.. find those posts Micros~1 is complaining about and post the contents of them to our individual Web pages? Sort of like DeCSS?
It might be even more fun to do this to M$, if they (an individual company) keeps fighting things in court, maybe they'll bankrupt... unlike the Entertainment Trust which still owns a lot of people's hearts and minds.
Yes, a significant part of this problem is that it is human nature for people who aren't paranoid (like myself) to be lax on security.
A good example is the passwords where I work. They all have to be simple, easy to remember words. If they aren't, my boss gets irritated with me. Of course, simple, easy to remember words are also simple to guess (or crack).
Coincidentally, we are probably going to be moving, soon, from a combination Linux and NT shop to a pure Windows 2000 shop, and there isn't anything I can do about it... well, except put my resume on Monsterboard;-)
Inertia is very difficult to fight, and right now the inertia is for lax security and stuff like ILOVEYOU. It would take a significantly powerful lever to change this.
Hmm, the night time music from Simon's Quest, it's called "Bloody Tears" I believe. (There is a good version of it out there.. but there are so many versions it is hard to find and you'll have to search around. Just try "Bloody Tears" and Castlevania in Hotbot.) It also shows up in the Genesis version soundtrack... and there may be a way to get it to play in the game but I don't know what it is. I used to know at least one trick to get different music to play when you were 100% powered up in Castlevania Bloodlines but I forgot it (it had something to do with a significant date set up using sound effects and soundtrack numbers in the sound test, maybe the first Castlevania's publishing date.. I don't remember).
I like the Super Nintendo version of this theme best.
Of course, the first Nintendo game I can remember buying where I found the sound test was Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos. I really liked the music in that game... oh, and the "cinematic" cut scenes:
What shall we do about the Ninja Dragon, sire?
Nothing. No further need of him, at least not for now.
I wish that had been the one to come out for the Lynx rather than the confusingly plotted Ninja Gaiden III though that was better than nothing, of course...
Hrmph, that reminds me, I was one of the ones who pre-ordered Castlevania: Sympathy of the Night got skimped out of the soundtrack and art book, bleah! That was a poorly planned fiasco... Oh, and I was irritated that Kefka's themes didn't show up on the free soundtrack CD that came with the Final Fantasy Collection for Playstation... oh well...
... in intellectual property is that no one will ever be allowed to own anything. Just as the next step in TV will have encryption to prevent you from taping your favorite shows, the DVD people are still thinking of bringing back the Divx idea, even Stephen King's latest eBook can only be read using licensed viewers.
Of course, you can still buy a CD of some of the great old Sega games (for Windows, I haven't been able to get it to run properly in Wine though I suspect it can be done) that'll be it.
Sega has to support Bleem! because it was ruled a legal application by the courts. Of course, Bleem! faces Digital Millenium, and may lose the next round.
Y'know, I remember a time when, if I bought a game I could put it on my hard drive. These days, it seems like few of my games will run unless I actually have the CD-Rom disk in the drive.
Prediction, one of the first events following Sega's "generous" offer will be someone hacks a way to keep the game on their machine as long as they want... and, of course, Sega goes after them with a bunch of nasty lawyers.
I've been thinking of getting a Dreamcast (I still may) but I will not support this form of emulation because it is a threat to having games released in ownable format.
The companies can sell me their content, but if I can't own it, free and clear, I don't want it!
In your old Infocom game, Bureaucracy, you present the concept of a terrible, meglomaniacal, and apparently wealthy nerd who controls the world's computers and makes life miserable for the main character.
I've noticed that in real life, a terrible, wealthy, and meglomaniacal nerd makes life miserable for everyone who has to use computers.
So, my question is, was the terrible nerd based on this real life person, or did God base Bill Gates on the game Bureaucracy?
If the latter is the case, do you intend to sue God for copyright infringement and what sort of sum of money would you be asking for?
I wrote two of the questions, but I didn't mind that he answered my questions without naming me. After all, I asked the questions because I was curious what the answer was, not to "feel like a big man." (To feel like a big man, I get a sack full of doorknobs -- obligatory Simpsons reference.)
Actually, the main thing was that when I found out what the GPL was and I understood how novel it was I thought, "I'd never have come up with something like that, that's clever." So, it was my hope that RMS would come up with something equally clever to defeat MPAA/DVD CCA/DMCA. Unfortunately, he only confirmed what I was already thinking, it all depends on a) What kinds of laws get passed and b) How the courts interpret those laws.
