This is what happens when people consistently elect fanatics to high office. The most ridiculous part of it is what you know if you, like me, had family in law enforcement: that it can often be a case of "the wolves guarding the hen house." Note: I'm not refering to my Dad, who was a stand up guy. I'm referring to stuff my Dad knew about other cops, especially the ones in Newark.
Note though your problem was that the girls Dad obviously had it in for you and was able to use our country's rather insane view of sex to get you into trouble. (Note, it wouldn't have happened if you'd had family on the police department... he'd probably have ended up in prison for molesting his own daughter or something in that case!)
There in lies the problem though, the press is supposed to be independant, but when everyone in power is feeding from the same trough, you end up with a recipe for oppression.
That's the most arrogant post I've ever seen on slashdot. You should be ashamed..
Or proud... I mean the most arrogant post? On Slashdot? That's an accomplishment that is pretty difficult to come by... especially since a lot of people around here seem to shoot for it.
Of course, now we run the risk of starting an argument over whether this is/is not really the most arrogant post...
You know, when I was a kid there wasn't any such thing as this "IT" thing people are talking about now. Of course, we had computers, but somehow when you thought computers, you didn't think of them in terms of well, I'll say it IPO's. Not to say nerds weren't interested in making money... so they could buy more computer stuff. They (or should I say I... no I think since nerd refers to a stereotype I can say they) mostly thought about computers as entertainment (or... dark obsession).
It seems to me that you are an IT Professional who wants to divorce the concept of "IT" from the concept of nerd...
Remember, the word nerd refers itself to an evil stereotype about guys who are obsessed with Star Trek and computers. (I'm not a Trek fan myself, but I don't have anything against it. I have probably seen every episode of classic trek and NextGen at least three times though....) When you adopt the name "nerd" for yourself, you adopt all the baggage, good and bad that comes with that term.
I, for one, am perfectly happy to see IT professionals draw distinctions between themselves and "geeks" and "nerds." (Hey, when I was in school I wanted to divorce myself from those concepts... I wasn't ever successfully able to do it though, despite the fact that I loved my Atari 800, Dr. Who and Dungeons and Dragons I was still considered a nerd;_;)
I've never actually watched anything to do with StarGate.....
Ok, I have a theory about the second plot of Crusade. I think that that Apocalypse box that Captain Matthew Gideon had was going to be central. It kept giving him advice that was sort of evil but he kept following it. I'm assuming it had its own agenda...
Appropo of nothing, and an obscure comment that I suspect few other people will get, it was kind of cool to see Fergus show up as the evil technomage on Crusade...
(I have to post this at 2... I'm afraid humorless Star Wars moderators will think of it as flamebait. Would it mollify you Star Wars moderators if I said Empire Strikes Back was one of my all time favorite movies?)
Ok, I know I'm risking my brother's freedom with this post, but I will make this an international story! So here is the anecdote:
My brother subscribed to the short lived Babylon 5 comic book, in one episode there was a letter from a guy in Denmark. The guy in Denmark said he was happy to get the B5 comic even though he couldn't watch the series in Denmark. Unfortunately, that was the last issue of the Babylon 5 commic published. So my brother, insane Babylon 5 evangelist that he was, started taping episodes of Babylon 5 off of TV and mailing them to this guy in Denmark. (In clear violation of region coding! Oh, the villainy of it!)
Ok, so, if there are any fan tapes of B5 circulating in Denmark now, maybe you can thank my brother...
Best episode? Hmm, ok, I'll take a shot at this, Chrysalis I think it was.
You know, Mr. Morden helps Molori with the Narn listening post... and while this isn't the first time we've seen the Shadows its the first time they've destroyed a major strategic target.
Then the ship carrying Santiago is destroyed, and the malevolent Mr. Clark becomes Earth alliance president.
I really wish Crusade hadn't been killed off, it was like it wasn't even given a chance to suceed...
Although most newspapers hardly consider this page one news (not surprising considering they are the ones pushing the Anti-Gamer Agenda) freedom forum has an article on it:
His [U.S. District Judge Edward Johnstone] opinion was based heavily on a similar case that arose a decade ago in which the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, a popular role-playing game, were not liable for a McCracken County, Ky., teen-ager's suicide.
