The results from the last election show that just over 105 million people voted. Since the US only has about 270 million citizens, that's not bad at all, when you consider that no one under the age of 18 can vote. That's about 25% of the population right there. Certain felons are also prohibited from voting, which takes out another few million. Basically, I think that about 60% of the people who were eligible to vote actually did. Which is not great by any means, but it is a majority.
What's really interesting is that both Gore and Bush had just over 50 million votes, meaning that neither of them can claim to represent most of America. There's 50 million people who voted against you, and another 170 who either didn't or couldn't. Kind of freaky.
It should be smooth. They are lawyers, after all, and they're trained to be professionally smooth. But honestly, folks, what did we expect from a group of people that is by definition exceptionally literate and eloquent?
Slashdot is read by plenty of l33t d00dz whose idea of self-control is not pissing themselves. The results of comparing them to people with advanced degrees in ligsuistically technical fields are on the obvious side.
Check out the following website: http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html
Now tell me that a boycott is going to do jack. The media corporations are so interconnected that a boycott is a useless gesture. And no, there is no hidden weakness here. Odds are they're providing you with your broadband anyway.
If you really want to hurt them, support your local file-sharing network.
The recent book "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" is perhaps the most recent scholarly work on the subject. But the author, Michael A. Bellseiles, did a fantastically unscrupulous job of research: making up figures, referencing books that haven't existed for 100 years, citing non-existent sources, and then refusing to produce any of his research. It made a large splash in the academic community last year, and Bellseiles has been discredited, forced to resign his academic posting, and there is talk of revoking a prestigous award previously given him.
In other news, I think you're going to find it very difficult to locate "unbiased" sources. I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "the facts" anyway. If you want to find out basic statistics, try the following site: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm. Other than that I'm really not sure that there are any facts to speak of. Is it a fact that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own a firearm or not? At the moment, it seems to, but this could change at the drop of a hat. What function did the Framers intend the Second Amendment to serve? You're a lot more optimistic than I am if you think something like that is determinible. The bare numbers are available on sites like the one I referenced: everything else is rhetoric, and a decent percentage of the numbers probably are too.
I think that your comparison of the video game industry to the film industry is quite plausible, but its very truth undermines your point. Hollywood in general makes utter shit. You go to the movies these days, and there's maybe one film at the multi-plex that you want to see, and even then you feel bad paying full freight.
The true gems in film that are still being made are made by independants, not the big movie houses. Cases in point: _Punch_Drunk_Love_ was an absolutely amazing movie that received great press, but a very limited run as it's far too thoughtful a movie for your average zit-faced, popcorn-throwing moviegoer. _Bottle_Rocket_ and _Rushmore_ were both genius films that never saw wide release. Movies like _The_Fast_And_The_Furious_ make the big media splashes, but these are forgettable trash. It's the artists working on the fringe that make the stuff worth seeing.
The same will eventually go for video games as well. Sure, most of the market is going to be for consumerized excrement crapped out by a major development house. But every now and then someone will make an absolutely fantastic work of art. A few of these will be big commercial hits, but most of them won't. It's just the way of it. While you'll never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public, a lot of people have gone broke overestimating it.
Video games are just like any other art form. If you're in it for the money, it'll show. Good video games will, I predict, eventually become similar to independant movies. They make almost no splash in the media, but contain most of what is worth seeing.
This might actually be a step in the wrong direction as far as security is concerned. Now all one need do is reverse-engineer the program and/or driver that enables the OS to access the media. Crackers have been reverse-engineering programs for years; it's their area of expertise, for crying out loud. Wouldn't this new scheme just make it easier for them? Crack the reader, get the files, and crack out the code that looks for the security. Seems simple enough to me.
Weird but unsurprising
on
Gaming Zone?
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· Score: 1
As a longtime gamer, I could have told you that myself. But I'm still at a loss as to the common element between religion, sports, and gaming. I mean, the intensity is obviously similar, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why. Think about it. What exactly is so compelling about making little virtual characters/objects to virtual things on a smallish glowing box? Damned if I know, but it sure is fun. Anyone else have any ideas here?
