Would you percieve a person opposed to Apartheid as anti-caucasian?
You would be surprised, but there are people who do believe in that exact formulation. Follow the logic, "If true equality is established, then the white minority will be at the mercy of the black majority, and terrible things will happen."
It's the exact same thing that people who believe in the partition between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country, "If Ireland were ever unified the Protestant minority would be at the mercy of the Catholic majority."
Of course, these formulations mean that the priveleged minority will always have to be protected from the masses. For example, you could make the argument, correctly I might add, "If France ever has an egalitarian revolution, the aristocratic minority will be at the mercy of the commoner majority." After all, after the revolution came many French aristocrats became intimate with Madame Guillotine.
Unfortunately, in countries like pre-revolutionary France, Northern Ireland, Apartheid South Africa and Israel where power is held by a regional minority tend to use this as an excuse for maintaining the status quo and not seeking a way to live in peace with the majority.
This is stupid, because a minority can't maintain their grip on the majority forever. I mean if a ruthless mass murderer like Joseph Stalin couldn't break the back of the Chechens, what hope does the Israeli hard line have? Even if they are willing to be as ruthless as Stalin, the Chechens are still here making trouble for the Russians. I keep hoping the Feds will realize that Israel is a horrible investment and write it off. We spend an ungodly amount of money on that failed state, and the leaders seem to be willing to take our money and then kick us in the teeth. Unfortunately, I think too many Americans have a sentimental attachment to it for that to happen.
Sentiment, even religiously motivated sentiment, can only get them so far. Eventually, it will just become impossible for America to continue pouring money into that sink-hole, and the money and arms will dry up. Israel has no other friends, none. Even if they did, who can take up billions of dollars worth of slack? At which point, even if the Israelis have managed to exterminate every Palistinian down to the last babe-in-arms, they will be surrounded by Muslim countries who hate them and want to see them destroyed.
It makes sense for them to try for a peaceful solution while they are still militarily strong, then they could get back to rebuilding their ruined country and economy. I don't expect much out of the bunch they have in charge currently, though.
I feel sorry for the innocent Israeli's who will die because of the murderous bunch of thugs they've put in power. I don't blame the average citizens (The IDF, however, is another matter. They think it is corking good sport to run down young girls with bulldozers).
Think about it, Geothermal might be a good source of energy if you could figure out how to harness it, and digging through the Earth's crust would allow you to get it wherever you need it.
Because, obviously, french wouldn't do. I mean, yeah, being French gives you a certain notoriety nowadays, but honestly, can you picture a supervillain ordering a 'croissant' and a copy of 'Le Monde' for breakfast?
I recently wanted to try an experiment. I thought, "If I was permanently living a life of sybaritic luxury in Thailand, would I still be able to buy things from Amazon?" So, I got the address of a girl I know in Thailand, and ordered her a copy of "Ranma 1/2 the Movie II: Nihao My Concubine." (She likes Ranma 1/2.)
Well, the ordering went without a hitch, the movie got shipped out and sent to Bangkok, Thailand. I had put my name instead of the girl's name as the recipient, but it was her address.
Well, the people at the post office wanted 10 dollars in addition to what I had already paid. So, here we have an already overpriced anime movie, going to a country famous for its bootleg market, being marked-up by ten extra dollars when it gets there.
I wasn't sure whether it was a legitimate tax or just a bribe for the postal official, but then I thought, "What's the difference?"
On the other hand, she really enjoyed the video, so mission accomplished in that respect. I consider the experiment inconclusive. Yes, I could buy something from Amazon in Thailand if I really wanted to, but if I were living in Thailand I would have to learn to make due with less income than I have in the United States. So, I can't think of a situation where it would make sense to do so.
Companies want you to be a regular soldier, they want you to have Esprit de Corps, and work out of your love of the company. You shouldn't listen to any of that or buy into it. I'm always surprised that people do. (This is why my current company set up an XBox room in one of the spare offices and occaisionally takes us to a matinee for big movies.)
I was up front with my manager at my old company when we had a power struggle going on with upper management. A nasty thing involving lawyers, the winners would end up controlling the company for the short time it survived after that. She was trying to sound me out to see whose side I was on. I told her, "I'm a mercenary, I'll work for whoever pays me." I think she appreciated my honesty, because she got me a job at the company where she ended up.
No matter how much you might want to be the perfect doormat, crawl and grovel before your boss, and degrade yourself for the good of the company, there comes a point where you have to leave. At my last company, I admit it wasn't until upper management said, "Well, how would you guys feel about working for stock."
At my current job, when I got fed up, I went to my boss, and said "Look, this is not what I got into this business to do. Either find me some work like you promised me when I signed on, or, with no malice between us, I will seek employment elsewhere." Note, this was at one of the scariest times in the current depression, companies were imploding everywhere you looked, where as the company I am at is a stable, established business that isn't going away for a long time. The safe route would have been, "please sir, may I have another."
I ended up with a job that was more like what I wanted to do, and I got a big increase in salary. It was scary, though, I had made up my mind to leave if I didn't get what I wanted. Things are far from perfect now. (I'm still trapped in a big bureacracy and bored out of my mind most of the time.) However, I can tolerate the situation now where I couldn't before.
So, basically, I think everyone has a breaking point. Everyone has a point where they say, "I've had all I can stands, I can't stands no more," even in a truly frightening economy like this one. Of course, it is easy to end up in a situation where you regret your actions, but I haven't yet.
Or maybe I should have kept my old job, working for stock. I'm sure I'd be a rich man today (snicker.).
Actually, that's a myth. The game companies would very much prefer that you didn't have to buy a new console every two years. The truth is that according to most reports the companies lose money on the consoles and make money on games. At best their console profits are nothing compared to their profits on actual game licenses. Actually, the longer a console is in production, the more likely it is that a company will make money on both the games and the console.
Why would they want you to buy a new console? When you go out to buy the new console is when you are most likely to switch to a competing brand! Companies work hard to try and prevent this.