Unfortunately, years and years of seeing demagogues frighten politicians into taking away our rights and large political contributors bribe politicians into taking away our rights, have left me somewhat cynical about the current state of the American Republic. Oh well, it's just going to take years and years of convincing people that it is not helpful to them if they aren't allowed to own things like movies (and even books! Read about Steven King's Riding the Bullet eBook for an example... he couldn't have it cracked so he could read it on his own MacIntosh because of the DMCA. That bit of information is scarier than anything he's ever written... well, except possible Pet Sematary) that it isn't good for them, no matter what the Intellectual Property marketing guys say. People managed to do this with the Divx format but I can tell DVDs are going to be an uphill struggle.
... shows with very good clarity the biases and poor research techniques of the psychologists who came out with the much touted "study" on the relationship between video games and real life violence. I suspect from reading it that these psychologists were headline-hunting Grossman wannabes who are probably looking around for a lawsuit to "consult" on.
I often wish I had a degree in psychology, then I could go around saying, "I'm a psychologist, obey me" like these types do.
I wonder how long it will be before I see them on Sally Jesse Raphael (is that still on TV, I remember they used to have the anti-D&D fanatics on there during the 80's), touting there new book, Columbine: Why video games were the cause..
I'm always happy when someone who knows about video or computer games can attack the integrity of the anti-gamer people by pointing out that the anti-gamer people never bother to do any investigation into the subject they are studying, video and computer games, before making their sweeping condemnations.
MPAA wants a precedent before they replace DVDs with a "more secure technology." They want to make sure that the idea that they still have the right to control your property after you've bought it to be firmly ensconced in American legal precedent.
Then they can do what they want, and if anyone breaks the new encryption, they can put them in jail.
The Federal government obviously didn't want Kevin Mitnick to have probation, and want him to screw up so once again they can make an example out of him, again. This is a violation of Mitnick's constitutional rights, but who cares, he's an ex-criminal right?
Of course, with the number of extreme, byzantine and intrusive laws in this country, anyone can be a criminal. It's all a matter of selective enforcement.
Of course, the Federal government may indeed get away with this, considering recent Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment (the fact that this ruling came down now is suspicious, I'm guessing that when he takes them to court they'll assert "secondary effects," "Why someone who listens to his words might become a double-plus ungood crimethinking computer hacker! That means that we can forbid him to speak.")
Let's see Miranda's gone, Fair Use is gone, Free Speech is gone, the Right to Bear Arms is gone (flame away!), and I'm guessing the next thing will either be that we have to billet soldiers in our houses or that the government will be able to search whatever it wants whenever it wants.
Oh by the way, I'm sure the Mitnick haters will show up in force to say, "Way to go Feds, get 'im." I just want you people to think of something, do you really want a government in place that can sentence someone, and then after they've served their sentence can continue to persecute them outside normal legal channels?
Well, I may just have to get a government job, I'm practically working for the government as it is (the company I work for has close ties to the U.N.), so it might not be that big a step. Then I'll be able to persecute any of my subjects as I please, without fear of restraint, right? Why are people so intent on making Federal bureacrats into feudal lords?
Sigh... what the Hell is happening to the United States?
Because I'm not a lawyer, I don't claim to 100% understand the DMCA or all its malevolent implications. However, I do know that one of it's most recently publicized uses was to allow the MPAA to maintain control of their miserable Digital Versatile Disks after they've sold them. Basically, if you don't use them according to their rules, you won't be allowed to use them at all.
So, what's the difference between that and what Scientology is doing? I'll bet if you really study the Scientology lawyers lawyertalk, you'll find reasoning along the lines of what the MPAA has been saying about their DVDs.
Or, it could be the DMCA clause that says, "As long as you are rich and evil, you can do whatever you want." Otherwise known as the insanity clause... (please note, the previous statement was not meant for the sarcasm impaired).
Actually, my boycott of nVidia is not based on the fact that they don't have Copyleft drivers.
My boycott of nVidia is based on the fact that they allow no reverse engineering and specifically don't want free software drivers for their hardware. There can only be one reason for this, it is because at some future date they intend to yank the rug out from under Linux users in favor of exclusivity deals with Micros~1 or someone else.
