I'm not trying to start a flame war here, but the parent post was about a stupid and childish ass it gets. You missed the whole point of the congressional hearings. Part of the problem with Congress is the fact that they waste years of time pushing legislation that has no business being on the floor and miss the soul purpose of why they are there.
They are not there to put a ban on gay marriage into the constitution and to actually protect the basic foundations of this country: education, health, and the economy. You could throw security in there too, but in these current times, that's a whole other arguement. Back to the original three, they are doing none of those. We have some of the lowest test scores in the world and it continues to drop, our health care costs are sky-rocketing, forcing too many to go uninsured and, I'm sure all of us felt the crunch in tech over the last few years, but our economy does not solely rely on the tech industry. It's about a balance of import and export of products and services. You can use the car industry as a perfect example. Ford, GM are on the brink of collapse, which in any other decade was a sign of slow down or decline in the car industry, yet now Toyota, Honda, etc seem to be growing at exponential rates.
And Gates giving out scholarships for every H1. He could give away every dime he has to the schools, but if the basic foundation of the education system is a failure, nothing will fix it. To put it into "tech" terms, no amount of servers you throw at a problem will fix the problem if the code sucks.
And to end it taking a cheap shot at Vista, that's just childish.
It's nice that you resort to nothing more that high school name calling to support your claim. I can guarantee that I read more books in a week than you do in a year. I don't base my ideas on what CNN or FOXNEWS tells me. For you to call me a "pig-headed idiot" just shows that instead of having a rational arguement, you resort to high school name calling.
Who gives a flying fuck as to what India did in 1974. When you are dealing with a nuclear power, or a wanna-be, you could give a shit less what they did 20 or 30 years ago.
If you want to suck GWB's dick, go do it on some other forum.
Actually if you had read the post, I wasn't accusing India of poliferation, although they did develop nuclear weapons without guidance. But in this reality that doesn't matter anymore. Maybe back in the 60's or 70's the treaty meant something. What I was talking about is the wholesale of nuclear technology that made only a one hour news cycle 10 years ago, and now we are worried about who Mr Jong-Il is going to sell the technology to, which in my asssumption is no one.
In this day and age, no one is stupid enough to actually use a nuclear weapon as a deterrent. And there isn't a person on earth that doesn't wish we could un-invent the nuclear weapon. Your list is a bit wrong on the cause and effect for each country to gain nuclear powers, but the point is well taken. The point of nuclear capacity is not who supplied it but why the buyer wanted it. Even a moron in a hurry would realize that no one can use a nuclear weapon without reprocussions from every other nation with the capacity.
BTW, India didn't misuse a reactor to test fire nuclear weapons in 1998.
Word of advise, read some books, don't be a mouth-piece for your parent's uneducated politics.
I apologize, 24 hours is a bit short of a time. But if you look at coups in the past (Thailand for a recent example), the act of the coup is not what takes the amount of time. We can easily get into a discussion of why we are failing in Iraq a opposed to a military strike in North Korea today. Iraq was a completely different set of circumstances. We all know what a monster of a person Hussein was, but about the only thing keeping that country from a civil war was his religious indifference. In the Middle East crisis (not just this war) we are not aware of the inherent religious backgrounds of the differences in these cultures, and therefore we don't understand why we can't just install an American democracy and everything is just fine. It's certainly not that one side or the other is wrong or right, we have no comprehension of why there are differences.
But in the case of North Korea, there are no undertones in the right of land, or territory (as far a I know), there are just starving people, who just need help. That's why if the regime crumbled in a matter of hours, as regimes often do, you would not see the civil war that we are currently experiencing in Iraq. I want to say something about the "war is horrible and takes time", but that would be a party debate and neither has come up with a responsible solution or even idea for foreign policy in the last (how long have we been a country?) while.
There is one thing that strikes me as almost comical, if it wasn't also so horrific at the same time. Mr Il-Sung (crazy muppet's father) invented the idea of "juche", which at it's cornerstone, besides the cult of personality creationism, is the idea of self-reliance. It's actually amazing how arrogant they are in the idea that they can survive in the world without anyone's help, yet they are nearly crippled and destroyed without aid from China and South Korea.
