service", or at least future ones. The taxes could be seen as an offset for future expenses incurred by the effects of global warming (as caused by the taxed services). Again, I don't know if I buy this or not, it is a way of looking at it though.
There is a term for this (borrowed shamelessly from polisci) "The tyranny of the masses". Even if the majority of consumers wants to digest pap, unoriginal games, and idiotic sequels, there should still be niches for gamers who want to play something unique and creative. Yes, the average consumer is an idiot, most of us agree when looking at Hollywood, or in your local Gamestop), since 90% of whats out there is crap, profitable crap, but still crap. For every Katamari or Elebits there is 900,000 WWII clones, and 10,000,000 stealth shooters. People don't play creative games, because they are rare and thus people don't get to experience difference. Creative games are rare because no one buys them. The only people who can short circuit this are the developers and publishers. (Just like the indie film market created exposure, which creative desire, which created a larger market, which created more indie films). Nintendo is, though, the last show in town with exposure, PCs comes second.
I'm sick of the "nintendo only pops out sequels" myth. Yes, there are shared characters, and series. BUT, how much gameplay do these share with other games with "Mario" or "Donkey Kong"? Not much. They at least shake things up, unlike other popular series, such as the much beloved Halo series, which is the exact same game, going on 3 iterations now.
The minigame thing for the Wii is scary though. I love Wii Sports, Rabbids, and Wario, but 3 is enough for so close after launch, and perhaps another year. Sure, it is nice to be able to play a game for 10 minutes, and still get a good experience, and have something to break out at parties. But still...
As for adventure (classic, hunt the hotspot type), I rather doubt they will be big ever again. The audience is aging, and has less time on their hands, the younger folks don't have the patience to stare at a static screen for an hour, trying to figure out you need to shove the fence post into the giant evil space pumpkin, to kill her.
Yes, I want a Wii version of Sanitarium.
Insolent meat! Your cells lack structure!"
Sorry...
YOU'VE BEEN EATEN BY A GRUE!
Thats my Commodore gaming memory.