While it's good news that the Anti-Gamer Agenda didn't manage to push its agenda any further than they have in past cases, it's a little frightening that these twisted, single-minded fanatics have been pushing this <insert obscenity> at the American people for so long. I just wonder when the American people will see the truth, that it is these people, the ones pushing lawsuits like this, who are truly dangerous to the United States and who need to be pushed out of the mainstream and sent to the fringes, where they belong! I find fascist-leaning lunatics like Grossman to be far more dangerous than any gamer, and far more likely to cause death and suffering.
The solution to this? Metamoderate! Go to Amazon, sign in and put negative votes on the reviews which are pro-Grossman. This is fair, because all the reviews you are refferring to were written by people starting with the preconcieved notion "Video games cause violence." Therefore, they would give a good review no matter what kind of atrocious drivel was in it. (I'm also pretty sure that the reviews were orchastrated by the political followers of the colonel, but that's beside the point.)
Read the reviews carefully! It is even more important to mod up the reviews of the book that are accurate as it is to moderate down Grossman's cronies.
Well, this is the first time I've logged into my Amazon account since Bezos patented 1-Click. (I may have to go to the library one day and see if they have this book so I can write a review. I'm sure not going to buy it for that purpose, though. Hmm... I wonder what colonel would do if I scanned it and put it up on the Internet in PDF format? I'm sure he would thank me, because after all he's written it as a public service... and not as an attempt to cash in on the death and suffering of children, right? (note sarcasm)
Stephenson wrote some books which are influential in Cyberpunk, a literary philosophy in which the future is normally dark, run by evil corporations which are either assisted or walk all over a corrupt government. Unfortunately, I haven't read his books, though Cryptonomicon was assigned reading in my ethics class for one persons final project.
Stephenson's comments about how "Big Brother can be benevolent" do strike me as similar to a lot of similar ideas in the Clinton administration (clipper chip, V-chip, etc.). Of course, I was really enraged by, Zimmerman's comment about "libertarian nutsos looking down a gunsight" which is an attempt to turn all Libertarians into Tim McVeigh (who I certainly don't consider a Libertarian).
How about getting your point across without lies,embellishments and SHOCK treatments..
I think you're right on with that, American politics is in the shape it is in because almost no one tries to win people over on the strength of their arguments any more. Unfortunately, considering the type of people who get elected, these types of tactics work. In fact, Micros~1 FUD is just these types of tactics turned toward business pursuits. The trouble is, people don't have time to really think about issues that they don't care about and tend to look to people that have solid reputations, like Stephenson to think for them.
Back when all this anti-gamer stuff was coming down the pike, right after Columbine, I put up my games and politics page. I noticed the way the debates were heading on message boards, so I wrote this:
Of course, it had no effect on anything. In fact, pro-Second Amendment politicians have been attacking games to draw peoples fire away from the Second Amendment (in a rather disgusting display of political cowardice.) I mean after Col. Grossman testified on the Hill that games ought to be regulated as armaments: Lt. Col. David Grossman
since part of his contention was that they were "learn by doing" murder simulators, it has become impossible to seperate the First Amendment issue involved with games from the Second Amendment issue involving guns. Grossman was acting as a consultant on these lawsuits, and has certainly gotten book sales out of them.
What people who are interested in facts should realize is that the emotional hysteria generated by these school shootings has destroyed the existence of rational debate on. Trigger locks, while they might possible preven accidental shootings, would have had no effect on Paducah. In fact, short of siezing guns from people who already had them, gun control wouldn't have been effective in any of these cases. The anti-games stuff is, of course, absurd as well. It is based on a view of games that suggests that they turn normal people into zombie killing machines. I get irritated when political opportunists who are against the Right to Bear Arms or against Free Speech expect us to swallow the most absurd arguments because they hope we've been blinded to reason by the emotions generated by these events. It is like the "red-baiting" mentality, connect your enemies to the commies and hope that no one looks at what you are really trying to accomplish.
The people who brought this suit ought to be sued by ID for bringing a frivolous lawsuit, and for attempting to gain from the suffering and death of innocent people.
He [Zimmerman] argued that he had not created the program, which has spread around the world via the Internet, to feed the paranoid fantasies of "libertarian nutsos looking down a gunsight."
Ah, I'm so glad we Libertarians are viewed so fairly and justly by those who would lead us.
Basically, my guess is that at this point these men find they have significant influence with members of the government.
Time changes everything, but not as much as money.