Now there are a few things (and I did skip over 50% of the comments) that I didn't see mentioned that make North Korea a competent enemy (if that's what they are classified as). It really has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The first reaction is who are they going to sell them to, or if not the weapons, then the technology. I think that isn't the issue. If that were an actual worry, then we should have paid attention when India and Pakistani scientists were willing to sell them to anyone a decade ago. The weapons themselves are to keep the U.N. at a stand still in dealings with North Korea. Mr. Jong-Il has 3 things going in his favor to keep his regime in place. China wants to be a major player in the global economic world, as is shown with moves into technology, such as Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC line, it's country's courting of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft for example, and it's heavy investment in it's higher-education. But they cannot afford 2 things. A mass flood of refugees along it's border with North Korea, and a destabilized North Korea with an unpredictable regime and nuclear weapons for them to use to keep them in control. Not only would it be bad on the regions along the border, China would also loose any bargaining chips in the U.N., G8 and elsewhere in it's ability to help in global policing responsibility, and in that is what it takes in this day in age to also be a player in the global economic world.
With South Korea it is a bit more tricky. Some do want reunification (most I gather do not). Not only is South Korea a prosperous country economically, they do not want authoritative control again, as it would wipe out 50 years of progress for their society since the Korean War.
But this does pose a secondary problem for the three nations surrounding North Korea. Do they stick by the U.N. sanctions verbatim, or do they risk a dictator with a nuclear weapon, who's only goal is to stay in power? I think it's too easy to pass him off as a crazy madman. I think he really does know by what grips he has everyone.
My guess is the end game for him is not selling the technology as he is fully aware that there would be a regime change in 24 hours if that happened, but to keep that region on just enough edge that they still receive aid, and his regime stays in control. It's easy to say he does this kind of thing because he's the 5 year old that didn't get any candy, but, while not Bobby Fisher (sp?), he plays chess better than we think.
Actually, in the case of GTA, the company does hold the responsibility for the content that was put on the CD, whether it was available via hack or some secret code or frely available. While the ESRB system does have it's share of problems, it represented the game as a Mature (M) rating based on violence and drug use/content. With the hack, this is a misrepresentation of the content of the game. It would be about the same as a comparison of Die Hard and Basic Instinct both getting a Restricted (R) rating, but for very different reasons. If the "hot-coffee" mod had been a total user-modification, then Rockstar cannot be held liable for it, because they reasonably could not control what content could be added and distributed via the Internets, or other means. But in this case they created and included, either intentionally or not on the production CD/DVD. This could be compared to Toyota, knowingly or not, including a faulty breaking system and being held liable for deaths, or a drunk driver killing a family.
That being said, I think, as probably everyone with a passing idea of the first amendment, is that freedom of speech is a two way street. Mr. Thompson believes that his views on the game should be heard, which they should, but he should not be allowed to infringe on someone else's ideas, in this case using the media and the court system. But the way I see it, is that in reality Mr. Thompson doesn't actually care about violence in video games, but is probably setting himself up for a political run in the future, either state seat or federal. This being assumed that he doesn't just fall flat on his face in the current case. Politicians and potential ones need a platform, a crusade. Along with that, to be credible, they need a track record of positive results from that crusade. Video games are an easy target right now, just as movies were in the Howard Hughes days and music during the 80's and early 90's with the introduction of "gangster-rap".
Personally I have no problem with violent video games or even with the idea of games like Bully. But it seems that Mr. Thompson is trying to convince people that keeping these types of games away from the public will stop Columbine type events or that bullying in schools will stop. Yes, I do know that his arguement is Amazon.com and the like are selling the game without an ESRB rating which means that they could potentially be selling a game to a minor in pre-order that might be given a rating of Mature. Now, since the ESRB rating is still voluntary and not recognized by state or federal court, this shouldn't have even made it to the courts to begin with. A better arguement, while still completely flawed, is that Rockstar, and the distribution channels were (not a legal term) willfully endangering a child. But this legal precident was set to protect children from physical abuse and neglect, not video games, movies, or T.V.