SEGA, in fact is often critized for coming out with two upgrades for SEGA Genesis. These were the SEGA CD and the SEGA 32X, they were over-priced and poorly supported, and ultimately horrible mistakes on SEGA's part. I sure don't think that SEGA intended them to be colossal, brand destroying failures so people would have to go out and buy Saturns(but would usually opt for Playstations, anyway), I think they just didn't have a clue what they were doing.
The Playstation was originally supposed to be the CD add on for Super Nintendo. For various reasons the partnership between Sony and Nintendo broke up, but the point is that Nintendo didn't want people to go out and buy a new system. They resisted moving from 8-bit to 16-bit as long as they possibly could, until they realized SEGA was going to eat their lunch.
Playstation II retained backward compatibility with PS-one, and I think new PS-one games are still coming out. The point is that instead of offering upgrades, which have historically done poorly, Sony offered a new console that had more capabilities but that would allow you to retain your old library.
The Gameboy is the Holy Grail of consoles. If you bought an original Gameboy, it lasted for years. You could even play some Gameboy Color games on the original Gameboy, just without enhancement. Think of how glorious it must have been for Hiroshi Yamauchi to watch every competitor over the years fail pitifully to make any dent in the Gameboy market. "Lynx, Turboexpress, GameGear, Wonderswan, Nomad, Neo Geo Pocket? All of them are nothing now, all of them are dust!!!" (Apologies to Lord Garth, "Whom the gods destroy," Star Trek:TOS)
It is the common people, Joe Twelve-Pack, who decides to go out and by the "latest, greatest" console. Sure, they couldn't do it if competitors didn't offer it, but it is the only chance competitors have to break the hold of the dominant player on the market. Heck, SEGA doesn't want you to buy a new console every two years, the Dreamcast was the last one they will ever make! People went out and bought their competitors consoles and drove them into the ground.
Bush is an empty suit. I'm not saying he isn't a bad man (he is), but he's not the real power in Washington at the moment. That's a group of neoconservatives and neoimperialists working behind the scenes, and while G.W. Bush fully agrees with and works toward their goals, he's not the one who came up with those goals. He's not the indispensible man (I'm not sure there is an indispensible man, though I'm sure Donald Rumsfeld thinks that it is Donald Rumsfeld.).
To put it another way, I think GWB will be happy to let Jeb Bush have his turn in the big chair, and I suspect that the Jeb Bush administration will look mighty similar to the current one. After Jeb, who knows, there are plenty of other Bushes out there to take the job...
Heck, if they could, they'd probably be willing to let Condi Rice sit in the big chair. The front man or woman doesn't matter, as long as they remain in charge.
And why in the world are you saying that 'the terrorists' won? What the US is becoming is the opposite of what terrorists would want. How could a group of terrorists want us to invade their home countries?
Oh, I hadn't heard, so we're invading Pakistan and Saudi Arabia now?
(Yeah, I know we did invade Afghanistan, which admittedly is an ObL stronghold. However, we haven't been serious even about that war, and it looks like the Taleban and al Qaeda are successfully waging a war of attrition against us there because of it.)
Last I heard, we were spending our time going after countries whose governments ObL didn't particularly like, like Shi'ite Iran and secular Iraq.
Because it seems to me that the destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein is exactly what ObL would want. It a) discredits Arab nationalism and traditional armed forces as a way of detering American domination and b) Destroys a secular state that was at one time (long past) the only independant Arab state that could be a threat to Israel. Back then, I bet ObL was grinding his teeth about our then good ally Saddam Hussein. Oh, not to mention ObL wanted to defend Saudi Arabia against the infidel Hussein way back during Gulf War I (until the Saudi's "decided" they'd rather have the Americans do it).
Did he really go mad, or just come out of the closet as a Republican of the Neocon variety?
It seems that a lot of so-called libertarians are lately going out of their way to prove the old canard that "Libertarians are just Republicans who want to look cool."
I say no to empire and no to militarism!!! Any true libertarian would believe that, or does ESR really want to go up against people like Harry Browne and Ron Paul. (Note: I used the small "l" libertarian, and Ron Paul is definitely that!)
I really wish he would just join the side he's on and register as a Republican (and prepare to become a Democrat when the neocons switch sides again.).
Look, I wasn't attacking Shadow Dancer. It is a fun ninja game, and I'm a sucker for fun ninja games.
I also really, really liked the Ninja Gaiden series on the original Nintendo. However, if someone took Ninja Gaiden, replaced all the references to Ryo Hayabusa with Joe Musashi and pasted a sticker saying Shinobi on the box to cover over the words Ninja Gaiden, it would still be a Ninja Gaiden game.
I can't comment on the post Genesis/Megadrive Shinobi incarnations. (My history has been to have consoles that never got Shinobi games... even the Dreamcast never got one, #$%&.) I'm just saying that Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master is a direct sequel to Revenge of Shinobi in that it has the same gameplay style and the characters look the same.
I mean, Shadow Dancer is completely different, it doesn't even have a life gauge. One hit and you are killed... However, and I can't stress this enough, that is not intended to be a knock at Shadow Dancer.
Now, on one level you are right and I am wrong, because if SEGA says it is a Shinobi game, then it is a Shinobi games. Just like the western Super Mario Brothers II is a Mario Brothers game, even if the original Japanese game it was based on is not.
On another level, any ninja game can be called Shinobi since it means stealth (I believe) in Japanese (well, except possibly for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Besides, in this accurs-ed modern age, which I like to think of as the Age of Eternal Darkness in a nod to Ninja Gaiden II, they can take a perfectly good side scrolling platformer, change it into a third person perspective polygon game, call it MegaMan Legends and everyone (including me) accepts it as a MegaMan game. That's a much more radical difference than between Shadow Dancer:The Secret of Shinobi and the other Shinobi games...