Hardware is hardware, if I'm not allowed to write software to make it work, why would I buy it? It might make a good coaster, but it won't be of any use to me. I also think that hardware manufacturers need to be encouraged to see the truth, that free software is empowering and profitable for companies that are primarily hardware vendors.
I'll stick with Matrox, thanks. Maybe nVidia will decide that deals with the Empire are not worth the losses they will incur, maybe not. So what? They have viable competition, so why does the GNU/Linux community need a company that deliberately spits in our faces?
As to the mainstreaming of Linux, if Linux goes mainstream but the ideals of free software are lost, then what was the point? We might just has well used M$ (or a more fitting analogy, the doomed OS/2) and saved ourself the trouble.
Linux is not just an alternate OS, it is a philosophy of doing business in the software world. No graphics card is worth giving up my ideals for.
"If I like it, no matter how obviously flawed and biased the research is, then it is good science and everyone should just bow down before the authoritarian new laws we will have to enact to protect people from themselves."
I mean, I'm sure it never occured to you (and I say this as someone who has no real opinions on homeopathic medicine, but who has close friends who swear by it) that the reason why the body that was supposed to enforce a.med domain name would deny it to homeopathic medicine is because they believe homeopathic medicine is bad science and have studies to back that up.
Of course, knowing the US medical establishment the way I do, I know that.com is the correct designation for such sites, money comes first and people second.
But then, it has always been the position of authoritarian fanatics, from Hitler to the present day, that they have unimpeachable scientific authority for their insane, repressive political beliefs. These people have to corrupt the scientific community because their claims do not stand up on their own merits. If you can't convince people they have to give up their right to free speech because it is good for the state, use some pseudo science to push your claim, eh?
Of course, the elitist and condescending attitudes of such fanatics always gives them away, "How dare you try to disagree with these people!! They're priests^H^H^H^H^H^Hpsychologists, you should be burned for heresy for even trying to debate them!!"
I've read this reoprt, it is bad science, and you know it is bad science. Anything for the cause though, right? The big lie technique, keep repeating obviously false statements until the public swallows them, eh?
Actually, the article said it wasn't installed by default, unless you choose install all. The problem with it is that the principle should be "default passwords are evil."
I mean, they don't give you a default password for root, they shouldn't give you one for piranha.
Now, the most important question is... was it Q (the password^H^H^H^Hletter is Q) from Star Trek: The Next Generation or Q from James Bond?
The trouble is though that there are so many anonymous people now that it is impossible to sort through the improperly moderated posts down in the sediment of Slashdot.
I mean, we have people who just run scripts to put stuff up, just gibberish. They aren't doing anything to the upper levels of moderation, but they are effectively silencing the lower levels.
Actually, if we could somehow prevent spam I wouldn't mind ACs. I mean, I actually want to look at 0, -1, or -2 posts but even with the amount of time I spend on Slashdot I can't read them all.
I support anonymous posters, I just wish there was a way to support letting people post without an account which would also allow automatically created spam to be stopped.
Listen KahunaBurger and understand, you people just don't get it. The United States is not going to turn into the "worker's paradise"/fascist state/"aryan utopia"/"kingdom of god" or whatever flavor of the same old tired totalitarian dictatorship that you and people like you have been trying to push ever since the peasants got uppity and decided to overthrow the king. It just isn't going to happen, Americans always resist those who would set themselves above other men as kings or gods, and you and your hero Grossman are no different. You should give it up, you'll find that you can live a happy life in a free country if you give it half a chance.
However, people like you can inflict a lot of suffering on a lot of people in the short term before people see through you and see what you are about. You are talking about jailing people for downloading Doom or buying their kids Mortal Kombat, yet another reason for jack booted government thugs to knock down the doors of law abiding peaceful American citizens and put guns to their heads. That's the use of force your ilk never object to, a use of force you and your ilk seem to relish with unholy glee. Otherwise, how would you enforce your censorship, someone is going to have to go to jail and there must be uncounted millions of copies of the game Doom out there. They aren't just going to evaporate because you say they're bad.
Don't read On Killing, it's a poorly researched, poorly written book by a quack pop-psychologist. The people who did this study may be ignorant, but they are far less idiotic than Lt. Col. Grossman, who is basically a fascist leaning politico trying to make money from the death and suffering of children. He's hardly an unbiased bystander, he was an advisor to the failed lawsuit against id and others.
