The Five Doctors was actually part of the series, just a special episode to commemorate the anniversary. Christmas specials go through the pipe differently, I think.
Note to Writers: Just parroting whatever obvious of popular joke is going around the internet will not make you funny, even if you write it like it's real news. The Onion's schtick is that it is both absurd and satirically insightful. This doesn't seem to be either.
Part of the problem with this study is its subject matter; science-related articles are by and large cut and dry, and only common misconceptions usually are introduced. While one could say this exonerates wikipedia, I'm pretty sure this doesn't say a whole lot. Another problem is that they consider an "omission" an inaccuracy. That doesn't seem like a good standard to hold either publication to.
What about biographies, the pieces more often cited as innacurate? Or political pieces? Or any subject that has any controversy, really.
While it's nice to see that wikipedia is only slightly worse off in science, as the article said, it's still in general poorly written and still contains more errors than brittanica in the least error-prone subject. Hardly a vote of confidence.
Sodomy laws are unconstitutional. That's settled law. Polygamy is illegal more for health and safety concerns than moral concerns, when the state is challenged on these grounds it always argues higher disease and abuse rates rather than "we think it's bad."
Perhaps the misunderstanding is my misstype of "public" corporations rather than "private" corporations. Before, states could find a corporation it liked and say "no one can compete with you." That's different from setting apart of the public world and saying "you are best situated to deal with this, deal with it and be fair, because people are watching." It's a world of difference.
I sympathise with your wife's cause. You seem to think that the system should be perfect. It isn't. It never will be. You were kicked off juries for very real causes: you attempted to influence the decisions of your fellow jurors improperly. Furthermore, jury nullification is a gigantic crock. Not only does it not help anything, since the judge can either enter JNOV or appeal a decision not to, it's attempting to take the question of law away from the actual law and subvert it into a gut-reaction to a series of facts and people who we may or may not sympathise with. The proper place to find out if a law is invalid is the appelate system. For the jury to attempt a tactic such as that not only harms the integrity of the system, but actually harms the person that they attempted to help, since they give no findings of fact, which requires a judge to either order a new, expensive trial or look at the case at the appellate level de novo, with unfound facts that likely would not help the party the jury was attempting to aid's case. Even if jury nullification would "aid" my client, I would use a peremptory challenge to get rid of the juror who believed in it off the jury. It doesn't work, it's bad policy, and it doesn't help anyone involved, except maybe a few jurors who get a warm fuzzy feeling for facially "doing the right thing."
Voting districts based on geography are permanent gerrymandering. With our system we can enact legislation to fix things. You have a valid complaint about states' rights. I, on the other hand, completely disagree. I think states need a strong federal government to orchestrate things so we don't have 50 little countries fighting each other. Additionally, most aspects of our lives are national in scope, now, so it makes sense that federal laws should be in the driver's seat. BUT, a good argument can be made to oppose that, and it is a wonderful area for debate.
With regards to your closing, I don't get why you think the whole thing is going to collapse. Shouting gloom and doom won't convince me. What I do see is a system very similar to ours in England adapting with changing circumstances over the course of 400 years and serving them as well as can possibly be expected. I see systems with very similar ideas but very different mechanics working properly in Germany, Israel (although they have problems with their government, for obvious duress-realated reasons) and Japan. I also see the only system that's really able to integrate the free-market ideals you espouse. While our system isn't perfect, the one you've somewhat described is by no wild stretch of the imagination perfect, either. When you look at what we have right now, we're doing pretty damn good. The best is the enemy of the better.
You say education has turned into daycare? How has school replaced parents? Because we as a culture don't hold strong parenting in high regard? How is that the school's fault? Or the government's fault?
Okay, our education system is in trouble, and it could be profitable if they tried, and our kids education sucks. All right, sucks compared to what? Compared to Japan and its publically-funded education system? Compared to Germany and its publically-funded education system? Or just sucks in general, and everyone on the planet is stupid? Except you, of course.
You also rail against teachers' unions. In the world you've created, they would be even MORE important. Without the government to adjucate discrimination claims, contract disputes and all that, individual teachers would be at an extreme disadvantage. Although I suppose since the government isn't paying for it, then only the already-wealthy could afford to go to school, so perhaps cost isn't such a big deal. Again, you're saying that every school would be in an equal position to compete. Some would, most would not. Schools would have to rely on donations, which wouldn't pan out equally regionally due to wealth distribution. So those good schools can afford to pay cash money for the absolute best teachers, and the not-quite-so-rich schools get the table scraps. You forget that unions also equalize pay so the good teachers can go to less economically-advantaged schools. The system you'd create would end up with a few people being more well-educated, sure, but many would be getting the same or worse, and most would be getting none at all.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on the trade issue. There needs to be both sound domestic and international standards for trade to work at all. Really, there does. That's why capitalism is an economic system that relies in most part in a representative government. In international trade. what will other countries do regarding port-of-call agreements? Do they go with the port that offers the best deal? The top 5? What happens to all the other ports, who can't afford to compete? It's nice and all to believe in a capitalist fairyland where everyone's on equal ground, but they rarely are, and that's hundreds of thousands of people in an area that now have significantly lowered ability to make money. Plus, how are trade claims to be adjucated? If one company has a beef with another company over shoddy dealing, who is there to figure out the situation, recompence the unfortunate party, and punish the offender?