I love Shadow Dancer, everyone should go out and buy it.
However, I still think it could've easily been the basis for a seperate franchise. (Oh, and I admit that I am pendantic.)
If you ever get the chance, try the Turbographix-16/PC Engine game Ninja Spirit. It's a lot of fun, but a little too short. I wish they would bring it out on Gameboy advance...
Is it better than Mugen? I mean, Mugen if it were on an "Arcade in a Box."(no longer available, sob...)
Or is it more like one of those Dig Dug cartridges that you get in Thailand that say Doreamon on them and have pictures of Doreamon and Nobita on the packages?
I've come to the conclusion that in some cases when laws like this are proposed, it is irrelevant for the people creating the laws whether they are held to be constitutional, or even passed. These people want publicity, and they want to reinforce certain scapegoats in the public mind. So, from this law, how many headlines are we going to have about "Cop-Killer" video games? How many news stories will focus purely on games like GTA, and focus in such a way as to horrify Jane Soccermom?
Now, that doesn't mean that some of the people behind these laws aren't sincere crackpots, jut that I doubt very much they'd be trying to pass these kinds of laws if it was going to harm them in the polls.
Look at Joe Lieberman (well, you don't have to actually look at him, I mean his career). He's made a career out of being "the pious Democrat." Part of the way he got that reputation was by hammering video games. It means that when the news media wants a quote, say, about President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, he gets to be on TV and lecture us all about morality. He's a more important figure than he would've been if he had just left Mortal Kombat alone. (When he was a Vice Presidential candidate, though, he tried to downplay it. Being a sanctimonious scold may play well in Connecticut, but it wasn't as "cool" nationwide.)
For conservatives and certain kinds of Left-wingers, it's even more valuable than that. It becomes a symbolically defining issue for them to the public. When people go to the polls, they might think, "Well, I don't know if Bob Johnson is pro-life (or pro-gun control) but he did try to get those horrible video games taken off the market, so I'll vote for him."
I originally thought that Microsoft would be OK, I mean, how could an American based company figure out how to screw American gamers? (Of course, Europe is another story, but I'm making a point...)
Well, as it turned out, I was wrong. After getting us all hyped up for Shenmue II on the Dreamcast, SEGA makes a deal with Microsoft to not bring out the fully translated Dreamcast version in the United States! Technically, it was SEGA who screwed us, but I tend to feel some sympathy for "dying video game company on life-support" versus "800 lb. gorilla of the American software industry."
I'll admit that from SEGA's perspective, it would've been a good gamble if the Xbox version had been a hit, but it wasn't. They probably lost some goodwill from some Dreamcast owners on that.
Of course, I bought the European Dreamcast version from National Console Support. Incidentally, it made me wake up from considering buying an Xbox, myself. I mean, whatever expedient arguments I made to myself to justify buying it, just evaporated when I heard about the Shenmue II thing.
Articles like this make me really regret owning a Gamecube (I knew what Nintendo was like though... but I can't afford to by a new PC right now and I like playing games, damn it!) Oh well, I won't have to worry about them for much longer, I guess, if they make stupid decisions like this. Soon it will be Sony versus Microsoft, I guess. (Nintendo is not doing well in Europe, and they aren't doing so well overall that they can afford to spit on customers. I know they have Gameboy, but I could see them deciding to focus on portables in the future and leaving TV consoles to the "big boys.")
When I was working in retail, I once got a Mom in who hated video games and felt incredibly hostile to them as a concept, but was feeling pressured to by her son a Super Nintendo because she didn't want him to be an abnormal freak among his peer group.
Needless to say I did everything I could to talk her out of buying a video game system. She mentioned she had a PC so I think I had her get him Mario Teaches Typing or something instead. I was pretty proud of myself in that situation.
Why? Because she was a huge threat, her hatred of games was so irrational that they would probably get the blame if her son's grades started slipping, he got detention, got caught smoking (marijuana or tobacco) or lost his virginity. I might feel sorry for the kid, but that was somebody else's problem. (Namely it was his problem.)
The last think I wanted was her on Sally Jesse Raphael sobbing about how her son was a good boy until video games turned him into a promiscuous drug addict.
But there was one thing I couldn't disagree with him (her absent son) on, when you buck popular social trends, you are a freak. If everyone is talking about Halo, or arguing how much better Gamecube is than XBox, and you can't enter the conversation, you will be isolated. This kind of thing never bothered me as a kid, I didn't see what was so great about the crowd that I would want to join in with them anyway. (Of course, it is possible that he really just wanted a Super Nintendo and went with the "but all the kids have them," argument. That's what I would've done.)
However, the truth has always been, the things that make you popular with your peers are never the things that your parents think should make you popular. My parents never understood why forcing me to join various clubs at school (like "Olympics of the Mind") never made me more popular. What was it Martin Prince said?
But... but my speed with numbers... my years of service as a hall monitor, my prize-winning dioramas? These things mean nothing to them?
Hmm, I think the kid as far more serious problems than what kind of movies he sees or games he plays. It sounds like he's being pulled in different directions by his parents. I wouldn't be surprised if he is acting up.
I mean, if I were divorced, I still probably wouldn't go around telling my coworkers that the mother of my child was completely incompetent and irresponsible even if she were. Maybe my close friends, but I would be careful who I told because I wouldn't want it to get back to my son.
Mind you, I'm not arguing that parents shouldn't be allowed to control their kids. Why, as a lad, my Dad prevented me from seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey on the basis it might be too scary for me. (The lousy so-and-so, needless to say even at 34 that still irks me.)
However, how do you exercise parental control when two equally valid (from the child's point of view, he doesn't care what the law says) parental figures are giving him two different messages? This can even be a problem in a married couple, where one parent is more permissive than the other.
I'd say the parents ought to put aside their differences and think of the child by coming up with a set of guidelines that they both follow, but if this divorce was as acrimonious as it seems, I don't think that's too likely. Besides, I think the kid's biggest problem will be sensing the hatred between the two parents.