Oh, and KahunaBurger, this isn't Amazon, so quit trying to peddle books. If you have something useful to contribute to the conversation, contribute it, don't just say read On Killing over and over again to get money into the pocket of your fascist hero. I happen to know that his testimony before Congress is available to everyone online, so why don't you do a little Web search.
Or could it be that you don't give a damn about people and just want to see profits for Grossman at the expense of American freedom?
Oh, and no, a person doesn't have to read On Killing to conclude Grossman was a fascist any more than he or she has to read Mein Kampf to conclude Hitler was a Nazi.
Haven't you ever heard of Gallipoli, where the Turks machine gunned unarmed British soldiers?
The whole of France was turned into a charnel pit!
Have you ever done any serious study of the Great War?
Did you know that German snipers would shoot through the eye slits on the British side of the lines?
Sigh... the American school system, kids think that WWI started when the Lusitania sank. Perhaps when you've grown up and gone through college you'll get some historical education? Of course, I'm not sure what that will be like at Bob Jones University...
Don't get me wrong I'm not a big fan of the porn industry or their very creative java script programmers.
You should be aware that those pages with the JavaScripts on them are designed to cheat the legitimate pornography providers. To explain, I'll ask if you've ever heard of AllAdvantage.com? Well, if not, I'll explain that they basically have this thing about how you can "earn money for surfing the Web!" Now, they get paid by advertisers for eyeballs (yuck) on ADs, then they pass on a tiny amount of that money to the surfer. Of course, some people know how to write programs to surf the Web for them while they are off watching TV, so they are getting paid but they aren't viewing the ads.
What does this have to do with porn? Simple, the porn sites want business so they pay other site based on the number of clicks they get (similar to the way AllAdvantage pays based on how active a surfer you are). Somehow, opening or closing those Javascript windows that pop-up count as clicks. In fact, there are JavaScript loops out there that will _never_ get you to real porn, but will just generate clicks for their creators.
Of course, you'd think that the people behind the pornsites that actually, you know, provide real porn would catch on and quit paying people for click throughs (I'm sure they will, eventually).
I read this on an online magazine, Salon I think, but I can't find the article now.
Ok, everyone who thinks Gargoyles handled the D&D theme better than Dungeons and Dragons the cartoon, raise your hand.
Ok, I know what people will say, Gargoyles (except for a few notable episodes) took place mostly in modern times. However, please note that all the characters in Dungeons and Dragons the cartoon series, there were a bunch of modern kids who got all their powers handed to them on a silver platter. I mean, if you watch Gargoyles you see how MacBeth became such a powerful fighter and how Demona became such a powerful mage.
Besides which, I loved the episode of Gargoyles where the Arch-Mage returns to take revenge on Goliath. Of course it's directly stolen from Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps," but then that's what I like about it ^_^
This is not intended to slam the D&D cartoon, but when it first came out it always drove me nuts how _unlike_ actual D&D it was. It was more like Captain N.
One Two Three Four... will this start a flame war?
Ok, but wouldn't it be better if violent people didn't have the benefit of simulator training before they went on actual killing sprees?
Heavily armed, violent sociopaths do not need simulator training to murder unarmed, defenseless people. All they need to be able to do is point their guns in the direction of a group of people and pull the trigger. It doesn't require skill or marksmanship, just access to decent weaponry and the desire to use it.
Quite aside from that, the New York Times article mentioned in this post, points out that the vast majority of rampage killers do not have an interest in video games. Recently, I heard a story of a 60 year old guy who shot up his neighborhood association, he killed two people and injured other. I'm am absolutely sure he never touched a video game in his life, but he did have a history of violent, anti-social behavior.
You can continue to push snake oil at people if you like, but only fools and the APA will be buying. I just hope the fools don't out number the intelligent people.
However, to be fair, the U.S. already has insane-military-guy-who-wrote-a-book in all the reactionary venues, so this is just going to bolster up his arguments (bad, but he was already here.).
I don't know if you remember the anti-video game AD campaigns that the Church of England ran a while back, now they were scary...
Slashdot Mirror
It might be even more fun to do this to M$, if they (an individual company) keeps fighting things in court, maybe they'll bankrupt... unlike the Entertainment Trust which still owns a lot of people's hearts and minds.