I think most people here would agree that GTA or others like it should not be purchased by parents for a 10 year old. But it insights about as much violent tendencies as that same child watching an episode of 24 or Lost, or whatever the popular show is now. I think the resources could be better spent on making the ESRB a recognized rating system for video games, much like the motion picture industry, as it is now still a voluntary rating system. But since most all video games use this system, we could also spend the resources to help educate the public on the importance of the ratings the games receive. Much like everyone can now assume what the likelyhood of content is for a PG/PG-13/R rated movie is, parents can have a better understanding of why a game would receive such a rating.
I know some will disagree with this, but being an owner of serveral technology companies, one of which doing classified work, ownership is something I have to worry about. If, God forbid, something does happen to one of my partners, and that ownership is given to the family, or lands in probate court for years, it has a chance of seriously hampering operations of the company. For one thing, the family is not involved in the operations, and could make incorrect decisions, or worse, sell off their ownership to anyone with the finances. Now, I do have some say in the sell of ownership, as a clause of the original agreements, and they do too, but these kinds of things really are a problem to fight.
It sucks having to entertain those thoughts, but it is necessary.
I think Cringley is always looking for fodder on Bill any chance he can, myself, I could care less. I use Macs as my primary machines, but have a Dell/Windows for games (if I ever have time for them) and my database sandbox is on Redhat AS 4.
I, in no way, mean to offend anyone with these comments, but this is ridiculous. I have a couple of dear friends that are blind and are laughing at this latest attempt to suck tax-payer money. I have developed plenty of websites in my time and those friends have been kind enough to make sure I am completely compliant with their screen-readers.
With the 5 billion plus websites out there how the hell is everyone going to be able to comply with this?
What I see coming next is that association suing the auto industry because they are inaccessible to the blind. I don't see myself suing a company because I am too short to reach the top shelf in a kitchen.
My wife is legally deaf, and has been from birth, but wouldn't even think of suing the record industry (although they should be for other reasons) because she can't enjoy Mozart with me. She thinks that would be insane.
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I'm not trying to start a flame war here, but the parent post was about a stupid and childish ass it gets. You missed the whole point of the congressional hearings. Part of the problem with Congress is the fact that they waste years of time pushing legislation that has no business being on the floor and miss the soul purpose of why they are there.
They are not there to put a ban on gay marriage into the constitution and to actually protect the basic foundations of this country: education, health, and the economy. You could throw security in there too, but in these current times, that's a whole other arguement. Back to the original three, they are doing none of those. We have some of the lowest test scores in the world and it continues to drop, our health care costs are sky-rocketing, forcing too many to go uninsured and, I'm sure all of us felt the crunch in tech over the last few years, but our economy does not solely rely on the tech industry. It's about a balance of import and export of products and services. You can use the car industry as a perfect example. Ford, GM are on the brink of collapse, which in any other decade was a sign of slow down or decline in the car industry, yet now Toyota, Honda, etc seem to be growing at exponential rates.
And Gates giving out scholarships for every H1. He could give away every dime he has to the schools, but if the basic foundation of the education system is a failure, nothing will fix it. To put it into "tech" terms, no amount of servers you throw at a problem will fix the problem if the code sucks.
And to end it taking a cheap shot at Vista, that's just childish.
It's nice that you resort to nothing more that high school name calling to support your claim. I can guarantee that I read more books in a week than you do in a year. I don't base my ideas on what CNN or FOXNEWS tells me. For you to call me a "pig-headed idiot" just shows that instead of having a rational arguement, you resort to high school name calling.
Who gives a flying fuck as to what India did in 1974. When you are dealing with a nuclear power, or a wanna-be, you could give a shit less what they did 20 or 30 years ago.
If you want to suck GWB's dick, go do it on some other forum.
Actually if you had read the post, I wasn't accusing India of poliferation, although they did develop nuclear weapons without guidance. But in this reality that doesn't matter anymore. Maybe back in the 60's or 70's the treaty meant something. What I was talking about is the wholesale of nuclear technology that made only a one hour news cycle 10 years ago, and now we are worried about who Mr Jong-Il is going to sell the technology to, which in my asssumption is no one.