Well, actually, that's a pretty depressing story, now that I think about it.
Shadow Dancer was not Shinobi. For marketing reasons, SEGA decided to slap the Shinobi name on another ninja game. Surely you can tell by playing? The enemies don't resemble the enemies in the other Shinobi's. He has infinite throwing stars instead of limited numbers of knife shaped shuriken. He fights something called Union Lizard instead of Neo Zeed. He has a big attack dog that wasn't in the other two. He can't do his multiple shurikan strike flip. His ninja magic is different, and operates differently. Look, I'm sorry, but Shadow Dancer is not Shinobi. It's a decent ninja platformer, but it isn't Shinobi.
For more information on Shinobi consult your local library.
Fortunately, no one saw it because it was part of a thread...
Incidentally, if either of you is a psychiatrist, please don't take my anti-psychiatrist comment seriously. Really, I'm all better now, no need for more treatment, heh..
Hi, the main problem is that the term antisocial in its correct usage is a psychiatric euphemism for evil:
antisocial behavior
Conduct indicating indifference to anotherâ(TM)s person or property; criminal behavior, dishonesty, or abuse are examples. In DSM-IV, childhood or adolescent antisocial behavior (in contrast to antisocial personality disorder, etc.) are included as âoeother conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.â American Psychiatric Association definition
Unfortunately, in common usage, antisocial means something else:
anÂtiÂsoÂcial ( P ) Pronunciation Key (nt-sshl, nt-)
adj.
Shunning the society of others; not sociable.
Hostile to or disruptive of the established social order; marked by or engaging in behavior that violates accepted mores: gangs engaging in vandalism and other antisocial behavior.
Having spent many years in the care of psychologists and psychiatrists, I became very aware of the difference in the two definitions. The correct definition is essentially the movie, A Clockwork Orange, when the main character is seeking "a little of the old ultraviolence." But people who were not aware of the correct definition confused the word with the definition of asocial:
aÂsoÂcial ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-sshl)
adj.
Not social: âoeBears are asocial, secretive animalsâ (David Graber).
Avoiding or averse to the society of others; not sociable: âoeIt's not that you're so asocial, but a man who likes people doesn't wind up in the Antarcticâ (Saul Bellow).
Unable or unwilling to conform to normal standards of social behavior; antisocial: âoecrime, riots, drug use and other asocial behaviorâ (Derek Shearer).
So, while you probably don't mean that you are antisocial in the sense of getting your droogs together for a night of mayhem, the politician, psychologist, "killologist," or social worker using the term will probably take advantage of the slipperiness of it to make it seem as if you were.
Remember, always watch your back with psychiatrists and their ilk, they are out to get you.
This was the law that was out to de facto ban games like House of the Dead or Tekken from arcades, by placing an unfunded mandate on arcade owners that they wouldn't be able to afford if they wanted to stock violent games.
Basically, with this law in effect, depending on the size of your arcade, you might have to rent a larger builing if you wanted to stock Tekken. I think it was even ambiguous if you could create an "adult's only" arcade.
It wasn't really aimed at retail stores as much:
"It would be an odd conception of the First Amendment that would allow a state to prevent a boy from purchasing a magazine containing pictures of topless women in provocative poses, but give the same boy a constitutional right to train to become a sniper at the local arcade without his parents' permission," U.S. District Judge David Hamilton said at the time.
Of course, the above refers to the Indianapololis ban, not the St. Louis ban, but the articles I've read claimed the laws were very similar with the St. Louis ban going even further:
The main point is that this was censorship, of a very specific kind. By imposing harsh restrictions on arcade owners that would cost money to meet, they basically could cause arcade owners to stop stocking certain games. Arcade owners are mostly interested in making money, not in idealistically protecting the right of the public to have the choice of playing the video games they want. (It's exactly the same purpose as the Castillo case, really, just swap out comic books for video games.)
The main thing that comes through in these cases is that the people putting these bans in place don't like video games at all and don't think kids (or adults) ought to be playing them, period. They go after them where they are weakest, the only reason they don't try for a blanket ban on all video games is because this is not Afghanistan and it wouldn't hold up. It's very reminiscent of the anti-Dungeons & Dragons crusades of years past, if these same people had stated right out why they didn't like D&D they would not have been listened to. So instead, they linked it to suicide and homicidal rampages among teenagers, even if the link was tenuous or an urban legend.
People can criticize Bush, too. People do criticize Bush, both the famous and the obscure. The trouble is it is irrelevant unless it leads to a change in the government.
That goes for Tony Blair, too. He walked into the recolonization of Iraq with both eyes open, and he ought to have been aware of the kinds of people who are running things in the Bush administration. (It's not like they are new faces around Washington's foriegn policy establishment.)
Now, if Britain gets rid of Blair (and America retains Bush), you'll be able to crow and crow about it to your heart's content. But Blair was either improbably trusting or cynical in the way he pushed Britain into America's latest imperial adventure. I actually dislike Blair more.
Bush is who he is, he never pretended that the War on Iraq was anything other than payback for 9/11/01. Yes, he's going to get rich off of the war, but the kind of Americans who like him will be satisfied that he provided them with revenge against their ethnic enemies, even if those people were completely innocent of involvement in al Qaeda. It's like the old days, someone commits a crime, and they hang some member of an unpopular minority for it. The mob is happy, even if the specific sacrificial lamb is innocent of any crimes. (In this case, I'm referring to the people of Iraq, not Hussein, who seems to be at large with a few billion dollars, poor baby. Sure, he's far from innocent, but if the U. S. government decides to go the puppet route, I doubt the tyrant they pick to run things will be better. Provided the U. S. government gets to pick the tyrant and it doesn't end up being some fanatic who wants to stone women for committing adultery, who might be the popular choice.)