Well, I don't have any money, at least not in significant amounts. I am currently not a member of the ruling class, and I don't expect to be any time soon. It doesn't surprise me that as people become mega-wealthy, they stop being concerned about the rights of "the little people." After all, once you've got power, you imagine you can always protect your rights. No need to complain about the government if you can hobnob with senators, after all.
I mean think about it, at one time all the people in the Entertainment Trust once thought of themselves as anti-establishment liberals. Now they are the establishment, they're the ones pushing all these Draconian copyright laws.
I honestly hope that if I am ever in a position of power I retain my ethics, and don't see it as a chance to oppress those who haven't made it. (All sane people will continue to hope I never get into a position of power, of course.... ^_-)
Oh, and one last thing:
But instead of automatically condemning that Orwellian notion, he suggested that the assembled engineers and coders might work to make the brave new video world work for us all, to enhance safety and security though a kind of global neighborhood watch.
Hmm, where I live most of the neighborhood associations say that you can't have a boat, a camper, or a sattelite dish. I sure do want that on a global scale. It starts with a "license to ogle" (which is really what is being suggested) and continues on into a "license to meddle." I guess Stephenson has decided to become a respectible member of the upper middle class. Sort of like all the ex-hippes who felt free love was ok when they were kids but want to suppress it now.
...will come from the console market. Think about it, it is far harder to modify a Playstation or N64 than it is to modify a computer. While it can be done, it can't become as widespread as PC modification. Any idiot with a modem can download a hack for their PC as soon as it comes out. Soldering a chip into your Playstation is far more dicey.
Of course, the current move of consoles to become more PC-like will potentially destroy this anti-cheating solution. Let's see if there is much twinking and PowerGaming in the Dreamcast multiplayer market when they release Phantasy Star online.
This may be a place where dedicated game boxes under tight controls from their parent companies do certain things better than PCs...
(Note: This should not be construed as an endorsement of despicable console maker Sony, whose villainy runs unchecked throughout the world.)
My "Of course, good luck to the U.S. government if they ever want to break up Sony..." quote was actually meant in a hopeless sense, such as "Good luck trying to sell your refrigerators in Alaska.." Since Sony is unperturbed by US law, like all Japanese companies, obviously the US government can't break them up even though they seem to be headed closer and closer to a Micros~1 style monopoly in this country. In fact, it occurs to me that the US government is more or less powerless against companies located in other countries if you combine the anti-trade restraint WTO with the other country's national sovriegnty (in as much as that still exists with the WTO in place).
Ok, a few things in this article lead me to question Wired's integrity. The first is this quote:
DeCSS was the byproduct of a cracker effort to reverse-engineer the DVD movie player for Windows in an attempt to create a similar DVD player for Linux.
Cracker is a loaded word, it has been pushed by the hacker community as an evil alternative for the word hacker, which we'd like people to use in a neutral, he's-a-great-computer-guy kind of way. I believe that this is a deliberate attempt to color people's perceptions of MoRE in a negative way.
There is also this quote:
Eventually a legal player for Linux came along, but not until after a huge fight erupted between the open-source crowd and the movie studios over content protection.
I object to the words "content protection" and "legal." The movie studio's actual idea of content protection is to control your use of content they produced even after you've bought it. The idea of content protection they are trying to put forth concerns "piracy" which impractical for DVDs using current technology. Note that even though I'm sure people will object to that statement, "but it will be practical someday!" the fact that casual piracy of DVDs is currently impractical is far better protection for content in an anti-piracy sence than the flimsy and pathetic protection offered by CSS. I object to the word legal because it implies that OpenDVD is illegal, as opposed to contested. It would be like calling a contested, unauthorized biography that was being tried in slander court an illegal biography. Again, the word legal is loaded in this context. Oh, and the quote from Lord Jack Valenti is of course absurd, a deliberate attempt to dumb down the concept of the Internet. I think most people should know what linking is, and they know it is essentially drawing a map rather than transporting. I could write a JavaScript that would be more like the transportation he refers too, i.e. click on my page and be automatically shunted to a page with deCSS content.
Of course, this shouldn't be surprising coming from a magazine which has the headline, Geeks Protest, Nobody Comes , which is literally untrue. (This is the correct use of the word "literally" in other words, saying "Nobody Comes" is a lie because there were actually people at the protest.)
Were sent out as part of a mailing list? Hmm, if I use an Email account that let's me send Emails in HTML form (like Netscape Webmail, for instance), I might be able to put it in as a comment. If everyone who had one of those Emails with an HTML sig (well it's too long for a sig... but you can do a save draft and use that draft everytime you are sending out Emails), they could send out a lot of copies of the code to everyone they Email.