There's a reason we have the commerce clause. The smaller and more self-sufficient the government, the more likely they are to engage in trade wars. We saw it between the states in the early history of the republic, and it did a lot of damage to our development. Who's to say your town won't declare economic jihad on another town? What happens when the two towns are vital conduits on a supply chain to smaller, more remote towns? What happens if your town figures out those remote towns depend on you and uses it to their advantage? What happens to the people of this likely poor town then? Not enough money to move? Not enough food to eat? Or does it not matter because they're the losers is Capitalism Is The Government: The Game?
Finally, the issue of currency. That system worked in the days of lincoln because we had a smaller population, were not so heavily invested in foreign trade, and to be frank had an entirely different concept of how banks worked. For starters, there are too many people and too much trade going on to have a gold standard without valuating our currency so high that it becomes unmanageable. That would create massive international trade issues, despite whomever it is doing the trading. Plus, banks don't base currency on standards anymore, they do so on credit. Assuming you think this is the direction the US should go, how do you divide this up into a reserve? I suppose the government could buy up gold to start the banks out, but where would the debt go, then? How would the conversion work? It's an unmanageable situation.
And you still haven't described how this capitalism-government would work and not simply become a giant monopoly that strangled the free market and became a de facto dictatorship.
But what if the way YOU want to live DOES harm another person? Or to expand the argument: What happens when everyone espouses that philosophy, and everyone votes for themselves? If you allow ties, than all you have is an unweildly direct democracy, in which everyone is simply out for their own interests.
You talk about the powers given to the government over the past 100 years, but ignore that the powers the government can exercise have been severely curtailed. The government can no longer discriminate based on race, gender or religious beliefs. The government can no longer use the power to enforce morality as a de facto compelling state interest. The government can no longer punish us for sleeping with whomever we choose or marrying whomever we choose. The government can no longer appoint public corporations as sanctioned monopolies. The list goes on and on.
And even if you're one of the unlucky people in the minority who would be in a position to get trampled upon by the wills of the majority, we have a judicial system by which a malevolent will of the majority can be quashed.
All these things have been working in all of our interests. Even in the "horribly stagnant" two-party system, we've seen revolutionary improvements in the system. Did you know that before 1963, voting districts were determined by geography, rather than population? That means that people in denser areas actually had LESS of a vote than those in rural areas.
Is it perfect? Hell no. But it beats the heck out of a system run by people working entirely in their own interests with the absurd notion that no question or problem or desire they have will EVER conflict with anyone else's.
Uh, you're comparing an economic system with a governmental system? Wha? What would a free-market government look like? Who would issue currency? How could you enforce rapidly-changing laws? How could you do all the wonderfully unprofitable things that governments do, like funding education? Competition isn't going to help students in any aspect other than their pocketbook, since it'll be a race down to the bottom to try to provide the most cheap, bare-bones system posible. And how would you regulate trade? The closest I can come up with is a greek system of city-states, but even those had civic governments. I just don't see how you can compare free-market capitalism and democracy as political systems.
Oh, and you can fix past errors in judgment. Laws can be repealed (even amendments!) and courts can find laws unconstitutional, even if they were found consitutional before, if "society's understanding of the facts have been fundamentally altered." To paraphrase Justice O'Connor.
That's a really great statement, and I don't think it can be emphasized enough. I'm a techie and now a lawyer, but once upon a time I spent a summer working in maintenance. There are so many things that people who slashdotites look down on can do it boggles the mind... and it's not just advanced stuff, it's knowing how to wire something properly. Computers won't give you that. Sure, most of the guys didn't go to college. But they're certainly not stupid. They're sending their kids to college because they want opportunities for them. They watch jeopardy and all that good stuff. You read/. long enough and you get the idea that everyone else here thinks that "joe sixpack" really is a permanently inebriated, dirt-eating idiot. That's really unfortunate, and it doesn't reflect well on us as techies.
So, uh... what about those of us that run just linux? Will banks assume we're clean, or will they just lock us out because Symantec's stuff returns an error? That's a pretty big concern.
"Making racism illegal didn't advance racial equality one bit."
If you're talking about social equality, perhaps, perhaps not. By having negative reenforcement of an action, you can curb tendencies. Sure, not for everyone, but there is an effect. Plus, if you legislate against something (like racism), then many forms of economic inequality can be solved, because racists need to resort to subtler, less effective means of discriminating. They can no longer keep them out of jobs, refuse to sell them things, or a bevy of other things they used to be able to do, which greatly aids the minority's position. Sure, it might embitter some, but in the long run (even after just 40 years), we've seen solid improvement in race relations. That's really quick in social engineering terms.
Don't discount the power of government to affect peoples' behavior.
Yes, and the cost of research required to stay a top-flight university and get the best students doesn't enter into it at all.
Neither does the cost of getting good business minds into your University's staff and good academic minds into your faculty, when either of those groups could be making way more, even with government subsidies.
Plus subsidized housing in many cases. And security concerns. And buildings to house all these people. And expensive IT stuff to keep your faculty, staff and student body happy.
But er, yeah! Bad government! Spending money is the problem! What a pathetically simplistic analysis.
No, the judge won't smack it down. He was under no compulsion to enter into the contract, he agreed to its terms, he is fully capable of understanding and acting in accordance to the contract. It's perfectly valid.