Blair, on the other hand, will go to his grave pretending that this wasn't about something as base as mindless revenge cynically manipulated by greedy neo-imperialists, but some kind of world humanitarian interest.
So, I am actually hoping you will be able to get your chance to crow, but I'm pessimistic so I doubt it.
For information on what you are talking about, I give you the War Nerd on an over-hyped product of the current war in Iraq (which so far hasn't been used, but the war is young):
Of course, I can't think of a single contingency where it would be sane or smart to use the MOAB, either. Even if we had a real war with real American interests (as opposed to Brown & Root interests) at stake rather than a neoimperial war to recolonize a former British colony (with American masters now, of course), I can't think of a good reason to use it. If we ever had a real war, tac nukes make more sense.
It's the same thing with these super teched out uniforms. We are fighting colonial wars in impoverished Third World countries that have no hope of actually beating the U.S. in conventional warfare. The big scary villains right now are Iran and North Korea, and the only reason they are "scary" is because if they kill too many of our soldiers it will look bad in the polls, but these teched out uniforms won't help with that. Good body armor, good vehicle armor, and lots of air support is what is needed. Iran and North Korea have no hope of beating the U. S., which spends more on its military than the next 14 nations combined, even if they use a couple of nukes.
Asymmetrical warfare is based on the idea that the enemy (assuming you are in the position of a guerilla/terrorist) is patient, hides well, and constantly scans the enemy for weak points. In the case of terrorists, there will always be a huge number of targets as long as the U.S. is at all a nice place to live, and even if it turns into East Berlin I don't think they can completely shut down terrorism. (A guy in South Korea recently showed what could be done with ordinary gasoline and a subway, for example. He did much better than those Japanese fanatics with their Sarin gas bags.) In our colonies, like Iraq, it will be guerilla warfare. They'll keep testing the defenses, and I suspect they will find weaknesses. (This is why up until recently U. S. wars were supposed to have something called an exit strategy. In other words, the war ends, the troops come home, rather than being permanently deployed to foriegn combat zones.)
So why spend money on all this high-tech but useless and detrimental gear? Well, war is a racket, as Major General Smedley Butler said, and a big part of the racket is bilking the American taxpayer out of billions of dollars to buy weapons that the military should neither need nor want.
I've already pre-ordered this game, and it will have to actually be bad, as opposed to derivative or unoriginal, for me not to like it.
After all, the only thing I really wanted for my Playstation 1 was Rockman III (Japanese for Megaman III), and Sony deprived me of it. I bought the import version and tried to play it in my mod chipped Playstation and it didn't work because Sony had screwed it up to defeat the mod chip, so I couldn't play it (even though I could've had it if I were Japanese). Thus Sony gained my eternal, undying hatred and drove me stark, staring insane.
Although I own Megaman 8 for Playstation, I didn't like it as much as the classic Megaman games. Unfortunately, all the classic Megaman games I ever played belonged to my evil brother, and as I no longer live with him, I can't play them any more.
So here's hoping that this game really is not that much different than previous editions of Megaman.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the exact same thing that people who believe in the partition between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country, "If Ireland were ever unified the Protestant minority would be at the mercy of the Catholic majority."
Of course, these formulations mean that the priveleged minority will always have to be protected from the masses. For example, you could make the argument, correctly I might add, "If France ever has an egalitarian revolution, the aristocratic minority will be at the mercy of the commoner majority." After all, after the revolution came many French aristocrats became intimate with Madame Guillotine.
Unfortunately, in countries like pre-revolutionary France, Northern Ireland, Apartheid South Africa and Israel where power is held by a regional minority tend to use this as an excuse for maintaining the status quo and not seeking a way to live in peace with the majority.
This is stupid, because a minority can't maintain their grip on the majority forever. I mean if a ruthless mass murderer like Joseph Stalin couldn't break the back of the Chechens, what hope does the Israeli hard line have? Even if they are willing to be as ruthless as Stalin, the Chechens are still here making trouble for the Russians. I keep hoping the Feds will realize that Israel is a horrible investment and write it off. We spend an ungodly amount of money on that failed state, and the leaders seem to be willing to take our money and then kick us in the teeth. Unfortunately, I think too many Americans have a sentimental attachment to it for that to happen.
Sentiment, even religiously motivated sentiment, can only get them so far. Eventually, it will just become impossible for America to continue pouring money into that sink-hole, and the money and arms will dry up. Israel has no other friends, none. Even if they did, who can take up billions of dollars worth of slack? At which point, even if the Israelis have managed to exterminate every Palistinian down to the last babe-in-arms, they will be surrounded by Muslim countries who hate them and want to see them destroyed.
It makes sense for them to try for a peaceful solution while they are still militarily strong, then they could get back to rebuilding their ruined country and economy. I don't expect much out of the bunch they have in charge currently, though.
I feel sorry for the innocent Israeli's who will die because of the murderous bunch of thugs they've put in power. I don't blame the average citizens (The IDF, however, is another matter. They think it is corking good sport to run down young girls with bulldozers).
Think about it, Geothermal might be a good source of energy if you could figure out how to harness it, and digging through the Earth's crust would allow you to get it wherever you need it.
What about the Merovingian?
Well, the ordering went without a hitch, the movie got shipped out and sent to Bangkok, Thailand. I had put my name instead of the girl's name as the recipient, but it was her address.
Well, the people at the post office wanted 10 dollars in addition to what I had already paid. So, here we have an already overpriced anime movie, going to a country famous for its bootleg market, being marked-up by ten extra dollars when it gets there.
I wasn't sure whether it was a legitimate tax or just a bribe for the postal official, but then I thought, "What's the difference?"
On the other hand, she really enjoyed the video, so mission accomplished in that respect. I consider the experiment inconclusive. Yes, I could buy something from Amazon in Thailand if I really wanted to, but if I were living in Thailand I would have to learn to make due with less income than I have in the United States. So, I can't think of a situation where it would make sense to do so.