A good example is the passwords where I work. They all have to be simple, easy to remember words. If they aren't, my boss gets irritated with me. Of course, simple, easy to remember words are also simple to guess (or crack).
Coincidentally, we are probably going to be moving, soon, from a combination Linux and NT shop to a pure Windows 2000 shop, and there isn't anything I can do about it... well, except put my resume on Monsterboard ;-)
Inertia is very difficult to fight, and right now the inertia is for lax security and stuff like ILOVEYOU. It would take a significantly powerful lever to change this.
I like the Super Nintendo version of this theme best.
Of course, the first Nintendo game I can remember buying where I found the sound test was Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos. I really liked the music in that game... oh, and the "cinematic" cut scenes:
I wish that had been the one to come out for the Lynx rather than the confusingly plotted Ninja Gaiden III though that was better than nothing, of course...Hrmph, that reminds me, I was one of the ones who pre-ordered Castlevania: Sympathy of the Night got skimped out of the soundtrack and art book, bleah! That was a poorly planned fiasco... Oh, and I was irritated that Kefka's themes didn't show up on the free soundtrack CD that came with the Final Fantasy Collection for Playstation... oh well...
Of course, you can still buy a CD of some of the great old Sega games (for Windows, I haven't been able to get it to run properly in Wine though I suspect it can be done) that'll be it.
Sega has to support Bleem! because it was ruled a legal application by the courts. Of course, Bleem! faces Digital Millenium, and may lose the next round.
Y'know, I remember a time when, if I bought a game I could put it on my hard drive. These days, it seems like few of my games will run unless I actually have the CD-Rom disk in the drive.
Prediction, one of the first events following Sega's "generous" offer will be someone hacks a way to keep the game on their machine as long as they want... and, of course, Sega goes after them with a bunch of nasty lawyers.
I've been thinking of getting a Dreamcast (I still may) but I will not support this form of emulation because it is a threat to having games released in ownable format.
The companies can sell me their content, but if I can't own it, free and clear, I don't want it!
I've noticed that in real life, a terrible, wealthy, and meglomaniacal nerd makes life miserable for everyone who has to use computers.
So, my question is, was the terrible nerd based on this real life person, or did God base Bill Gates on the game Bureaucracy?
If the latter is the case, do you intend to sue God for copyright infringement and what sort of sum of money would you be asking for?
I think he may have finally decided to go for it and buy that persian cat...
Actually, the main thing was that when I found out what the GPL was and I understood how novel it was I thought, "I'd never have come up with something like that, that's clever." So, it was my hope that RMS would come up with something equally clever to defeat MPAA/DVD CCA/DMCA. Unfortunately, he only confirmed what I was already thinking, it all depends on a) What kinds of laws get passed and b) How the courts interpret those laws.
Unfortunately, years and years of seeing demagogues frighten politicians into taking away our rights and large political contributors bribe politicians into taking away our rights, have left me somewhat cynical about the current state of the American Republic. Oh well, it's just going to take years and years of convincing people that it is not helpful to them if they aren't allowed to own things like movies (and even books! Read about Steven King's Riding the Bullet eBook for an example... he couldn't have it cracked so he could read it on his own MacIntosh because of the DMCA. That bit of information is scarier than anything he's ever written... well, except possible Pet Sematary) that it isn't good for them, no matter what the Intellectual Property marketing guys say. People managed to do this with the Divx format but I can tell DVDs are going to be an uphill struggle.
I often wish I had a degree in psychology, then I could go around saying, "I'm a psychologist, obey me" like these types do.
I wonder how long it will be before I see them on Sally Jesse Raphael (is that still on TV, I remember they used to have the anti-D&D fanatics on there during the 80's), touting there new book, Columbine: Why video games were the cause..
I'm always happy when someone who knows about video or computer games can attack the integrity of the anti-gamer people by pointing out that the anti-gamer people never bother to do any investigation into the subject they are studying, video and computer games, before making their sweeping condemnations.
I'm just surprised these two psychologists didn't try to set up a competitive Myst deathmatch...Then they can do what they want, and if anyone breaks the new encryption, they can put them in jail.
Of course, with the number of extreme, byzantine and intrusive laws in this country, anyone can be a criminal. It's all a matter of selective enforcement.