You could sign yourself into all sorts of terrible situations and the courts wouldn't care. You have a right to contract freely. You need to make wise use of it.
Re:Next Generation doesn't tell the whole story
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Why Ebert Was Right
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Uh, they deal with that cricism, and he (Ebert) gives a solid reason for his claim: That viewer-based progression is inferior to author-based progression.
While I don't disagree with this in practice, I do disagree with it as a theory. You may have a version of, say, Price and Predjudice (for instance), where Darcy decided he was going to be honest about his past to Elizabeth from the start. I would argue that it would be possible for it to be a fine novel still if a user were given a choice, as Darcy, in a prompt for "Tell the truth? [y/n]" at that point, with complete stories written for each. However, in PRACTICE you make an incredible number of decisions in a game. Not are very relevant, but they give enough variation that permanently changing the story to reflect it would take an inordinate amount of effort. Whether or not there is an aesthetically "ideal" way to present your plot is an entirely different discussion. As someone whose philosophy espouses an objective standard of quality, I'm tempted to say yes, but I could definitely be wrong.
People arguing RPGs disprove Ebert's claim are actually proving it. His definition of video game is as something intensively user-driven, where the decisions are made by the player. In most RPGs this isn't the case. I think Dragon Quest was the game that gave me the most choice in any RPG, but choices in any game are superficial, like "Do we get this chracter" or "do we take the high road or the low road?" They almost never affect plot in any meaningful fashion.
There are ways to rememdy this, I believe. All this focus on "nonlinearity" has completely missed the boat. In order for a story to be successful, as Ebert said, it needs a very strict and linear progression. However, then they're just clicking through a novel. My solution to this would be to have an RPG with a very, very strong and indellible central plot (perhaps with several possible CHARACTER-driven endings, ala Star Ocean or Baldur's Gate), but have an absurd number of small, interlocking character-driven side quests. That is where, I believe, games fail spectacularly telling a story. Stories aren't just "he did that," or at least they rarely are. Stories since the advent of the novel are psychological affairs, and we need to get the player involved in the character's past, his temperment, and his decisions AS AN INDIVIDUAL, rather than simply a member of the party. We need more than just a few small "party huddles" to get this. Expand star ocean's private action system, perhaps, by letting the player take the perspective of a party member other than the main character. This won't disrupt the narrative; it's already 3rd-person omniscient. I think that making all this optional would be the only way to do it, however.
Not an easy problem. I suppose if I decided to go into design instead of law I would've spent my whole life trying to puzzle it out.
Why doesn't wikipedia just create a queue for articles before they're submitted. Have different queues for each topic that can be pared down, so the editors can see it before it's committed and vote on it or something to ensure some validity. If no one notices/votes on it while it's in the queue, you could commit it, flag the article at the top saying there was unverified data, and zip off a message to a couple people designated to keep an eye on articles committed due to review expiration. If you tweaked the system enough, I could see a couple days between submission and commitance (due to deadline) at the most, which would help credibility and accuracy a great deal, I think.
I agree completely. I read on and I see "Kojima-san" and... "Bushnell."
Okay, that's cool, guys. Honoriffics aren't part of english. We have our own way of handling it. You know Japanese, that's nice. But mixing the two to try to sound impressive makes you sound like a massive twat. Saishi rashikunai zo.
Yes, without this great evil, we would have an avalanche of innovative "taking someone else's idea and product and sticking it on the internet" innovation! I mean, it's not like IP law helps companies, inventors, and the economy (by making useful research/production profitable, by protecting ideas and by precluding problematic price wars with new products, respectively)!
But gosh darn it, we want this thing, and THE MAN is telling us that we can't have it unless we pay him money! That's unamerican!
You would probably have to introduce a lot of novel ideas into it, too. Courts aren't hapy when defendants come in with a laundry list of things that they obviously did just to circumvent the copyright while keeping the basic content.
Can we please restrain ourselves from ridiculously superficial overgeneralizations in articles? The article submission was great until the last sentences... "The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up." In addition to being gramatically incorrect, is both inaccurate and perjurative to the whole submission, ruining what should have been a pretty interesting intro to an article about a shift in Nielsen's ratings, which is pretty interesting and somewhat important stuff. Is the audience really taking control? Because we can time-shift? We can do that with VCRs. Because we can do things with live television? Kind of, but, again, you could do something similar with a VCR. Are the TV companies scrambling to catch up? Nielsen is changing their methodology because these gadgets are leading to UNDER-reporting of audiences, so doesn't that indicate that they're not doing so badly after all?
There's been a rash of this lately, too... The online dictionary and "finally someone realizes that language evolves" is another egregious and recent one. If you want to comment on the story, comment in the comments. Just report the story in the submission. Saves us from reading something that is often stupid and taints the whole discussion from the get-go.
Actually, court SPECIFICALLY ALLOW you do regulate things in a patchwork fashion. Additionally, laws should be narrowly-focused. I think there needs to be something like this for games. I also think there needs to be something like this for movies. I DON'T, however, think they should be in the same law, because that invites overreaching aims, and if one of them turns out to be unworkable or problematic, it's easier to repeal an entire law than just a section, from a political standpoint.