In this day and age, no one is stupid enough to actually use a nuclear weapon as a deterrent. And there isn't a person on earth that doesn't wish we could un-invent the nuclear weapon. Your list is a bit wrong on the cause and effect for each country to gain nuclear powers, but the point is well taken. The point of nuclear capacity is not who supplied it but why the buyer wanted it. Even a moron in a hurry would realize that no one can use a nuclear weapon without reprocussions from every other nation with the capacity.
BTW, India didn't misuse a reactor to test fire nuclear weapons in 1998.
Word of advise, read some books, don't be a mouth-piece for your parent's uneducated politics.
dbill,
I apologize, 24 hours is a bit short of a time. But if you look at coups in the past (Thailand for a recent example), the act of the coup is not what takes the amount of time. We can easily get into a discussion of why we are failing in Iraq a opposed to a military strike in North Korea today. Iraq was a completely different set of circumstances. We all know what a monster of a person Hussein was, but about the only thing keeping that country from a civil war was his religious indifference. In the Middle East crisis (not just this war) we are not aware of the inherent religious backgrounds of the differences in these cultures, and therefore we don't understand why we can't just install an American democracy and everything is just fine. It's certainly not that one side or the other is wrong or right, we have no comprehension of why there are differences.
But in the case of North Korea, there are no undertones in the right of land, or territory (as far a I know), there are just starving people, who just need help. That's why if the regime crumbled in a matter of hours, as regimes often do, you would not see the civil war that we are currently experiencing in Iraq. I want to say something about the "war is horrible and takes time", but that would be a party debate and neither has come up with a responsible solution or even idea for foreign policy in the last (how long have we been a country?) while.
There is one thing that strikes me as almost comical, if it wasn't also so horrific at the same time. Mr Il-Sung (crazy muppet's father) invented the idea of "juche", which at it's cornerstone, besides the cult of personality creationism, is the idea of self-reliance. It's actually amazing how arrogant they are in the idea that they can survive in the world without anyone's help, yet they are nearly crippled and destroyed without aid from China and South Korea.
Now there are a few things (and I did skip over 50% of the comments) that I didn't see mentioned that make North Korea a competent enemy (if that's what they are classified as). It really has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The first reaction is who are they going to sell them to, or if not the weapons, then the technology. I think that isn't the issue. If that were an actual worry, then we should have paid attention when India and Pakistani scientists were willing to sell them to anyone a decade ago. The weapons themselves are to keep the U.N. at a stand still in dealings with North Korea. Mr. Jong-Il has 3 things going in his favor to keep his regime in place. China wants to be a major player in the global economic world, as is shown with moves into technology, such as Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC line, it's country's courting of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft for example, and it's heavy investment in it's higher-education. But they cannot afford 2 things. A mass flood of refugees along it's border with North Korea, and a destabilized North Korea with an unpredictable regime and nuclear weapons for them to use to keep them in control. Not only would it be bad on the regions along the border, China would also loose any bargaining chips in the U.N., G8 and elsewhere in it's ability to help in global policing responsibility, and in that is what it takes in this day in age to also be a player in the global economic world.
With South Korea it is a bit more tricky. Some do want reunification (most I gather do not). Not only is South Korea a prosperous country economically, they do not want authoritative control again, as it would wipe out 50 years of progress for their society since the Korean War.
But this does pose a secondary problem for the three nations surrounding North Korea. Do they stick by the U.N. sanctions verbatim, or do they risk a dictator with a nuclear weapon, who's only goal is to stay in power? I think it's too easy to pass him off as a crazy madman. I think he really does know by what grips he has everyone.
My guess is the end game for him is not selling the technology as he is fully aware that there would be a regime change in 24 hours if that happened, but to keep that region on just enough edge that they still receive aid, and his regime stays in control. It's easy to say he does this kind of thing because he's the 5 year old that didn't get any candy, but, while not Bobby Fisher (sp?), he plays chess better than we think.
The minute I saw it posted I realized the stupid mistake I made. Thank you for the very nice comments on the post.