Companies want you to be a regular soldier, they want you to have Esprit de Corps, and work out of your love of the company. You shouldn't listen to any of that or buy into it. I'm always surprised that people do. (This is why my current company set up an XBox room in one of the spare offices and occaisionally takes us to a matinee for big movies.)
I was up front with my manager at my old company when we had a power struggle going on with upper management. A nasty thing involving lawyers, the winners would end up controlling the company for the short time it survived after that. She was trying to sound me out to see whose side I was on. I told her, "I'm a mercenary, I'll work for whoever pays me." I think she appreciated my honesty, because she got me a job at the company where she ended up.
At my current job, when I got fed up, I went to my boss, and said "Look, this is not what I got into this business to do. Either find me some work like you promised me when I signed on, or, with no malice between us, I will seek employment elsewhere." Note, this was at one of the scariest times in the current depression, companies were imploding everywhere you looked, where as the company I am at is a stable, established business that isn't going away for a long time. The safe route would have been, "please sir, may I have another."
I ended up with a job that was more like what I wanted to do, and I got a big increase in salary. It was scary, though, I had made up my mind to leave if I didn't get what I wanted. Things are far from perfect now. (I'm still trapped in a big bureacracy and bored out of my mind most of the time.) However, I can tolerate the situation now where I couldn't before.
So, basically, I think everyone has a breaking point. Everyone has a point where they say, "I've had all I can stands, I can't stands no more," even in a truly frightening economy like this one. Of course, it is easy to end up in a situation where you regret your actions, but I haven't yet.
Or maybe I should have kept my old job, working for stock. I'm sure I'd be a rich man today (snicker.).
Samir: "It would be nice to have that kind of job security."
-- Office Space
Why would they want you to buy a new console? When you go out to buy the new console is when you are most likely to switch to a competing brand! Companies work hard to try and prevent this.
SEGA, in fact is often critized for coming out with two upgrades for SEGA Genesis. These were the SEGA CD and the SEGA 32X, they were over-priced and poorly supported, and ultimately horrible mistakes on SEGA's part. I sure don't think that SEGA intended them to be colossal, brand destroying failures so people would have to go out and buy Saturns(but would usually opt for Playstations, anyway), I think they just didn't have a clue what they were doing.
The Playstation was originally supposed to be the CD add on for Super Nintendo. For various reasons the partnership between Sony and Nintendo broke up, but the point is that Nintendo didn't want people to go out and buy a new system. They resisted moving from 8-bit to 16-bit as long as they possibly could, until they realized SEGA was going to eat their lunch.
Playstation II retained backward compatibility with PS-one, and I think new PS-one games are still coming out. The point is that instead of offering upgrades, which have historically done poorly, Sony offered a new console that had more capabilities but that would allow you to retain your old library.
The Gameboy is the Holy Grail of consoles. If you bought an original Gameboy, it lasted for years. You could even play some Gameboy Color games on the original Gameboy, just without enhancement. Think of how glorious it must have been for Hiroshi Yamauchi to watch every competitor over the years fail pitifully to make any dent in the Gameboy market. "Lynx, Turboexpress, GameGear, Wonderswan, Nomad, Neo Geo Pocket? All of them are nothing now, all of them are dust!!!" (Apologies to Lord Garth, "Whom the gods destroy," Star Trek:TOS)
It is the common people, Joe Twelve-Pack, who decides to go out and by the "latest, greatest" console. Sure, they couldn't do it if competitors didn't offer it, but it is the only chance competitors have to break the hold of the dominant player on the market. Heck, SEGA doesn't want you to buy a new console every two years, the Dreamcast was the last one they will ever make! People went out and bought their competitors consoles and drove them into the ground.
To put it another way, I think GWB will be happy to let Jeb Bush have his turn in the big chair, and I suspect that the Jeb Bush administration will look mighty similar to the current one. After Jeb, who knows, there are plenty of other Bushes out there to take the job...
Heck, if they could, they'd probably be willing to let Condi Rice sit in the big chair. The front man or woman doesn't matter, as long as they remain in charge.
(Yeah, I know we did invade Afghanistan, which admittedly is an ObL stronghold. However, we haven't been serious even about that war, and it looks like the Taleban and al Qaeda are successfully waging a war of attrition against us there because of it.)
Last I heard, we were spending our time going after countries whose governments ObL didn't particularly like, like Shi'ite Iran and secular Iraq.
Because it seems to me that the destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein is exactly what ObL would want. It a) discredits Arab nationalism and traditional armed forces as a way of detering American domination and b) Destroys a secular state that was at one time (long past) the only independant Arab state that could be a threat to Israel. Back then, I bet ObL was grinding his teeth about our then good ally Saddam Hussein. Oh, not to mention ObL wanted to defend Saudi Arabia against the infidel Hussein way back during Gulf War I (until the Saudi's "decided" they'd rather have the Americans do it).
It seems that a lot of so-called libertarians are lately going out of their way to prove the old canard that "Libertarians are just Republicans who want to look cool."
I say no to empire and no to militarism!!! Any true libertarian would believe that, or does ESR really want to go up against people like Harry Browne and Ron Paul. (Note: I used the small "l" libertarian, and Ron Paul is definitely that!)
I really wish he would just join the side he's on and register as a Republican (and prepare to become a Democrat when the neocons switch sides again.).
I also really, really liked the Ninja Gaiden series on the original Nintendo. However, if someone took Ninja Gaiden, replaced all the references to Ryo Hayabusa with Joe Musashi and pasted a sticker saying Shinobi on the box to cover over the words Ninja Gaiden, it would still be a Ninja Gaiden game.
I can't comment on the post Genesis/Megadrive Shinobi incarnations. (My history has been to have consoles that never got Shinobi games... even the Dreamcast never got one, #$%&.) I'm just saying that Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master is a direct sequel to Revenge of Shinobi in that it has the same gameplay style and the characters look the same.