I like how "language evolves" has turned into "language shouldn't even attempt to stay the same." There's a real problem with both extreme views on the issue, and the idea-- and what is borne out in most all languages-- is that there is a conservative section of the language's population which works as a retentive force and another section that works as a changing force. The changing force is always stronger, but the retentive force is still important... it's why we can still read older materials and understand them (although as they get older it gets more and more difficult). That's really valuable. By removing that retention, we run the risk of rending a lot of important writing incomprehensible to most, and at worst having dialects make the jump to separate languages by way of regional syntax.
So yes, language evolves. But the idea that we should throw whatever retention we have out the window because things eventually change is a really, really stupid view.
I'm very happy to see the standard knee-jerk "change the article!" defense of wikipedia in full effect. The problem with that is that you're not allowed to change articles about yourself, so even this ridiculous charge is meritless. I also think there's a fundamental problem with the way people are looking at this. For one second, put aside your self-righteous indignation and think about the position the guy's in. You worked with a guy, were his friend, and knew his brother. Next, remember what effect these assasinations had on the country at large, not even just those who knew the brothers. We had people suing for infliction of extreme emotional distress just because they SAW President Kennedy getting shot. Now, imagine someone claiming that you were involved in the death of your friend and his brother, AND that you were in collusion with a foreign power, and sticking it on a website, where everyone could see it. Sure, it might not be libel, but it's pretty close, and warrants better discussion than "he should just change the article! The magic of wiki!"
Next, the utility of wikipedia. I'm sorry, I don't see it. First of all, there's a huge credibility problem, because they don't take responsibility for anything. This isn't something new, every other month we see a collection of things gone horribly wrong, and every time we get a push to fix the symptoms, but never the cause. Sure, the new certification procedures will have some bite, but not nearly enough. They don't have enough staff, they don't have researchers to double-check things, so anything that looks plausible will likely get through. Witness the article by John Dean a couple of months ago, which claimed that he ghost-wrote his books. Not only did he not, as he explained, the article got the number of book he had written incorrect. How are subtle but very important problems like that going to be addressed, when they're being reviewed by someone with too much on his plate and no solid expertise on the subject? If it can happen to someone as important as John Dean, why can't it happen to really anyone?
I've also seen a lot of comparisons to the so-called "Main-stream Media." While I'll agree that the media has a lot of problems, this comparison is completely bogus. Firstly, the media actually has accountability, in the form of a large group of people who get very angry when things do go wrong. Witness Rathergate, Jason Blair, et al. Secondly, in most cases (high-profile reporters are often exceptions), reporters are under pressure to get things right to both keep the editor off their backs (yes, editors do fact-check!) and to not get fired, which is what happens to (most) reporters when they go off the reservation. Perfect? No. But a lot better than the monkeys-at-typewriters approach so in vogue with the internet nowadays. As a friend said: The best is the enemy of the better.
Finally, I see a lot of stuff about how wikipedia is good for quick-fire information, that the things are usually verifiable, and that it covers topic in a good basic way. My question to that is: How does that vary from an internet search? If you're going back to other sources to verify, why not just start at the sources? If they're being cited in a basic article about the subject, they most likely are treating the subject in the same basic way the wiki article is. Plus, if you search the internet, you get ALL the information, not just cherry-picked bits. If we're purporting that you should decide on the wiki based on the validity of the sources, you should be in a similar position to weed out the chaff. So in the end you get more information, the same level of error-checking, and no filter.
So, why is this the great golden god of the internet? It's not particularly useful for its stated purpose, it's shown to often be inaccurate, and any criticism of it leads to a large number of people ignoring the problem and simply chanting "change the article." If we want a collaborative information project, this is just about the exact wron
The real problem is that the majority of "games journalists" are starry-eyed kids (adults now, I suppose), who really wanted to be that guy making a game, or that guy who got to play games all day. They're not going into this because they want to inform people. Sure, they might have a desire to do it, but for the vast majority of people, it's a mix of wanting to play games and wanting to tell people what you think.
That is a really, really bad mix for any sort of journalism that isn't strict opinion/editorial.
Add in the fact that these people are now working at getting information from companies who made the games that sparked this desire in the first place, and you have a real conflict of interest problem. You can't get objective analysis, because everyone is so bent on what their favorite genre is, or what type of art they like, or whether they think graphics are as important as sound or story or vice versa. The only real hack I've seen that's come close to working is IGN's system of just separating the fanboys and having them write on specific companies, but even then there's a problem because they then want to rate highly games they think will help their system of choice "win."
It's really a sorry state of affairs, and I'm happy that someone called them all on it.
Actually, most text is meaningless if taken literally. Taken literally, the butter battle book is all about people who really like bread. And somehow Bloom got a sex change and then another real quick sandwiching one chapter in Ulysses. Literal meaning is often the worst interpretation, because authors speak in metaphor and allegory, not just writing.
That aside, there are really good reasons to take the bible as allegory. For one, it was written waaaay post hoc, during the babylonian exile, after being handed down by oral tradition. Then there's the added fact that the tone for almost all of the bible, excluding the books of the prophets, IS allegory. They go right out and say it. Jesus' stories, legends of the exile and all that. Aside from disparate fundamentalist groups, this is accepted and widely taught.
Slashdot Mirror
The Five Doctors was actually part of the series, just a special episode to commemorate the anniversary. Christmas specials go through the pipe differently, I think.