Well, it's just something I was thinking of today... unfortunately being an anti-social, misanthropic loner, I don't Email enough people myself for it to be an effective distribution method. Hmm... I have an idea though...
I think it is very hard for people to see the truth about the Entertainment Trust, because people are far more emotionally influenced by the Entertainment Trust than they ever were by Micros~1. I mean, I know if I say anything negative about the Sony PS2 based on the fact that Sony is an evil company and the PS2 uses truly vile technology (like region coding) that it's going to be tougher than saying, "Hey that Bill Gates, he's really evil."
This is because people associate things like their favorite characters, shows and games with the Entertainment Trust and they associate all the annoyances they have come to expect from computers with M$. I remember that a politician (or political columnist, I forget which) made a point about Jack Valenti and his influence on the Hill. Lobbyists for other industries can do a lot with money and the like, but only Valenti can arrange for Clint Eastwood or Julia Roberts to show up at your fundraiser. People get blinded by the glamor of the Entertainment Industry and it keeps them from despising it the same way they do Micros~1.
In fact, if M$ was smart, they buy a film studio like AOL did and get some of the public relations magic that that can give them. Though they have been smart enough to co-opt popular culture (like my beloved Rolling Stones *sob*) to try to achieve the same result and manipulate people.
Of course, good luck to the U.S. government if they ever want to break up Sony...
I think this is true and it goes along with the X-Box and Micros~1 games. However, I'm not sure that Micros~1 is an accepted member of the gentleman's agreement that is the basis for what we have to deal with from the Entertainment Industry. You see, currently, the Entertainment Industry is run by a group of evil, bloated plutocrats, but isn't really one single company. To them, Bill Gates will still carry the stigma of being new to the game, unlike Sony and (AOL)/Time/Warner. It's also possible that Bill Gates won't fit in, he likes to dominate and the other companies in the industry are content with not rocking the boat and keeping their piece of the pie. That's the basis for any trust, if any company in the Entertainment Trust decided to break ranks on DVD, MP3 or anything else in order to increase their profits at the expense of the others, then they wouldn't be able to keep up their united front. It is because they don't really compete that they can all unite as a group on most of the important issues facing their industry. My bet is Bill Gates will want to compete and dominate as he did with computers, provided he can figure out how.
Oh, there's a great story about Bill Gates in the Onion:
Which is a fairly good analysis of the fact that the administration at Columbine seemed to tolerate and encourage violence among the students. (Especially the ones who were involved in athletics.). It's basically a serious version of the Onion story.
Incidentally, I don't think that the Columbine murderers were geeks, really. I think that a good portion of the media/political establishment decided to label them as such because it serves their agenda. For instance, geeks are always complaining about things like the DMCA and they know more about computers than members of Congress. Not surprising that the government favors the image of geeks as dangerous social outcasts with scores to settle. They did the same thing with hippies after the Manson murders. It seems like the two murderers got some of the same lenient treatment from the school as some of the athletes, if the Washington Post story is to be believed.
For example, in the story referenced above in this post, it is noted that the two Columbine murderers had committed felony burglary before they went on their killing spree, which would seem to be more germain than the fact that they modded levels for Doom. Most people, however, only ever hear about Doom. Also, Columbine isn't the only one of these attacks, how come Jonesborough is never mentioned? Could it be that the details of the Jonesborough incident don't fit a useful profile? In fact, I pretty sure that a careful analysis of Jonesborough wouldn't yield it as a "geeks vs. jocks" situation at all.
Personally, I'd like to see this one stopped. Why? Because if this actually does anything, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Washington Crowd will use it to obtain sweeping new powers. On the other hand, if it fails miserably, people can point out that the solutions to these types of things are technological, not legal.
Basically, giving the U.S. government an excuse to crack down on Internet freedom is not a useful way to protest things in my opinion. Besides, a Script-kiddie style DoS attack (they won't even have to obtain their own tools) which will be blamed on hackers isn't particularly 37337. Oh, and I would seriously hate the abomination of a word 'Hactivist' (bleah!) come into common usage... -_-
Re:Great news?? I think not...