I suppose it's unsurprising given the audience, but I note a disturbing phenomenon in both the author of the article in question and the bulk of the respondents here on/. Do all of you really think that increases in technology and easier access to information really solve any problems worth solving? Today's kids have access to just about everything that has ever been written, yet now many high school students who can barely read are graduated every year? Technology, including physical, social, political, and educational technologies, have advanced to levels never before seen, yet I doubt that we are happier or more productive than any of the ancients.
Orwell was wrong, but unfortunately it seems that Big Brother was an optimist. In his scenario, at least someone was in control, whether it was a single individual or group of individuals. Today it seems that something worse has happened. Technology has advanced to the point where no one is in control. It advances at its own pell-mell pace, with no clear direction or goal other than its own advancement. Instead of technology advancing to the point where society is controlled by an oppressive government that uses technology to its own advantage, we are under the sway of a Pandora's Box let loose: now our technology controls us.
We devote trillions of dollars into technological devices and research every year, and for what purpose? Simply to advance technology. Why do this? What end is accomplished? Easier access to information? People, information can't get much easier to access. If a novel-length work takes up less than 2 megs, you can probably store everything that has ever been written on two hard drives. We don't need more technology. We need a more responsible attitude towards technology before technology progresses to the point where we really can't control it. I don't mean AI horror scenario's either: I view those as impossible. I'm talking about progressing to the point where new technologies are introduced and adopted simply because they are new, without any consideration given to side effects upon both existing technologies and the human condition in general.
And both parties are far, far to the right of the average American as a consequence.
I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "right" in this sense. Classically, the "right" end of the political spectrum has been devoted to maintaining the status quo, while the "left" has been devoted to changing the status quo into something allegedly more desirable. These were dubbed "conservative" and "liberal", respectively, as the right-wing wanted to "conserve" the system while the left-wing wanted to be "liberal" in their dealings with and interpretations of the status quo.
Given this definition of "right" and "left", I'd say that this makes the Republicans, far, far more classically liberal than the Democrats.
In any case, you are right: both parties are more interested in preserving the status quo and their societal hides than doing anything of value for those they seek to rule.
You have woefully overestimated revenues and woefully underestimated costs. First, not everyone buys concessions, so lower your average revenue-per-customer to $15, tops. So to make $500 to $1000 is going to take between 30 and 70 people, not 25. But that's just at the bottom cost: say they get 200 people. $3000 dollars, right? Yeah, but the studios take $500-1000 or half of their proceeds whichever is more. So the studio gets $1500 there. You've also forgotten the costs of food, labor (employing a ticket vendor, concession vendors, projectionists, and a janitor or two could cost $200 a night). So out of your $3000 your now down to $1300. Then there's utilities, rent, paying off the loan you took out to build the theater in the first place etc. Then there's taxes, so take out another $1000. Shall we do the numbers again?
Take for one night if 200 people come and each spend $15: $3000 Taxes: ($1000) Studio take: ($1500) Labor: ($200) Utilities, and loan on the theater ($50?) Misc. costs (food, etc.): ($100?) Total take for the night, if I haven't forgotten anything: $250, if you're lucky.
Now, how long is it going to take you to afford that $140K digital projector? You do the math...
I noticed something in the replies posted to this point. The vast majority are in defense of the canonical reading of Star Wars. This is understandable, given the constitution of the/. community. A significant number of them are simply unwilling to let our favorite heros become the Bad Guys. This is understandable too. But at least that many are given over to a dangerous but common assumption: democracy is inherently superior to other forms of government. This is inexcusable. What Lucas has really done is appeal to a deep seated artifact of Western - especially American - consciousness, the idea that democracy and individualism are morally superior to other brands of social order.