Actually, in the case of GTA, the company does hold the responsibility for the content that was put on the CD, whether it was available via hack or some secret code or frely available. While the ESRB system does have it's share of problems, it represented the game as a Mature (M) rating based on violence and drug use/content. With the hack, this is a misrepresentation of the content of the game. It would be about the same as a comparison of Die Hard and Basic Instinct both getting a Restricted (R) rating, but for very different reasons. If the "hot-coffee" mod had been a total user-modification, then Rockstar cannot be held liable for it, because they reasonably could not control what content could be added and distributed via the Internets, or other means. But in this case they created and included, either intentionally or not on the production CD/DVD. This could be compared to Toyota, knowingly or not, including a faulty breaking system and being held liable for deaths, or a drunk driver killing a family. That being said, I think, as probably everyone with a passing idea of the first amendment, is that freedom of speech is a two way street. Mr. Thompson believes that his views on the game should be heard, which they should, but he should not be allowed to infringe on someone else's ideas, in this case using the media and the court system. But the way I see it, is that in reality Mr. Thompson doesn't actually care about violence in video games, but is probably setting himself up for a political run in the future, either state seat or federal. This being assumed that he doesn't just fall flat on his face in the current case. Politicians and potential ones need a platform, a crusade. Along with that, to be credible, they need a track record of positive results from that crusade. Video games are an easy target right now, just as movies were in the Howard Hughes days and music during the 80's and early 90's with the introduction of "gangster-rap". Personally I have no problem with violent video games or even with the idea of games like Bully. But it seems that Mr. Thompson is trying to convince people that keeping these types of games away from the public will stop Columbine type events or that bullying in schools will stop. Yes, I do know that his arguement is Amazon.com and the like are selling the game without an ESRB rating which means that they could potentially be selling a game to a minor in pre-order that might be given a rating of Mature. Now, since the ESRB rating is still voluntary and not recognized by state or federal court, this shouldn't have even made it to the courts to begin with. A better arguement, while still completely flawed, is that Rockstar, and the distribution channels were (not a legal term) willfully endangering a child. But this legal precident was set to protect children from physical abuse and neglect, not video games, movies, or T.V. I think most people here would agree that GTA or others like it should not be purchased by parents for a 10 year old. But it insights about as much violent tendencies as that same child watching an episode of 24 or Lost, or whatever the popular show is now. I think the resources could be better spent on making the ESRB a recognized rating system for video games, much like the motion picture industry, as it is now still a voluntary rating system. But since most all video games use this system, we could also spend the resources to help educate the public on the importance of the ratings the games receive. Much like everyone can now assume what the likelyhood of content is for a PG/PG-13/R rated movie is, parents can have a better understanding of why a game would receive such a rating.
I know some will disagree with this, but being an owner of serveral technology companies, one of which doing classified work, ownership is something I have to worry about. If, God forbid, something does happen to one of my partners, and that ownership is given to the family, or lands in probate court for years, it has a chance of seriously hampering operations of the company. For one thing, the family is not involved in the operations, and could make incorrect decisions, or worse, sell off their ownership to anyone with the finances. Now, I do have some say in the sell of ownership, as a clause of the original agreements, and they do too, but these kinds of things really are a problem to fight. It sucks having to entertain those thoughts, but it is necessary. I think Cringley is always looking for fodder on Bill any chance he can, myself, I could care less. I use Macs as my primary machines, but have a Dell/Windows for games (if I ever have time for them) and my database sandbox is on Redhat AS 4.
I, in no way, mean to offend anyone with these comments, but this is ridiculous. I have a couple of dear friends that are blind and are laughing at this latest attempt to suck tax-payer money. I have developed plenty of websites in my time and those friends have been kind enough to make sure I am completely compliant with their screen-readers. With the 5 billion plus websites out there how the hell is everyone going to be able to comply with this? What I see coming next is that association suing the auto industry because they are inaccessible to the blind. I don't see myself suing a company because I am too short to reach the top shelf in a kitchen. My wife is legally deaf, and has been from birth, but wouldn't even think of suing the record industry (although they should be for other reasons) because she can't enjoy Mozart with me. She thinks that would be insane.