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It's a good idea. The most important thing for this format, though, is content. Is anything still allowed to go into the public domain? I mean we'd need a proof of concept, maybe Nosferatu. It's a good film for smart-aleck irony purposes, if you know the story of the film Nosferatu, it should be in the public domain, and actually the copyright holder on it (Mrs. Bram Stoker was found to own the rights) tried to have all copies of it destroyed. Since it is silent it could be released with a cool soundtrack created by Copyleft-friendly bands (if there are any). Well, I'm just dreaming here, obviously... but I still think it is a good idea if anyone is up for it.
CSS has the potential to create...
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... the next Micros~1. Why does everyone hate Micros~1 (well, not everyone but a lot of people)? It is because they leveraged their operating system to dominate the PC market, by making programs from competitor's incompatible with Windos. This is the reason for the anti-trust suit, this is the basis for their nasty tactics, and this is why Micros~1 is seen as a great evil beast.
DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disks. The DVD consortium deliberately didn't want them called Digital Video Disks because they want them to be used for everything from computer software, to audio and video content. Its all supposed to go on DVD and it may all end up using the CSS encryption standard.
Well, I don't see why DVD CCA couldn't use its encryption standard to bully people and get an unfair competitive advantage in the Information Technology marketplace the same way Micros~1 used its Windos monopoly. After all, you won't be allowed to reverse engineer to make it work if you don't license it from them.
I liked the recent Futurama episode about the Internet. All the Planet Express people went on the Internet (using some futuristic VR gear) and were immediately visciously attacked by Ads. I remember Fry was almost carried off by an Ad for organ donation.
Basically, Wyse needed to get this thing out the door A.S.A.P. so they did a short term thinking model. That's fine for a small company, I guess. Why short term thinking? Well, because they could've written a lot of the software they needed to make Linux thin clients themselves, and then they wouldn't be in bondage to William Gates for the forseeable future. (Relevant Star Wars scenario, Darth Vader: "I would hate to have to leave a garrison behind." Going into business with the Empire may have seemed like a good idea to Lando... until Vader uttered that line.)
I mean, Wyse is dropping Linux, but IBM is picking it up and developing for it in a major way. So, I have to say, I don't care what Wyse is doing. Oh, and of course if Wyse is really big in the thin client area, this opens up the Linux thin client business for IBM to get into it.
The truth is, forward thinking companies (provided they have the time and resources to make it work) are going to understand that Linux is better for their bottom lines that Micros~1. If you manage to make Linux work for you, then you are an independant company who is in control of your own destiny. If you make M$ work for you, you are beholden to M$.
I know which choice I'd make, if I could afford it.
Slashdot Mirror
Kandyland decision a new First Amendment landmark
This is what happens when people consistently elect fanatics to high office. The most ridiculous part of it is what you know if you, like me, had family in law enforcement: that it can often be a case of "the wolves guarding the hen house." Note: I'm not refering to my Dad, who was a stand up guy. I'm referring to stuff my Dad knew about other cops, especially the ones in Newark.
Note though your problem was that the girls Dad obviously had it in for you and was able to use our country's rather insane view of sex to get you into trouble. (Note, it wouldn't have happened if you'd had family on the police department... he'd probably have ended up in prison for molesting his own daughter or something in that case!)
There in lies the problem though, the press is supposed to be independant, but when everyone in power is feeding from the same trough, you end up with a recipe for oppression.
Of course, now we run the risk of starting an argument over whether this is/is not really the most arrogant post...
^_-
"The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote..."
You know, when I was a kid there wasn't any such thing as this "IT" thing people are talking about now. Of course, we had computers, but somehow when you thought computers, you didn't think of them in terms of well, I'll say it IPO's. Not to say nerds weren't interested in making money... so they could buy more computer stuff. They (or should I say I... no I think since nerd refers to a stereotype I can say they) mostly thought about computers as entertainment (or... dark obsession).
It seems to me that you are an IT Professional who wants to divorce the concept of "IT" from the concept of nerd...
Remember, the word nerd refers itself to an evil stereotype about guys who are obsessed with Star Trek and computers. (I'm not a Trek fan myself, but I don't have anything against it. I have probably seen every episode of classic trek and NextGen at least three times though....) When you adopt the name "nerd" for yourself, you adopt all the baggage, good and bad that comes with that term.
I, for one, am perfectly happy to see IT professionals draw distinctions between themselves and "geeks" and "nerds." (Hey, when I was in school I wanted to divorce myself from those concepts... I wasn't ever successfully able to do it though, despite the fact that I loved my Atari 800, Dr. Who and Dungeons and Dragons I was still considered a nerd ;_;)
I've never actually watched anything to do with StarGate.....