Of course, the Federal government may indeed get away with this, considering recent Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment (the fact that this ruling came down now is suspicious, I'm guessing that when he takes them to court they'll assert "secondary effects," "Why someone who listens to his words might become a double-plus ungood crimethinking computer hacker! That means that we can forbid him to speak.")
Let's see Miranda's gone, Fair Use is gone, Free Speech is gone, the Right to Bear Arms is gone (flame away!), and I'm guessing the next thing will either be that we have to billet soldiers in our houses or that the government will be able to search whatever it wants whenever it wants.
Oh by the way, I'm sure the Mitnick haters will show up in force to say, "Way to go Feds, get 'im." I just want you people to think of something, do you really want a government in place that can sentence someone, and then after they've served their sentence can continue to persecute them outside normal legal channels?
Well, I may just have to get a government job, I'm practically working for the government as it is (the company I work for has close ties to the U.N.), so it might not be that big a step. Then I'll be able to persecute any of my subjects as I please, without fear of restraint, right? Why are people so intent on making Federal bureacrats into feudal lords?
Sigh... what the Hell is happening to the United States?
So, what's the difference between that and what Scientology is doing? I'll bet if you really study the Scientology lawyers lawyertalk, you'll find reasoning along the lines of what the MPAA has been saying about their DVDs.
Or, it could be the DMCA clause that says, "As long as you are rich and evil, you can do whatever you want." Otherwise known as the insanity clause... (please note, the previous statement was not meant for the sarcasm impaired).
The Pope likes Pokemon
My boycott of nVidia is based on the fact that they allow no reverse engineering and specifically don't want free software drivers for their hardware. There can only be one reason for this, it is because at some future date they intend to yank the rug out from under Linux users in favor of exclusivity deals with Micros~1 or someone else.
Hardware is hardware, if I'm not allowed to write software to make it work, why would I buy it? It might make a good coaster, but it won't be of any use to me. I also think that hardware manufacturers need to be encouraged to see the truth, that free software is empowering and profitable for companies that are primarily hardware vendors.
I'll stick with Matrox, thanks. Maybe nVidia will decide that deals with the Empire are not worth the losses they will incur, maybe not. So what? They have viable competition, so why does the GNU/Linux community need a company that deliberately spits in our faces?
As to the mainstreaming of Linux, if Linux goes mainstream but the ideals of free software are lost, then what was the point? We might just has well used M$ (or a more fitting analogy, the doomed OS/2) and saved ourself the trouble.
Linux is not just an alternate OS, it is a philosophy of doing business in the software world. No graphics card is worth giving up my ideals for.
"If I like it, no matter how obviously flawed and biased the research is, then it is good science and everyone should just bow down before the authoritarian new laws we will have to enact to protect people from themselves."
"If I don't like it, as in this post by KahunaBurger about the fact that the American Scientific Establishment might deny homeopathic medicine a top level .med domain name then it's bad science and suppressing people's rights and should not be listened too."
I mean, I'm sure it never occured to you (and I say this as someone who has no real opinions on homeopathic medicine, but who has close friends who swear by it) that the reason why the body that was supposed to enforce a .med domain name would deny it to homeopathic medicine is because they believe homeopathic medicine is bad science and have studies to back that up.
Of course, knowing the US medical establishment the way I do, I know that .com is the correct designation for such sites, money comes first and people second.
But then, it has always been the position of authoritarian fanatics, from Hitler to the present day, that they have unimpeachable scientific authority for their insane, repressive political beliefs. These people have to corrupt the scientific community because their claims do not stand up on their own merits. If you can't convince people they have to give up their right to free speech because it is good for the state, use some pseudo science to push your claim, eh?
Of course, the elitist and condescending attitudes of such fanatics always gives them away, "How dare you try to disagree with these people!! They're priests^H^H^H^H^H^Hpsychologists, you should be burned for heresy for even trying to debate them!!"
I've read this reoprt, it is bad science, and you know it is bad science. Anything for the cause though, right? The big lie technique, keep repeating obviously false statements until the public swallows them, eh?
I mean, they don't give you a default password for root, they shouldn't give you one for piranha.
Now, the most important question is... was it Q (the password^H^H^H^Hletter is Q) from Star Trek: The Next Generation or Q from James Bond?