Note to Writers: Just parroting whatever obvious of popular joke is going around the internet will not make you funny, even if you write it like it's real news. The Onion's schtick is that it is both absurd and satirically insightful. This doesn't seem to be either.
Part of the problem with this study is its subject matter; science-related articles are by and large cut and dry, and only common misconceptions usually are introduced. While one could say this exonerates wikipedia, I'm pretty sure this doesn't say a whole lot. Another problem is that they consider an "omission" an inaccuracy. That doesn't seem like a good standard to hold either publication to.
What about biographies, the pieces more often cited as innacurate? Or political pieces? Or any subject that has any controversy, really.
While it's nice to see that wikipedia is only slightly worse off in science, as the article said, it's still in general poorly written and still contains more errors than brittanica in the least error-prone subject. Hardly a vote of confidence.
Sodomy laws are unconstitutional. That's settled law. Polygamy is illegal more for health and safety concerns than moral concerns, when the state is challenged on these grounds it always argues higher disease and abuse rates rather than "we think it's bad."
Perhaps the misunderstanding is my misstype of "public" corporations rather than "private" corporations. Before, states could find a corporation it liked and say "no one can compete with you." That's different from setting apart of the public world and saying "you are best situated to deal with this, deal with it and be fair, because people are watching." It's a world of difference.
I sympathise with your wife's cause. You seem to think that the system should be perfect. It isn't. It never will be. You were kicked off juries for very real causes: you attempted to influence the decisions of your fellow jurors improperly. Furthermore, jury nullification is a gigantic crock. Not only does it not help anything, since the judge can either enter JNOV or appeal a decision not to, it's attempting to take the question of law away from the actual law and subvert it into a gut-reaction to a series of facts and people who we may or may not sympathise with. The proper place to find out if a law is invalid is the appelate system. For the jury to attempt a tactic such as that not only harms the integrity of the system, but actually harms the person that they attempted to help, since they give no findings of fact, which requires a judge to either order a new, expensive trial or look at the case at the appellate level de novo, with unfound facts that likely would not help the party the jury was attempting to aid's case. Even if jury nullification would "aid" my client, I would use a peremptory challenge to get rid of the juror who believed in it off the jury. It doesn't work, it's bad policy, and it doesn't help anyone involved, except maybe a few jurors who get a warm fuzzy feeling for facially "doing the right thing."
Voting districts based on geography are permanent gerrymandering. With our system we can enact legislation to fix things. You have a valid complaint about states' rights. I, on the other hand, completely disagree. I think states need a strong federal government to orchestrate things so we don't have 50 little countries fighting each other. Additionally, most aspects of our lives are national in scope, now, so it makes sense that federal laws should be in the driver's seat. BUT, a good argument can be made to oppose that, and it is a wonderful area for debate.
With regards to your closing, I don't get why you think the whole thing is going to collapse. Shouting gloom and doom won't convince me. What I do see is a system very similar to ours in England adapting with changing circumstances over the course of 400 years and serving them as well as can possibly be expected. I see systems with very similar ideas but very different mechanics working properly in Germany, Israel (although they have problems with their government, for obvious duress-realated reasons) and Japan. I also see the only system that's really able to integrate the free-market ideals you espouse. While our system isn't perfect, the one you've somewhat described is by no wild stretch of the imagination perfect, either. When you look at what we have right now, we're doing pretty damn good. The best is the enemy of the better.
You say education has turned into daycare? How has school replaced parents? Because we as a culture don't hold strong parenting in high regard? How is that the school's fault? Or the government's fault?
Okay, our education system is in trouble, and it could be profitable if they tried, and our kids education sucks. All right, sucks compared to what? Compared to Japan and its publically-funded education system? Compared to Germany and its publically-funded education system? Or just sucks in general, and everyone on the planet is stupid? Except you, of course.
You also rail against teachers' unions. In the world you've created, they would be even MORE important. Without the government to adjucate discrimination claims, contract disputes and all that, individual teachers would be at an extreme disadvantage. Although I suppose since the government isn't paying for it, then only the already-wealthy could afford to go to school, so perhaps cost isn't such a big deal. Again, you're saying that every school would be in an equal position to compete. Some would, most would not. Schools would have to rely on donations, which wouldn't pan out equally regionally due to wealth distribution. So those good schools can afford to pay cash money for the absolute best teachers, and the not-quite-so-rich schools get the table scraps. You forget that unions also equalize pay so the good teachers can go to less economically-advantaged schools. The system you'd create would end up with a few people being more well-educated, sure, but many would be getting the same or worse, and most would be getting none at all.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on the trade issue. There needs to be both sound domestic and international standards for trade to work at all. Really, there does. That's why capitalism is an economic system that relies in most part in a representative government. In international trade. what will other countries do regarding port-of-call agreements? Do they go with the port that offers the best deal? The top 5? What happens to all the other ports, who can't afford to compete? It's nice and all to believe in a capitalist fairyland where everyone's on equal ground, but they rarely are, and that's hundreds of thousands of people in an area that now have significantly lowered ability to make money. Plus, how are trade claims to be adjucated? If one company has a beef with another company over shoddy dealing, who is there to figure out the situation, recompence the unfortunate party, and punish the offender?