Was your post a troll?
Appropo of nothing, and an obscure comment that I suspect few other people will get, it was kind of cool to see Fergus show up as the evil technomage on Crusade...
Ok, how much better was Babylon 5 than The Phantom Menace?
Would (a googleplex)*(a googleplex) be excessive?
I think not....
(I have to post this at 2... I'm afraid humorless Star Wars moderators will think of it as flamebait. Would it mollify you Star Wars moderators if I said Empire Strikes Back was one of my all time favorite movies?)
My brother subscribed to the short lived Babylon 5 comic book, in one episode there was a letter from a guy in Denmark. The guy in Denmark said he was happy to get the B5 comic even though he couldn't watch the series in Denmark. Unfortunately, that was the last issue of the Babylon 5 commic published. So my brother, insane Babylon 5 evangelist that he was, started taping episodes of Babylon 5 off of TV and mailing them to this guy in Denmark. (In clear violation of region coding! Oh, the villainy of it!)
Ok, so, if there are any fan tapes of B5 circulating in Denmark now, maybe you can thank my brother...
Now it is an international story, see... ^_-
You know, Mr. Morden helps Molori with the Narn listening post... and while this isn't the first time we've seen the Shadows its the first time they've destroyed a major strategic target.
Then the ship carrying Santiago is destroyed, and the malevolent Mr. Clark becomes Earth alliance president.
I really wish Crusade hadn't been killed off, it was like it wasn't even given a chance to suceed...
Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie, video game makers
It has some interesting data on the case:
While it's good news that the Anti-Gamer Agenda didn't manage to push its agenda any further than they have in past cases, it's a little frightening that these twisted, single-minded fanatics have been pushing this <insert obscenity> at the American people for so long. I just wonder when the American people will see the truth, that it is these people, the ones pushing lawsuits like this, who are truly dangerous to the United States and who need to be pushed out of the mainstream and sent to the fringes, where they belong! I find fascist-leaning lunatics like Grossman to be far more dangerous than any gamer, and far more likely to cause death and suffering.Read the reviews carefully! It is even more important to mod up the reviews of the book that are accurate as it is to moderate down Grossman's cronies.
Well, this is the first time I've logged into my Amazon account since Bezos patented 1-Click. (I may have to go to the library one day and see if they have this book so I can write a review. I'm sure not going to buy it for that purpose, though. Hmm... I wonder what colonel would do if I scanned it and put it up on the Internet in PDF format? I'm sure he would thank me, because after all he's written it as a public service... and not as an attempt to cash in on the death and suffering of children, right? (note sarcasm)
Stephenson's comments about how "Big Brother can be benevolent" do strike me as similar to a lot of similar ideas in the Clinton administration (clipper chip, V-chip, etc.). Of course, I was really enraged by, Zimmerman's comment about "libertarian nutsos looking down a gunsight" which is an attempt to turn all Libertarians into Tim McVeigh (who I certainly don't consider a Libertarian).
I think you're right on with that, American politics is in the shape it is in because almost no one tries to win people over on the strength of their arguments any more. Unfortunately, considering the type of people who get elected, these types of tactics work. In fact, Micros~1 FUD is just these types of tactics turned toward business pursuits. The trouble is, people don't have time to really think about issues that they don't care about and tend to look to people that have solid reputations, like Stephenson to think for them.The Second Amendment and Games
Of course, it had no effect on anything. In fact, pro-Second Amendment politicians have been attacking games to draw peoples fire away from the Second Amendment (in a rather disgusting display of political cowardice.) I mean after Col. Grossman testified on the Hill that games ought to be regulated as armaments: Lt. Col. David Grossman
since part of his contention was that they were "learn by doing" murder simulators, it has become impossible to seperate the First Amendment issue involved with games from the Second Amendment issue involving guns. Grossman was acting as a consultant on these lawsuits, and has certainly gotten book sales out of them.
What people who are interested in facts should realize is that the emotional hysteria generated by these school shootings has destroyed the existence of rational debate on. Trigger locks, while they might possible preven accidental shootings, would have had no effect on Paducah. In fact, short of siezing guns from people who already had them, gun control wouldn't have been effective in any of these cases. The anti-games stuff is, of course, absurd as well. It is based on a view of games that suggests that they turn normal people into zombie killing machines. I get irritated when political opportunists who are against the Right to Bear Arms or against Free Speech expect us to swallow the most absurd arguments because they hope we've been blinded to reason by the emotions generated by these events. It is like the "red-baiting" mentality, connect your enemies to the commies and hope that no one looks at what you are really trying to accomplish.
