I agree wholeheartedly. One of the things I loved most about the old Ultima games, and more recently Oblivion (whaddya know... that one was Bethesda, as well. Go Fig.).
I'm not saying freedom of speech should be inviolable; I don't think child pornography should be a part of our country's "free speech," so I do think that there are instances where freedom of speech can and should be regulated by law. What I'm saying is that restricting speech is one of the gravest things a government can do, and should by default be considered a crime against society unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary (like the aforementioned child pornography example). I say we treat it like we treat the death penalty.
The Declaration of Independence states that we hold certain truths to be self-evident, that all (not some, not Americans, not just rich white men in a specific cultural context) have inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In our Constitution, we enumerate some of man's "liberty" rights, foremost among them the Freedom of Speech. This doesn't carry legal weight in China or Saudi Arabia, but it should be our conscience when dealing with them.
Our forefathers believed that all men on the earth, regardless of culture, have these rights upon birth. If we now say that a man's inalienable right to free speech depend upon his cultural context, we betray the single most important ideal our country was founded on.
That said, yeah, the DMCA and Patriot Act don't help; they, bit by bit, have got us believing that the right to an opinion is something that can be abridged, and that's intolerable. However, if we don't speak for Chinese dissidents, saying "but we don't have the right, or we'll be hypocrites," then no one will speak for them at all. I think they would rather we were hypocrites than silent.
You need to brush up on your Ayn Rand. The term "altruist" is used as a derogatory term, and "voluntary altruism" is something to be reviled and weakness.
"Nobody respects an altruist, neither in private life nor in international affairs. An altruist is a person who keeps sacrificing himself and his values, which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies, his allies to his protagonists, his interests to any cry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness, his convictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie, the good to any evil."
"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master."
"Just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others - and, therefore, man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
To that end, I suggest Ayn Rand was a self-serving bitch.
I suppose one president is luck; but nine presidents is a pattern. We had national leaders that ranged from right-wing TFH's to bleeding heart liberals, and nine out of nine presidents (including Reagan, ridiculed in his own time for being a nuke-loving war-monger ["Land of Confusion", I loved that video]) did not press the button. Ditto for the Soviet Union. I don't believe the relative calm of the Cold War was a fluke; MAD was a diplomatic strategy designed to give us an excuse not to go to war in circumstances where war would otherwise be inevitable (or even as many post-WW2 military figures argued, necessary).
I think the world is less safe, now that no one is looking down the long barrel of an ICBM. There is now less inhibition to starting war, and fewer repercussions.
However, I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of people who do not have any of these characteristics, including Americans.
People have been saying this for 40-odd years. Having successfully concluded a nuclear-armed cold war, this statement sounds like a stale cliché. MAD worked fine, and we and the Soviets turned out not to be the raging psychopaths everyone thought we were.
Would you allow your daughter, who suffers from a debilitating, ultimately fatal disease, to undergo curative treatment derived from stem cell research?
Yes, because there is a well-nigh 100% certainty that cure came form adult stem-cell research, not embryonic. So far the only actual cures provided by stem-cell research are from adult stem-cells. Note that this is not because embryonic stem-cell research is illegal or somehow hard to fund. America spends more money on embryonic stem-cell reasearch than anywhere else in the world. It just doesn't work as well.
Why do people just ignore or hand-wave away adult stem-cell research? There are real miracles, happening today, through adult stem-cells; and yet it's embryonic stem-cells that get the spot-light in scientific circles. Adult stem-cell research gets the federal funding, and for good reason.
Yeah, I remember when those black helicopters and men in black came and abducted the Newsweek and NYT editorial staff. A dark day for America's freedom of speech.
...and GCC and the ubiquitous GNU tools and the legal foundation that nurtured Linux.
I don't see much politicization of these tools. If RMS had put restrictions on who would use the GNU tools past the terms already part of the GPL, I daresay they would have reached the same stagnation HURD has.
From another perspective, Linus's algorithm for deciding pragmatism is based on a greedy algorithm - it always spits out answers that look reasonable in the short term. He may be an excellent programmer and good project leader, but he seems to lack a sense of perspective.
Well, FSF's sense of "long-term" perspective has given them HURD. Linus's "lack" of perspective gives me Working Software Right Now(tm). In the end, that's all businesses really care about.
Unfortunately, creating this game is Constitutionally protected free speech
Unfortunately? As in, "It's rather unfortunate that people in America can say whatever the heck they want?"
If you're still having questions about this whole "Freedom of Speech" thing, and you're looking for extremists to side with, give Jack Thompson a call. I'm sure he can find something in this game to get offended about. Or call DHS.
So if a homeless man agrees to let you kick him for food, this is a perfectly acceptable thing to do? Are you a decent human being for bringing this opportunity to him? Fuck no, you're an exploiting piece of shit.
I think you're right, and you have every right to stop me from kicking a homeless man in exchange for giving him food.
No one summoned the Grammar Nazi's; I was joking (we still do that around here, right?) about the RIAA. You can go away, now.
But before you go, I want to mention that the proper way to pluralize a proper noun is with an apostrophe. If you're going to be a Grammar Nazi, at least know what the hell you're talking about. Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree wholeheartedly. One of the things I loved most about the old Ultima games, and more recently Oblivion (whaddya know... that one was Bethesda, as well. Go Fig.).
If I'm correct, did Bethesda do Terminator: Future Shock? It was a very fun game, and the first I ever played with free-look.
Well, seeing as how you're posting on the INTERNET, I'd say this places you solidly in the "loser" category, by your definition.
Enjoy your open-source.