There's a reason we have the commerce clause. The smaller and more self-sufficient the government, the more likely they are to engage in trade wars. We saw it between the states in the early history of the republic, and it did a lot of damage to our development. Who's to say your town won't declare economic jihad on another town? What happens when the two towns are vital conduits on a supply chain to smaller, more remote towns? What happens if your town figures out those remote towns depend on you and uses it to their advantage? What happens to the people of this likely poor town then? Not enough money to move? Not enough food to eat? Or does it not matter because they're the losers is Capitalism Is The Government: The Game?
Finally, the issue of currency. That system worked in the days of lincoln because we had a smaller population, were not so heavily invested in foreign trade, and to be frank had an entirely different concept of how banks worked. For starters, there are too many people and too much trade going on to have a gold standard without valuating our currency so high that it becomes unmanageable. That would create massive international trade issues, despite whomever it is doing the trading. Plus, banks don't base currency on standards anymore, they do so on credit. Assuming you think this is the direction the US should go, how do you divide this up into a reserve? I suppose the government could buy up gold to start the banks out, but where would the debt go, then? How would the conversion work? It's an unmanageable situation.
And you still haven't described how this capitalism-government would work and not simply become a giant monopoly that strangled the free market and became a de facto dictatorship.
But what if the way YOU want to live DOES harm another person? Or to expand the argument: What happens when everyone espouses that philosophy, and everyone votes for themselves? If you allow ties, than all you have is an unweildly direct democracy, in which everyone is simply out for their own interests.
You talk about the powers given to the government over the past 100 years, but ignore that the powers the government can exercise have been severely curtailed. The government can no longer discriminate based on race, gender or religious beliefs. The government can no longer use the power to enforce morality as a de facto compelling state interest. The government can no longer punish us for sleeping with whomever we choose or marrying whomever we choose. The government can no longer appoint public corporations as sanctioned monopolies. The list goes on and on.
And even if you're one of the unlucky people in the minority who would be in a position to get trampled upon by the wills of the majority, we have a judicial system by which a malevolent will of the majority can be quashed.
All these things have been working in all of our interests. Even in the "horribly stagnant" two-party system, we've seen revolutionary improvements in the system. Did you know that before 1963, voting districts were determined by geography, rather than population? That means that people in denser areas actually had LESS of a vote than those in rural areas.
Is it perfect? Hell no. But it beats the heck out of a system run by people working entirely in their own interests with the absurd notion that no question or problem or desire they have will EVER conflict with anyone else's.
Uh, you're comparing an economic system with a governmental system? Wha? What would a free-market government look like? Who would issue currency? How could you enforce rapidly-changing laws? How could you do all the wonderfully unprofitable things that governments do, like funding education? Competition isn't going to help students in any aspect other than their pocketbook, since it'll be a race down to the bottom to try to provide the most cheap, bare-bones system posible. And how would you regulate trade? The closest I can come up with is a greek system of city-states, but even those had civic governments. I just don't see how you can compare free-market capitalism and democracy as political systems.
Oh, and you can fix past errors in judgment. Laws can be repealed (even amendments!) and courts can find laws unconstitutional, even if they were found consitutional before, if "society's understanding of the facts have been fundamentally altered." To paraphrase Justice O'Connor.
That's a really great statement, and I don't think it can be emphasized enough. I'm a techie and now a lawyer, but once upon a time I spent a summer working in maintenance. There are so many things that people who slashdotites look down on can do it boggles the mind... and it's not just advanced stuff, it's knowing how to wire something properly. Computers won't give you that. Sure, most of the guys didn't go to college. But they're certainly not stupid. They're sending their kids to college because they want opportunities for them. They watch jeopardy and all that good stuff. You read /. long enough and you get the idea that everyone else here thinks that "joe sixpack" really is a permanently inebriated, dirt-eating idiot. That's really unfortunate, and it doesn't reflect well on us as techies.
So, uh... what about those of us that run just linux? Will banks assume we're clean, or will they just lock us out because Symantec's stuff returns an error? That's a pretty big concern.
"Making racism illegal didn't advance racial equality one bit."
If you're talking about social equality, perhaps, perhaps not. By having negative reenforcement of an action, you can curb tendencies. Sure, not for everyone, but there is an effect. Plus, if you legislate against something (like racism), then many forms of economic inequality can be solved, because racists need to resort to subtler, less effective means of discriminating. They can no longer keep them out of jobs, refuse to sell them things, or a bevy of other things they used to be able to do, which greatly aids the minority's position. Sure, it might embitter some, but in the long run (even after just 40 years), we've seen solid improvement in race relations. That's really quick in social engineering terms.
Don't discount the power of government to affect peoples' behavior.
Yes, and the cost of research required to stay a top-flight university and get the best students doesn't enter into it at all.
Neither does the cost of getting good business minds into your University's staff and good academic minds into your faculty, when either of those groups could be making way more, even with government subsidies.
Plus subsidized housing in many cases. And security concerns. And buildings to house all these people. And expensive IT stuff to keep your faculty, staff and student body happy.
But er, yeah! Bad government! Spending money is the problem! What a pathetically simplistic analysis.
No, the judge won't smack it down. He was under no compulsion to enter into the contract, he agreed to its terms, he is fully capable of understanding and acting in accordance to the contract. It's perfectly valid.