The people who brought this suit ought to be sued by ID for bringing a frivolous lawsuit, and for attempting to gain from the suffering and death of innocent people.
Basically, my guess is that at this point these men find they have significant influence with members of the government.
Well, I don't have any money, at least not in significant amounts. I am currently not a member of the ruling class, and I don't expect to be any time soon. It doesn't surprise me that as people become mega-wealthy, they stop being concerned about the rights of "the little people." After all, once you've got power, you imagine you can always protect your rights. No need to complain about the government if you can hobnob with senators, after all.I mean think about it, at one time all the people in the Entertainment Trust once thought of themselves as anti-establishment liberals. Now they are the establishment, they're the ones pushing all these Draconian copyright laws.
I honestly hope that if I am ever in a position of power I retain my ethics, and don't see it as a chance to oppress those who haven't made it. (All sane people will continue to hope I never get into a position of power, of course.... ^_-)
Oh, and one last thing:
Hmm, where I live most of the neighborhood associations say that you can't have a boat, a camper, or a sattelite dish. I sure do want that on a global scale. It starts with a "license to ogle" (which is really what is being suggested) and continues on into a "license to meddle." I guess Stephenson has decided to become a respectible member of the upper middle class. Sort of like all the ex-hippes who felt free love was ok when they were kids but want to suppress it now.Of course, the current move of consoles to become more PC-like will potentially destroy this anti-cheating solution. Let's see if there is much twinking and PowerGaming in the Dreamcast multiplayer market when they release Phantasy Star online.
This may be a place where dedicated game boxes under tight controls from their parent companies do certain things better than PCs...
(Note: This should not be construed as an endorsement of despicable console maker Sony, whose villainy runs unchecked throughout the world.)
My "Of course, good luck to the U.S. government if they ever want to break up Sony..." quote was actually meant in a hopeless sense, such as "Good luck trying to sell your refrigerators in Alaska.." Since Sony is unperturbed by US law, like all Japanese companies, obviously the US government can't break them up even though they seem to be headed closer and closer to a Micros~1 style monopoly in this country. In fact, it occurs to me that the US government is more or less powerless against companies located in other countries if you combine the anti-trade restraint WTO with the other country's national sovriegnty (in as much as that still exists with the WTO in place).
There is also this quote:
I object to the words "content protection" and "legal." The movie studio's actual idea of content protection is to control your use of content they produced even after you've bought it. The idea of content protection they are trying to put forth concerns "piracy" which impractical for DVDs using current technology. Note that even though I'm sure people will object to that statement, "but it will be practical someday!" the fact that casual piracy of DVDs is currently impractical is far better protection for content in an anti-piracy sence than the flimsy and pathetic protection offered by CSS. I object to the word legal because it implies that OpenDVD is illegal, as opposed to contested. It would be like calling a contested, unauthorized biography that was being tried in slander court an illegal biography. Again, the word legal is loaded in this context. Oh, and the quote from Lord Jack Valenti is of course absurd, a deliberate attempt to dumb down the concept of the Internet. I think most people should know what linking is, and they know it is essentially drawing a map rather than transporting. I could write a JavaScript that would be more like the transportation he refers too, i.e. click on my page and be automatically shunted to a page with deCSS content.Of course, this shouldn't be surprising coming from a magazine which has the headline, Geeks Protest, Nobody Comes , which is literally untrue. (This is the correct use of the word "literally" in other words, saying "Nobody Comes" is a lie because there were actually people at the protest.)
CSS Descrambler
Were sent out as part of a mailing list? Hmm, if I use an Email account that let's me send Emails in HTML form (like Netscape Webmail, for instance), I might be able to put it in as a comment. If everyone who had one of those Emails with an HTML sig (well it's too long for a sig... but you can do a save draft and use that draft everytime you are sending out Emails), they could send out a lot of copies of the code to everyone they Email.
Well, it's just something I was thinking of today... unfortunately being an anti-social, misanthropic loner, I don't Email enough people myself for it to be an effective distribution method. Hmm... I have an idea though...