I mean, Shadow Dancer is completely different, it doesn't even have a life gauge. One hit and you are killed... However, and I can't stress this enough, that is not intended to be a knock at Shadow Dancer.
Now, on one level you are right and I am wrong, because if SEGA says it is a Shinobi game, then it is a Shinobi games. Just like the western Super Mario Brothers II is a Mario Brothers game, even if the original Japanese game it was based on is not.
On another level, any ninja game can be called Shinobi since it means stealth (I believe) in Japanese (well, except possibly for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Besides, in this accurs-ed modern age, which I like to think of as the Age of Eternal Darkness in a nod to Ninja Gaiden II, they can take a perfectly good side scrolling platformer, change it into a third person perspective polygon game, call it MegaMan Legends and everyone (including me) accepts it as a MegaMan game. That's a much more radical difference than between Shadow Dancer:The Secret of Shinobi and the other Shinobi games...
I love Shadow Dancer, everyone should go out and buy it.
However, I still think it could've easily been the basis for a seperate franchise. (Oh, and I admit that I am pendantic.)
If you ever get the chance, try the Turbographix-16/PC Engine game Ninja Spirit. It's a lot of fun, but a little too short. I wish they would bring it out on Gameboy advance...
Or is it more like one of those Dig Dug cartridges that you get in Thailand that say Doreamon on them and have pictures of Doreamon and Nobita on the packages?
Now, that doesn't mean that some of the people behind these laws aren't sincere crackpots, jut that I doubt very much they'd be trying to pass these kinds of laws if it was going to harm them in the polls.
Look at Joe Lieberman (well, you don't have to actually look at him, I mean his career). He's made a career out of being "the pious Democrat." Part of the way he got that reputation was by hammering video games. It means that when the news media wants a quote, say, about President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, he gets to be on TV and lecture us all about morality. He's a more important figure than he would've been if he had just left Mortal Kombat alone. (When he was a Vice Presidential candidate, though, he tried to downplay it. Being a sanctimonious scold may play well in Connecticut, but it wasn't as "cool" nationwide.)
For conservatives and certain kinds of Left-wingers, it's even more valuable than that. It becomes a symbolically defining issue for them to the public. When people go to the polls, they might think, "Well, I don't know if Bob Johnson is pro-life (or pro-gun control) but he did try to get those horrible video games taken off the market, so I'll vote for him."
I originally thought that Microsoft would be OK, I mean, how could an American based company figure out how to screw American gamers? (Of course, Europe is another story, but I'm making a point...)
Well, as it turned out, I was wrong. After getting us all hyped up for Shenmue II on the Dreamcast, SEGA makes a deal with Microsoft to not bring out the fully translated Dreamcast version in the United States! Technically, it was SEGA who screwed us, but I tend to feel some sympathy for "dying video game company on life-support" versus "800 lb. gorilla of the American software industry."
I'll admit that from SEGA's perspective, it would've been a good gamble if the Xbox version had been a hit, but it wasn't. They probably lost some goodwill from some Dreamcast owners on that.
Of course, I bought the European Dreamcast version from National Console Support. Incidentally, it made me wake up from considering buying an Xbox, myself. I mean, whatever expedient arguments I made to myself to justify buying it, just evaporated when I heard about the Shenmue II thing.
Articles like this make me really regret owning a Gamecube (I knew what Nintendo was like though... but I can't afford to by a new PC right now and I like playing games, damn it!) Oh well, I won't have to worry about them for much longer, I guess, if they make stupid decisions like this. Soon it will be Sony versus Microsoft, I guess. (Nintendo is not doing well in Europe, and they aren't doing so well overall that they can afford to spit on customers. I know they have Gameboy, but I could see them deciding to focus on portables in the future and leaving TV consoles to the "big boys.")
Needless to say I did everything I could to talk her out of buying a video game system. She mentioned she had a PC so I think I had her get him Mario Teaches Typing or something instead. I was pretty proud of myself in that situation.
Why? Because she was a huge threat, her hatred of games was so irrational that they would probably get the blame if her son's grades started slipping, he got detention, got caught smoking (marijuana or tobacco) or lost his virginity. I might feel sorry for the kid, but that was somebody else's problem. (Namely it was his problem.)
The last think I wanted was her on Sally Jesse Raphael sobbing about how her son was a good boy until video games turned him into a promiscuous drug addict.
But there was one thing I couldn't disagree with him (her absent son) on, when you buck popular social trends, you are a freak. If everyone is talking about Halo, or arguing how much better Gamecube is than XBox, and you can't enter the conversation, you will be isolated. This kind of thing never bothered me as a kid, I didn't see what was so great about the crowd that I would want to join in with them anyway. (Of course, it is possible that he really just wanted a Super Nintendo and went with the "but all the kids have them," argument. That's what I would've done.)
However, the truth has always been, the things that make you popular with your peers are never the things that your parents think should make you popular. My parents never understood why forcing me to join various clubs at school (like "Olympics of the Mind") never made me more popular. What was it Martin Prince said?
I mean, if I were divorced, I still probably wouldn't go around telling my coworkers that the mother of my child was completely incompetent and irresponsible even if she were. Maybe my close friends, but I would be careful who I told because I wouldn't want it to get back to my son.
Mind you, I'm not arguing that parents shouldn't be allowed to control their kids. Why, as a lad, my Dad prevented me from seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey on the basis it might be too scary for me. (The lousy so-and-so, needless to say even at 34 that still irks me.)
However, how do you exercise parental control when two equally valid (from the child's point of view, he doesn't care what the law says) parental figures are giving him two different messages? This can even be a problem in a married couple, where one parent is more permissive than the other.
I'd say the parents ought to put aside their differences and think of the child by coming up with a set of guidelines that they both follow, but if this divorce was as acrimonious as it seems, I don't think that's too likely. Besides, I think the kid's biggest problem will be sensing the hatred between the two parents.
Well, actually, that's a pretty depressing story, now that I think about it.