You could sign yourself into all sorts of terrible situations and the courts wouldn't care. You have a right to contract freely. You need to make wise use of it.
Uh, they deal with that cricism, and he (Ebert) gives a solid reason for his claim: That viewer-based progression is inferior to author-based progression.
While I don't disagree with this in practice, I do disagree with it as a theory. You may have a version of, say, Price and Predjudice (for instance), where Darcy decided he was going to be honest about his past to Elizabeth from the start. I would argue that it would be possible for it to be a fine novel still if a user were given a choice, as Darcy, in a prompt for "Tell the truth? [y/n]" at that point, with complete stories written for each. However, in PRACTICE you make an incredible number of decisions in a game. Not are very relevant, but they give enough variation that permanently changing the story to reflect it would take an inordinate amount of effort. Whether or not there is an aesthetically "ideal" way to present your plot is an entirely different discussion. As someone whose philosophy espouses an objective standard of quality, I'm tempted to say yes, but I could definitely be wrong.
People arguing RPGs disprove Ebert's claim are actually proving it. His definition of video game is as something intensively user-driven, where the decisions are made by the player. In most RPGs this isn't the case. I think Dragon Quest was the game that gave me the most choice in any RPG, but choices in any game are superficial, like "Do we get this chracter" or "do we take the high road or the low road?" They almost never affect plot in any meaningful fashion.
There are ways to rememdy this, I believe. All this focus on "nonlinearity" has completely missed the boat. In order for a story to be successful, as Ebert said, it needs a very strict and linear progression. However, then they're just clicking through a novel. My solution to this would be to have an RPG with a very, very strong and indellible central plot (perhaps with several possible CHARACTER-driven endings, ala Star Ocean or Baldur's Gate), but have an absurd number of small, interlocking character-driven side quests. That is where, I believe, games fail spectacularly telling a story. Stories aren't just "he did that," or at least they rarely are. Stories since the advent of the novel are psychological affairs, and we need to get the player involved in the character's past, his temperment, and his decisions AS AN INDIVIDUAL, rather than simply a member of the party. We need more than just a few small "party huddles" to get this. Expand star ocean's private action system, perhaps, by letting the player take the perspective of a party member other than the main character. This won't disrupt the narrative; it's already 3rd-person omniscient. I think that making all this optional would be the only way to do it, however.
Not an easy problem. I suppose if I decided to go into design instead of law I would've spent my whole life trying to puzzle it out.
Why doesn't wikipedia just create a queue for articles before they're submitted. Have different queues for each topic that can be pared down, so the editors can see it before it's committed and vote on it or something to ensure some validity. If no one notices/votes on it while it's in the queue, you could commit it, flag the article at the top saying there was unverified data, and zip off a message to a couple people designated to keep an eye on articles committed due to review expiration. If you tweaked the system enough, I could see a couple days between submission and commitance (due to deadline) at the most, which would help credibility and accuracy a great deal, I think.
I agree completely. I read on and I see "Kojima-san" and... "Bushnell."
Okay, that's cool, guys. Honoriffics aren't part of english. We have our own way of handling it. You know Japanese, that's nice. But mixing the two to try to sound impressive makes you sound like a massive twat. Saishi rashikunai zo.
Yes, without this great evil, we would have an avalanche of innovative "taking someone else's idea and product and sticking it on the internet" innovation! I mean, it's not like IP law helps companies, inventors, and the economy (by making useful research/production profitable, by protecting ideas and by precluding problematic price wars with new products, respectively)!
But gosh darn it, we want this thing, and THE MAN is telling us that we can't have it unless we pay him money! That's unamerican!
You would probably have to introduce a lot of novel ideas into it, too. Courts aren't hapy when defendants come in with a laundry list of things that they obviously did just to circumvent the copyright while keeping the basic content.
Can we please restrain ourselves from ridiculously superficial overgeneralizations in articles? The article submission was great until the last sentences... "The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up." In addition to being gramatically incorrect, is both inaccurate and perjurative to the whole submission, ruining what should have been a pretty interesting intro to an article about a shift in Nielsen's ratings, which is pretty interesting and somewhat important stuff. Is the audience really taking control? Because we can time-shift? We can do that with VCRs. Because we can do things with live television? Kind of, but, again, you could do something similar with a VCR. Are the TV companies scrambling to catch up? Nielsen is changing their methodology because these gadgets are leading to UNDER-reporting of audiences, so doesn't that indicate that they're not doing so badly after all?
There's been a rash of this lately, too... The online dictionary and "finally someone realizes that language evolves" is another egregious and recent one. If you want to comment on the story, comment in the comments. Just report the story in the submission. Saves us from reading something that is often stupid and taints the whole discussion from the get-go.
Actually, court SPECIFICALLY ALLOW you do regulate things in a patchwork fashion. Additionally, laws should be narrowly-focused. I think there needs to be something like this for games. I also think there needs to be something like this for movies. I DON'T, however, think they should be in the same law, because that invites overreaching aims, and if one of them turns out to be unworkable or problematic, it's easier to repeal an entire law than just a section, from a political standpoint.