Historically, representative governments have fared exceptionally poorly: Athens was simply a pretty cool city until it *established an empire* by forcing other city-states to pay tribute and fight its wars. The Roman Senate was ruled by a powerful group of aristocrats who could not deal with the social and economic realities of anything larger than a city. And even they were well on their way to regional control by the time good old Julius stepped in to fix the mess - and they killed him for it. The only historical representative government that has had any measure of success has been Britain, and the only people who could vote were wealthy landholders, and then only to create an advisory body to the hereditary king. Our own system sure as hell doesn't work. Sure, every once in a while we get to participate in the purely symbolic act of voting, but hey: do you want the puppet on the Left or the puppet on the Right? Democracy ain't all it's cracked up to be, people. When reading Mr. Last's article again, try to remember that.
Just a thought, but has anyone ever considered that maybe we're giving the RIAA too *much* leeway? I think that the transfer of any and all music and video ought to be legal. I want to see an analog of the GPL for music. Sure, the RIAA would crash and burn, but who the hell needs them anyway? Artists can make a fine living doing concerts, and use the Internet to distribute their songs. They'd even sell a lot of CDs to the people who don't have broadband. The RIAA is complaining about how the fact that there is legal downloading makes illegal downloading quite easy. They're right. So instead of doing away with legal downloading, why not do away with illegal downloading?
This isn't the first time a major piece of legislation has been defeated early. Our highly esteemed Congressmen have a long and storied history of reintroducing previously defeated measures without telling anyone about it, or even worse, tacking noxious legislation onto the end of completely unrelated bills as "amendments". The CDBTPA is by no means dead, only this iteration of it. So Hollings couldn't get the thing passed as a bill of its own. I would bet my left kidney and firstborn child that in a few months, he'll slowly start introducing key parts of it into other bills up for discussion.
People, this thing is not dead, and unless we keep on top of it, going far beyond media coverage (they never report amendments as far as I can tell), we could see every single item of the CDBTPA as law within a few years. Keep vigilant.
Slashdot Mirror
The results from the last election show that just over 105 million people voted. Since the US only has about 270 million citizens, that's not bad at all, when you consider that no one under the age of 18 can vote. That's about 25% of the population right there. Certain felons are also prohibited from voting, which takes out another few million. Basically, I think that about 60% of the people who were eligible to vote actually did. Which is not great by any means, but it is a majority. What's really interesting is that both Gore and Bush had just over 50 million votes, meaning that neither of them can claim to represent most of America. There's 50 million people who voted against you, and another 170 who either didn't or couldn't. Kind of freaky.
It should be smooth. They are lawyers, after all, and they're trained to be professionally smooth. But honestly, folks, what did we expect from a group of people that is by definition exceptionally literate and eloquent?
Slashdot is read by plenty of l33t d00dz whose idea of self-control is not pissing themselves. The results of comparing them to people with advanced degrees in ligsuistically technical fields are on the obvious side.
Like where? Isn't part of the reason you're shopping on the Internet in the first place because you already tried to do that?
Check out the following website: http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html
Now tell me that a boycott is going to do jack. The media corporations are so interconnected that a boycott is a useless gesture. And no, there is no hidden weakness here. Odds are they're providing you with your broadband anyway.
If you really want to hurt them, support your local file-sharing network.
The recent book "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" is perhaps the most recent scholarly work on the subject. But the author, Michael A. Bellseiles, did a fantastically unscrupulous job of research: making up figures, referencing books that haven't existed for 100 years, citing non-existent sources, and then refusing to produce any of his research. It made a large splash in the academic community last year, and Bellseiles has been discredited, forced to resign his academic posting, and there is talk of revoking a prestigous award previously given him.
In other news, I think you're going to find it very difficult to locate "unbiased" sources. I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "the facts" anyway. If you want to find out basic statistics, try the following site: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm. Other than that I'm really not sure that there are any facts to speak of. Is it a fact that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own a firearm or not? At the moment, it seems to, but this could change at the drop of a hat. What function did the Framers intend the Second Amendment to serve? You're a lot more optimistic than I am if you think something like that is determinible. The bare numbers are available on sites like the one I referenced: everything else is rhetoric, and a decent percentage of the numbers probably are too.