This is because people associate things like their favorite characters, shows and games with the Entertainment Trust and they associate all the annoyances they have come to expect from computers with M$. I remember that a politician (or political columnist, I forget which) made a point about Jack Valenti and his influence on the Hill. Lobbyists for other industries can do a lot with money and the like, but only Valenti can arrange for Clint Eastwood or Julia Roberts to show up at your fundraiser. People get blinded by the glamor of the Entertainment Industry and it keeps them from despising it the same way they do Micros~1.
In fact, if M$ was smart, they buy a film studio like AOL did and get some of the public relations magic that that can give them. Though they have been smart enough to co-opt popular culture (like my beloved Rolling Stones *sob*) to try to achieve the same result and manipulate people.
Of course, good luck to the U.S. government if they ever want to break up Sony...
Oh, there's a great story about Bill Gates in the Onion:
Bill Gates Grants Self 18 Dexterity, 20 Charisma
Dissecti ng Columbine's Cult of the Athlete
Which is a fairly good analysis of the fact that the administration at Columbine seemed to tolerate and encourage violence among the students. (Especially the ones who were involved in athletics.). It's basically a serious version of the Onion story.
Incidentally, I don't think that the Columbine murderers were geeks, really. I think that a good portion of the media/political establishment decided to label them as such because it serves their agenda. For instance, geeks are always complaining about things like the DMCA and they know more about computers than members of Congress. Not surprising that the government favors the image of geeks as dangerous social outcasts with scores to settle. They did the same thing with hippies after the Manson murders. It seems like the two murderers got some of the same lenient treatment from the school as some of the athletes, if the Washington Post story is to be believed.
For example, in the story referenced above in this post, it is noted that the two Columbine murderers had committed felony burglary before they went on their killing spree, which would seem to be more germain than the fact that they modded levels for Doom. Most people, however, only ever hear about Doom. Also, Columbine isn't the only one of these attacks, how come Jonesborough is never mentioned? Could it be that the details of the Jonesborough incident don't fit a useful profile? In fact, I pretty sure that a careful analysis of Jonesborough wouldn't yield it as a "geeks vs. jocks" situation at all.
MSNBC:Hactivists to attack biotech firms
DoS people's website
Personally, I'd like to see this one stopped. Why? Because if this actually does anything, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Washington Crowd will use it to obtain sweeping new powers. On the other hand, if it fails miserably, people can point out that the solutions to these types of things are technological, not legal.
Basically, giving the U.S. government an excuse to crack down on Internet freedom is not a useful way to protest things in my opinion. Besides, a Script-kiddie style DoS attack (they won't even have to obtain their own tools) which will be blamed on hackers isn't particularly 37337. Oh, and I would seriously hate the abomination of a word 'Hactivist' (bleah!) come into common usage... -_-
It's a good idea. The most important thing for this format, though, is content. Is anything still allowed to go into the public domain? I mean we'd need a proof of concept, maybe Nosferatu. It's a good film for smart-aleck irony purposes, if you know the story of the film Nosferatu, it should be in the public domain, and actually the copyright holder on it (Mrs. Bram Stoker was found to own the rights) tried to have all copies of it destroyed. Since it is silent it could be released with a cool soundtrack created by Copyleft-friendly bands (if there are any). Well, I'm just dreaming here, obviously... but I still think it is a good idea if anyone is up for it.
DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disks. The DVD consortium deliberately didn't want them called Digital Video Disks because they want them to be used for everything from computer software, to audio and video content. Its all supposed to go on DVD and it may all end up using the CSS encryption standard.
Well, I don't see why DVD CCA couldn't use its encryption standard to bully people and get an unfair competitive advantage in the Information Technology marketplace the same way Micros~1 used its Windos monopoly. After all, you won't be allowed to reverse engineer to make it work if you don't license it from them.
The King is dead, long live the King.
Leela: "Oh no! Ads!"
I mean, Wyse is dropping Linux, but IBM is picking it up and developing for it in a major way. So, I have to say, I don't care what Wyse is doing. Oh, and of course if Wyse is really big in the thin client area, this opens up the Linux thin client business for IBM to get into it.
The truth is, forward thinking companies (provided they have the time and resources to make it work) are going to understand that Linux is better for their bottom lines that Micros~1. If you manage to make Linux work for you, then you are an independant company who is in control of your own destiny. If you make M$ work for you, you are beholden to M$.
I know which choice I'd make, if I could afford it.