I mean, we have people who just run scripts to put stuff up, just gibberish. They aren't doing anything to the upper levels of moderation, but they are effectively silencing the lower levels.
Actually, if we could somehow prevent spam I wouldn't mind ACs. I mean, I actually want to look at 0, -1, or -2 posts but even with the amount of time I spend on Slashdot I can't read them all.
I support anonymous posters, I just wish there was a way to support letting people post without an account which would also allow automatically created spam to be stopped.
However, people like you can inflict a lot of suffering on a lot of people in the short term before people see through you and see what you are about. You are talking about jailing people for downloading Doom or buying their kids Mortal Kombat, yet another reason for jack booted government thugs to knock down the doors of law abiding peaceful American citizens and put guns to their heads. That's the use of force your ilk never object to, a use of force you and your ilk seem to relish with unholy glee. Otherwise, how would you enforce your censorship, someone is going to have to go to jail and there must be uncounted millions of copies of the game Doom out there. They aren't just going to evaporate because you say they're bad.
I will resist people like you until I die, as Patrick Henry said, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Why don't you try Iran, I think they have just the kind of government you want already.
Oh, and KahunaBurger, this isn't Amazon, so quit trying to peddle books. If you have something useful to contribute to the conversation, contribute it, don't just say read On Killing over and over again to get money into the pocket of your fascist hero. I happen to know that his testimony before Congress is available to everyone online, so why don't you do a little Web search.
Or could it be that you don't give a damn about people and just want to see profits for Grossman at the expense of American freedom?
Oh, and no, a person doesn't have to read On Killing to conclude Grossman was a fascist any more than he or she has to read Mein Kampf to conclude Hitler was a Nazi.
Oh well:
Iä, Iä, SHODAN Phtagn!!!
Sigh, just have to wait for SHODAN to get here, she'll purge the world of non-believers...
Haven't you ever heard of Gallipoli, where the Turks machine gunned unarmed British soldiers?
The whole of France was turned into a charnel pit!
Have you ever done any serious study of the Great War?
Did you know that German snipers would shoot through the eye slits on the British side of the lines?
Sigh... the American school system, kids think that WWI started when the Lusitania sank. Perhaps when you've grown up and gone through college you'll get some historical education? Of course, I'm not sure what that will be like at Bob Jones University...
What does this have to do with porn? Simple, the porn sites want business so they pay other site based on the number of clicks they get (similar to the way AllAdvantage pays based on how active a surfer you are). Somehow, opening or closing those Javascript windows that pop-up count as clicks. In fact, there are JavaScript loops out there that will _never_ get you to real porn, but will just generate clicks for their creators.
Of course, you'd think that the people behind the pornsites that actually, you know, provide real porn would catch on and quit paying people for click throughs (I'm sure they will, eventually).
I read this on an online magazine, Salon I think, but I can't find the article now.
Ok, I know what people will say, Gargoyles (except for a few notable episodes) took place mostly in modern times. However, please note that all the characters in Dungeons and Dragons the cartoon series, there were a bunch of modern kids who got all their powers handed to them on a silver platter. I mean, if you watch Gargoyles you see how MacBeth became such a powerful fighter and how Demona became such a powerful mage.
Besides which, I loved the episode of Gargoyles where the Arch-Mage returns to take revenge on Goliath. Of course it's directly stolen from Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps," but then that's what I like about it ^_^
This is not intended to slam the D&D cartoon, but when it first came out it always drove me nuts how _unlike_ actual D&D it was. It was more like Captain N.
One Two Three Four... will this start a flame war?
Quite aside from that, the New York Times article mentioned in this post, points out that the vast majority of rampage killers do not have an interest in video games. Recently, I heard a story of a 60 year old guy who shot up his neighborhood association, he killed two people and injured other. I'm am absolutely sure he never touched a video game in his life, but he did have a history of violent, anti-social behavior.
You can continue to push snake oil at people if you like, but only fools and the APA will be buying. I just hope the fools don't out number the intelligent people.
Video games 'increase aggression'
However, to be fair, the U.S. already has insane-military-guy-who-wrote-a-book in all the reactionary venues, so this is just going to bolster up his arguments (bad, but he was already here.).
I don't know if you remember the anti-video game AD campaigns that the Church of England ran a while back, now they were scary...