I think that your comparison of the video game industry to the film industry is quite plausible, but its very truth undermines your point. Hollywood in general makes utter shit. You go to the movies these days, and there's maybe one film at the multi-plex that you want to see, and even then you feel bad paying full freight.
The true gems in film that are still being made are made by independants, not the big movie houses. Cases in point: _Punch_Drunk_Love_ was an absolutely amazing movie that received great press, but a very limited run as it's far too thoughtful a movie for your average zit-faced, popcorn-throwing moviegoer. _Bottle_Rocket_ and _Rushmore_ were both genius films that never saw wide release. Movies like _The_Fast_And_The_Furious_ make the big media splashes, but these are forgettable trash. It's the artists working on the fringe that make the stuff worth seeing.
The same will eventually go for video games as well. Sure, most of the market is going to be for consumerized excrement crapped out by a major development house. But every now and then someone will make an absolutely fantastic work of art. A few of these will be big commercial hits, but most of them won't. It's just the way of it. While you'll never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public, a lot of people have gone broke overestimating it.
Video games are just like any other art form. If you're in it for the money, it'll show. Good video games will, I predict, eventually become similar to independant movies. They make almost no splash in the media, but contain most of what is worth seeing.
This might actually be a step in the wrong direction as far as security is concerned. Now all one need do is reverse-engineer the program and/or driver that enables the OS to access the media. Crackers have been reverse-engineering programs for years; it's their area of expertise, for crying out loud. Wouldn't this new scheme just make it easier for them? Crack the reader, get the files, and crack out the code that looks for the security. Seems simple enough to me.
As a longtime gamer, I could have told you that myself. But I'm still at a loss as to the common element between religion, sports, and gaming. I mean, the intensity is obviously similar, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why. Think about it. What exactly is so compelling about making little virtual characters/objects to virtual things on a smallish glowing box? Damned if I know, but it sure is fun. Anyone else have any ideas here?
Who has those?
I suppose it's unsurprising given the audience, but I note a disturbing phenomenon in both the author of the article in question and the bulk of the respondents here on /. Do all of you really think that increases in technology and easier access to information really solve any problems worth solving? Today's kids have access to just about everything that has ever been written, yet now many high school students who can barely read are graduated every year? Technology, including physical, social, political, and educational technologies, have advanced to levels never before seen, yet I doubt that we are happier or more productive than any of the ancients.
Orwell was wrong, but unfortunately it seems that Big Brother was an optimist. In his scenario, at least someone was in control, whether it was a single individual or group of individuals. Today it seems that something worse has happened. Technology has advanced to the point where no one is in control. It advances at its own pell-mell pace, with no clear direction or goal other than its own advancement. Instead of technology advancing to the point where society is controlled by an oppressive government that uses technology to its own advantage, we are under the sway of a Pandora's Box let loose: now our technology controls us.
We devote trillions of dollars into technological devices and research every year, and for what purpose? Simply to advance technology. Why do this? What end is accomplished? Easier access to information? People, information can't get much easier to access. If a novel-length work takes up less than 2 megs, you can probably store everything that has ever been written on two hard drives. We don't need more technology. We need a more responsible attitude towards technology before technology progresses to the point where we really can't control it. I don't mean AI horror scenario's either: I view those as impossible. I'm talking about progressing to the point where new technologies are introduced and adopted simply because they are new, without any consideration given to side effects upon both existing technologies and the human condition in general.
Just something to think about.
And both parties are far, far to the right of the average American as a consequence.
I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "right" in this sense. Classically, the "right" end of the political spectrum has been devoted to maintaining the status quo, while the "left" has been devoted to changing the status quo into something allegedly more desirable. These were dubbed "conservative" and "liberal", respectively, as the right-wing wanted to "conserve" the system while the left-wing wanted to be "liberal" in their dealings with and interpretations of the status quo.