I like how "language evolves" has turned into "language shouldn't even attempt to stay the same." There's a real problem with both extreme views on the issue, and the idea-- and what is borne out in most all languages-- is that there is a conservative section of the language's population which works as a retentive force and another section that works as a changing force. The changing force is always stronger, but the retentive force is still important... it's why we can still read older materials and understand them (although as they get older it gets more and more difficult). That's really valuable. By removing that retention, we run the risk of rending a lot of important writing incomprehensible to most, and at worst having dialects make the jump to separate languages by way of regional syntax.
So yes, language evolves. But the idea that we should throw whatever retention we have out the window because things eventually change is a really, really stupid view.
So, to reply en masse...
I'm very happy to see the standard knee-jerk "change the article!" defense of wikipedia in full effect. The problem with that is that you're not allowed to change articles about yourself, so even this ridiculous charge is meritless. I also think there's a fundamental problem with the way people are looking at this. For one second, put aside your self-righteous indignation and think about the position the guy's in. You worked with a guy, were his friend, and knew his brother. Next, remember what effect these assasinations had on the country at large, not even just those who knew the brothers. We had people suing for infliction of extreme emotional distress just because they SAW President Kennedy getting shot. Now, imagine someone claiming that you were involved in the death of your friend and his brother, AND that you were in collusion with a foreign power, and sticking it on a website, where everyone could see it. Sure, it might not be libel, but it's pretty close, and warrants better discussion than "he should just change the article! The magic of wiki!"
Next, the utility of wikipedia. I'm sorry, I don't see it. First of all, there's a huge credibility problem, because they don't take responsibility for anything. This isn't something new, every other month we see a collection of things gone horribly wrong, and every time we get a push to fix the symptoms, but never the cause. Sure, the new certification procedures will have some bite, but not nearly enough. They don't have enough staff, they don't have researchers to double-check things, so anything that looks plausible will likely get through. Witness the article by John Dean a couple of months ago, which claimed that he ghost-wrote his books. Not only did he not, as he explained, the article got the number of book he had written incorrect. How are subtle but very important problems like that going to be addressed, when they're being reviewed by someone with too much on his plate and no solid expertise on the subject? If it can happen to someone as important as John Dean, why can't it happen to really anyone?
I've also seen a lot of comparisons to the so-called "Main-stream Media." While I'll agree that the media has a lot of problems, this comparison is completely bogus. Firstly, the media actually has accountability, in the form of a large group of people who get very angry when things do go wrong. Witness Rathergate, Jason Blair, et al. Secondly, in most cases (high-profile reporters are often exceptions), reporters are under pressure to get things right to both keep the editor off their backs (yes, editors do fact-check!) and to not get fired, which is what happens to (most) reporters when they go off the reservation. Perfect? No. But a lot better than the monkeys-at-typewriters approach so in vogue with the internet nowadays. As a friend said: The best is the enemy of the better.
Finally, I see a lot of stuff about how wikipedia is good for quick-fire information, that the things are usually verifiable, and that it covers topic in a good basic way. My question to that is: How does that vary from an internet search? If you're going back to other sources to verify, why not just start at the sources? If they're being cited in a basic article about the subject, they most likely are treating the subject in the same basic way the wiki article is. Plus, if you search the internet, you get ALL the information, not just cherry-picked bits. If we're purporting that you should decide on the wiki based on the validity of the sources, you should be in a similar position to weed out the chaff. So in the end you get more information, the same level of error-checking, and no filter.
So, why is this the great golden god of the internet? It's not particularly useful for its stated purpose, it's shown to often be inaccurate, and any criticism of it leads to a large number of people ignoring the problem and simply chanting "change the article." If we want a collaborative information project, this is just about the exact wron
The real problem is that the majority of "games journalists" are starry-eyed kids (adults now, I suppose), who really wanted to be that guy making a game, or that guy who got to play games all day. They're not going into this because they want to inform people. Sure, they might have a desire to do it, but for the vast majority of people, it's a mix of wanting to play games and wanting to tell people what you think.
That is a really, really bad mix for any sort of journalism that isn't strict opinion/editorial.
Add in the fact that these people are now working at getting information from companies who made the games that sparked this desire in the first place, and you have a real conflict of interest problem. You can't get objective analysis, because everyone is so bent on what their favorite genre is, or what type of art they like, or whether they think graphics are as important as sound or story or vice versa. The only real hack I've seen that's come close to working is IGN's system of just separating the fanboys and having them write on specific companies, but even then there's a problem because they then want to rate highly games they think will help their system of choice "win."
It's really a sorry state of affairs, and I'm happy that someone called them all on it.
In related news, Snowboard Kids DS is also out. The Kart racing gods have surely smiled upon us and our DSs.
No, you see, he said "games," not "same generic genre-representative game repackaged ad infinitum."
Actually, most text is meaningless if taken literally. Taken literally, the butter battle book is all about people who really like bread. And somehow Bloom got a sex change and then another real quick sandwiching one chapter in Ulysses. Literal meaning is often the worst interpretation, because authors speak in metaphor and allegory, not just writing.
That aside, there are really good reasons to take the bible as allegory. For one, it was written waaaay post hoc, during the babylonian exile, after being handed down by oral tradition. Then there's the added fact that the tone for almost all of the bible, excluding the books of the prophets, IS allegory. They go right out and say it. Jesus' stories, legends of the exile and all that. Aside from disparate fundamentalist groups, this is accepted and widely taught.