I'm not saying freedom of speech should be inviolable; I don't think child pornography should be a part of our country's "free speech," so I do think that there are instances where freedom of speech can and should be regulated by law. What I'm saying is that restricting speech is one of the gravest things a government can do, and should by default be considered a crime against society unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary (like the aforementioned child pornography example). I say we treat it like we treat the death penalty.
The Declaration of Independence states that we hold certain truths to be self-evident, that all (not some, not Americans, not just rich white men in a specific cultural context) have inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In our Constitution, we enumerate some of man's "liberty" rights, foremost among them the Freedom of Speech. This doesn't carry legal weight in China or Saudi Arabia, but it should be our conscience when dealing with them.
Our forefathers believed that all men on the earth, regardless of culture, have these rights upon birth. If we now say that a man's inalienable right to free speech depend upon his cultural context, we betray the single most important ideal our country was founded on.
That said, yeah, the DMCA and Patriot Act don't help; they, bit by bit, have got us believing that the right to an opinion is something that can be abridged, and that's intolerable. However, if we don't speak for Chinese dissidents, saying "but we don't have the right, or we'll be hypocrites," then no one will speak for them at all. I think they would rather we were hypocrites than silent.
It's amazing what you can get if you just bitch enough. Sometimes it's easier just to add another activation to a license to shut someone up.
You need to brush up on your Ayn Rand. The term "altruist" is used as a derogatory term, and "voluntary altruism" is something to be reviled and weakness.
"Nobody respects an altruist, neither in private life nor in international affairs. An altruist is a person who keeps sacrificing himself and his values, which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies, his allies to his protagonists, his interests to any cry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness, his convictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie, the good to any evil."
"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master."
"Just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others - and, therefore, man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
To that end, I suggest Ayn Rand was a self-serving bitch.
The copy of Moulin Rouge counter-acts the World At War box set, so it doesn't count.
And I don't mean "Privateer 2: The Random Game We Grafted Onto The Franchise."
I mean a real, honest-to-God Wing Commander Privateer sequel.
Don't be too sure. I can claim to make a Mars-lander in my backyard with old soup cans; it doesn't necessarily mean I've shown up NASA, or anything.
I suppose one president is luck; but nine presidents is a pattern. We had national leaders that ranged from right-wing TFH's to bleeding heart liberals, and nine out of nine presidents (including Reagan, ridiculed in his own time for being a nuke-loving war-monger ["Land of Confusion", I loved that video]) did not press the button. Ditto for the Soviet Union. I don't believe the relative calm of the Cold War was a fluke; MAD was a diplomatic strategy designed to give us an excuse not to go to war in circumstances where war would otherwise be inevitable (or even as many post-WW2 military figures argued, necessary).
I think the world is less safe, now that no one is looking down the long barrel of an ICBM. There is now less inhibition to starting war, and fewer repercussions.
However, I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of people who do not have any of these characteristics, including Americans.
People have been saying this for 40-odd years. Having successfully concluded a nuclear-armed cold war, this statement sounds like a stale cliché. MAD worked fine, and we and the Soviets turned out not to be the raging psychopaths everyone thought we were.
Would you allow your daughter, who suffers from a debilitating, ultimately fatal disease, to undergo curative treatment derived from stem cell research?
Yes, because there is a well-nigh 100% certainty that cure came form adult stem-cell research, not embryonic. So far the only actual cures provided by stem-cell research are from adult stem-cells. Note that this is not because embryonic stem-cell research is illegal or somehow hard to fund. America spends more money on embryonic stem-cell reasearch than anywhere else in the world. It just doesn't work as well.
Why do people just ignore or hand-wave away adult stem-cell research? There are real miracles, happening today, through adult stem-cells; and yet it's embryonic stem-cells that get the spot-light in scientific circles. Adult stem-cell research gets the federal funding, and for good reason.
Betamax was better, too. I'll stick with the HD-DVD bandwagon.
You neglect to mention that policy of arming Indonesia continued unchanged throughout the Carter administration. Are you going to hang him, too?
Yeah, I remember when those black helicopters and men in black came and abducted the Newsweek and NYT editorial staff. A dark day for America's freedom of speech.
From another perspective, Linus's algorithm for deciding pragmatism is based on a greedy algorithm - it always spits out answers that look reasonable in the short term. He may be an excellent programmer and good project leader, but he seems to lack a sense of perspective.
Well, FSF's sense of "long-term" perspective has given them HURD. Linus's "lack" of perspective gives me Working Software Right Now(tm). In the end, that's all businesses really care about.
A "progressive Christian" is the Christian with the delusion that atheists are laughing with him, not at him.
If you're still having questions about this whole "Freedom of Speech" thing, and you're looking for extremists to side with, give Jack Thompson a call. I'm sure he can find something in this game to get offended about. Or call DHS.
So if a homeless man agrees to let you kick him for food, this is a perfectly acceptable thing to do? Are you a decent human being for bringing this opportunity to him? Fuck no, you're an exploiting piece of shit.
I think you're right, and you have every right to stop me from kicking a homeless man in exchange for giving him food.
Just don't expect the homeless man to thank you.
Read the Halloween Memos. They do, in fact, expend effort to crush what they see as their only real competition: http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
I thought about looking it up, until I realized I don't freakin' care. I'll concede the point, and admit that you are both correct and a pompous ass.
My original post was for the purpose of humor, not intellectual masturbation.
No one summoned the Grammar Nazi's; I was joking (we still do that around here, right?) about the RIAA. You can go away, now.
But before you go, I want to mention that the proper way to pluralize a proper noun is with an apostrophe. If you're going to be a Grammar Nazi, at least know what the hell you're talking about. Thanks.
If there's two things I can't stand together in a discussion, it's the RIAA, and Nazi's. But I repeat myself.