Given this definition of "right" and "left", I'd say that this makes the Republicans, far, far more classically liberal than the Democrats.
In any case, you are right: both parties are more interested in preserving the status quo and their societal hides than doing anything of value for those they seek to rule.
You have woefully overestimated revenues and woefully underestimated costs. First, not everyone buys concessions, so lower your average revenue-per-customer to $15, tops. So to make $500 to $1000 is going to take between 30 and 70 people, not 25. But that's just at the bottom cost: say they get 200 people. $3000 dollars, right? Yeah, but the studios take $500-1000 or half of their proceeds whichever is more. So the studio gets $1500 there. You've also forgotten the costs of food, labor (employing a ticket vendor, concession vendors, projectionists, and a janitor or two could cost $200 a night). So out of your $3000 your now down to $1300. Then there's utilities, rent, paying off the loan you took out to build the theater in the first place etc. Then there's taxes, so take out another $1000. Shall we do the numbers again?
Take for one night if 200 people come and each spend $15: $3000
Taxes: ($1000)
Studio take: ($1500)
Labor: ($200)
Utilities, and loan on the theater ($50?)
Misc. costs (food, etc.): ($100?)
Total take for the night, if I haven't forgotten anything: $250, if you're lucky.
Now, how long is it going to take you to afford that $140K digital projector? You do the math...
I noticed something in the replies posted to this point. The vast majority are in defense of the canonical reading of Star Wars. This is understandable, given the constitution of the /. community. A significant number of them are simply unwilling to let our favorite heros become the Bad Guys. This is understandable too. But at least that many are given over to a dangerous but common assumption: democracy is inherently superior to other forms of government. This is inexcusable. What Lucas has really done is appeal to a deep seated artifact of Western - especially American - consciousness, the idea that democracy and individualism are morally superior to other brands of social order.
Historically, representative governments have fared exceptionally poorly: Athens was simply a pretty cool city until it *established an empire* by forcing other city-states to pay tribute and fight its wars. The Roman Senate was ruled by a powerful group of aristocrats who could not deal with the social and economic realities of anything larger than a city. And even they were well on their way to regional control by the time good old Julius stepped in to fix the mess - and they killed him for it. The only historical representative government that has had any measure of success has been Britain, and the only people who could vote were wealthy landholders, and then only to create an advisory body to the hereditary king. Our own system sure as hell doesn't work. Sure, every once in a while we get to participate in the purely symbolic act of voting, but hey: do you want the puppet on the Left or the puppet on the Right? Democracy ain't all it's cracked up to be, people. When reading Mr. Last's article again, try to remember that.
Just a thought, but has anyone ever considered that maybe we're giving the RIAA too *much* leeway? I think that the transfer of any and all music and video ought to be legal. I want to see an analog of the GPL for music. Sure, the RIAA would crash and burn, but who the hell needs them anyway? Artists can make a fine living doing concerts, and use the Internet to distribute their songs. They'd even sell a lot of CDs to the people who don't have broadband. The RIAA is complaining about how the fact that there is legal downloading makes illegal downloading quite easy. They're right. So instead of doing away with legal downloading, why not do away with illegal downloading?
This isn't the first time a major piece of legislation has been defeated early. Our highly esteemed Congressmen have a long and storied history of reintroducing previously defeated measures without telling anyone about it, or even worse, tacking noxious legislation onto the end of completely unrelated bills as "amendments". The CDBTPA is by no means dead, only this iteration of it. So Hollings couldn't get the thing passed as a bill of its own. I would bet my left kidney and firstborn child that in a few months, he'll slowly start introducing key parts of it into other bills up for discussion.
People, this thing is not dead, and unless we keep on top of it, going far beyond media coverage (they never report amendments as far as I can tell), we could see every single item of the CDBTPA as law within a few years. Keep vigilant.