For more information on Shinobi consult your local library.
Re:Let's step back for a moment
Fortunately, no one saw it because it was part of a thread...
Incidentally, if either of you is a psychiatrist, please don't take my anti-psychiatrist comment seriously. Really, I'm all better now, no need for more treatment, heh..
But if not... I meant every word.
Remember, always watch your back with psychiatrists and their ilk, they are out to get you.
City wages war against violent video games
Basically, with this law in effect, depending on the size of your arcade, you might have to rent a larger builing if you wanted to stock Tekken. I think it was even ambiguous if you could create an "adult's only" arcade.
It wasn't really aimed at retail stores as much:
Of course, the above refers to the Indianapololis ban, not the St. Louis ban, but the articles I've read claimed the laws were very similar with the St. Louis ban going even further:First They Take Vice City, Then They Take Berlin: Video Game Legislation Offers Hard Lessons For Comic Books
The main point is that this was censorship, of a very specific kind. By imposing harsh restrictions on arcade owners that would cost money to meet, they basically could cause arcade owners to stop stocking certain games. Arcade owners are mostly interested in making money, not in idealistically protecting the right of the public to have the choice of playing the video games they want. (It's exactly the same purpose as the Castillo case, really, just swap out comic books for video games.)
The main thing that comes through in these cases is that the people putting these bans in place don't like video games at all and don't think kids (or adults) ought to be playing them, period. They go after them where they are weakest, the only reason they don't try for a blanket ban on all video games is because this is not Afghanistan and it wouldn't hold up. It's very reminiscent of the anti-Dungeons & Dragons crusades of years past, if these same people had stated right out why they didn't like D&D they would not have been listened to. So instead, they linked it to suicide and homicidal rampages among teenagers, even if the link was tenuous or an urban legend.
I guess Full Metal Jacket lied to me....
That goes for Tony Blair, too. He walked into the recolonization of Iraq with both eyes open, and he ought to have been aware of the kinds of people who are running things in the Bush administration. (It's not like they are new faces around Washington's foriegn policy establishment.)
Now, if Britain gets rid of Blair (and America retains Bush), you'll be able to crow and crow about it to your heart's content. But Blair was either improbably trusting or cynical in the way he pushed Britain into America's latest imperial adventure. I actually dislike Blair more.
Bush is who he is, he never pretended that the War on Iraq was anything other than payback for 9/11/01. Yes, he's going to get rich off of the war, but the kind of Americans who like him will be satisfied that he provided them with revenge against their ethnic enemies, even if those people were completely innocent of involvement in al Qaeda. It's like the old days, someone commits a crime, and they hang some member of an unpopular minority for it. The mob is happy, even if the specific sacrificial lamb is innocent of any crimes. (In this case, I'm referring to the people of Iraq, not Hussein, who seems to be at large with a few billion dollars, poor baby. Sure, he's far from innocent, but if the U. S. government decides to go the puppet route, I doubt the tyrant they pick to run things will be better. Provided the U. S. government gets to pick the tyrant and it doesn't end up being some fanatic who wants to stone women for committing adultery, who might be the popular choice.)
Blair, on the other hand, will go to his grave pretending that this wasn't about something as base as mindless revenge cynically manipulated by greedy neo-imperialists, but some kind of world humanitarian interest.
So, I am actually hoping you will be able to get your chance to crow, but I'm pessimistic so I doubt it.
MOAB: the Monster Truck of American Ordnance
Of course, I can't think of a single contingency where it would be sane or smart to use the MOAB, either. Even if we had a real war with real American interests (as opposed to Brown & Root interests) at stake rather than a neoimperial war to recolonize a former British colony (with American masters now, of course), I can't think of a good reason to use it. If we ever had a real war, tac nukes make more sense.
It's the same thing with these super teched out uniforms. We are fighting colonial wars in impoverished Third World countries that have no hope of actually beating the U.S. in conventional warfare. The big scary villains right now are Iran and North Korea, and the only reason they are "scary" is because if they kill too many of our soldiers it will look bad in the polls, but these teched out uniforms won't help with that. Good body armor, good vehicle armor, and lots of air support is what is needed. Iran and North Korea have no hope of beating the U. S., which spends more on its military than the next 14 nations combined, even if they use a couple of nukes.
Asymmetrical warfare is based on the idea that the enemy (assuming you are in the position of a guerilla/terrorist) is patient, hides well, and constantly scans the enemy for weak points. In the case of terrorists, there will always be a huge number of targets as long as the U.S. is at all a nice place to live, and even if it turns into East Berlin I don't think they can completely shut down terrorism. (A guy in South Korea recently showed what could be done with ordinary gasoline and a subway, for example. He did much better than those Japanese fanatics with their Sarin gas bags.) In our colonies, like Iraq, it will be guerilla warfare. They'll keep testing the defenses, and I suspect they will find weaknesses. (This is why up until recently U. S. wars were supposed to have something called an exit strategy. In other words, the war ends, the troops come home, rather than being permanently deployed to foriegn combat zones.)
So why spend money on all this high-tech but useless and detrimental gear? Well, war is a racket, as Major General Smedley Butler said, and a big part of the racket is bilking the American taxpayer out of billions of dollars to buy weapons that the military should neither need nor want.
After all, the only thing I really wanted for my Playstation 1 was Rockman III (Japanese for Megaman III), and Sony deprived me of it. I bought the import version and tried to play it in my mod chipped Playstation and it didn't work because Sony had screwed it up to defeat the mod chip, so I couldn't play it (even though I could've had it if I were Japanese). Thus Sony gained my eternal, undying hatred and drove me stark, staring insane.
Although I own Megaman 8 for Playstation, I didn't like it as much as the classic Megaman games. Unfortunately, all the classic Megaman games I ever played belonged to my evil brother, and as I no longer live with him, I can't play them any more.
So here's hoping that this game really is not that much different than previous editions of Megaman.