You seem to be having a hard time differentiating between "public" servers and "unclassified" servers. An unclassified network doesn't mean that the information is public, it means that government employees don;t need a security clearance to access it, and it's not supposed to contain classified information. It can still contain all kinds of information that's known to the government but not made public. I know a guy who worked on satellite image processing for TWO YEARS before he got his security clearance, meaning all that time his data was stored on an unclassified network.
Insinuating this is an attempt to "Classify" all these networks is idiotic. That would mean that all the employees doing all kinds of menial tasks that in any way required a computer would now had to get a security clearance, something that can take years to aquire. And for what?
Incidentally, I don't even work for the government, but this last year I've logged THOUSANDS of attacks from China on machines I work with. FYI, they're dictionary attacks on SSH ports, and buffer overflow exploits on a variety of other common ports, like 80. This isn't people "looking up information", they're trying to break in.
What am I supposed to call it then? I guess I could call it the case:-| However, that does bring up another good tech support story.
Manager notifies us that one of the graphic designers computers is on the fritz. I go down there, and it's the monitor. So, I take the monitor and have it sent in. In the meantime, another one is put into place. When I notify the manager that I sent the monitor in for repairs, I swear she screams "DID YOU GET THE FILES OFF IT FIRST?????", because, apparently, the files are kept in the freaking MONITOR.
I have asthma as well. Strictly speaking, I did not work at the power plant, but I had to go there about every other day. I was usually only there for an hour or so at a time. Not any major problems.
One of the stories I like to tell about it is, watching a janitor (who DID wear a respirator) sweeping coal dust, and by the time he'd gotten to the other side of the plant, you could see the coal dust was already starting to collect again where he started.
Working tech support, guy dumps entire glass of Orange juice into his IBM Thinkpad. It won't boot, and he wants me to fix it over the PHONE. He was obviously scared to death to tell his boss he trashed a 2K dollar notebook. When he FINALLY sent it in, it took two people to yank the battery, as it was glued in place with crusty orange juice
Again, tech support. Salesman's laptop comes in won't boot. Reason: buggy porno screen saver. We remind scared, contrite salesman "not to install unapproved software on company machines."
Worked in a power plant for a few years. Tape drive caught on fire from being caked with coal dust. While it was still flaming, I grabbed the drive by the parallel cable and whipped it into the middle of the parking lot where it could burn without catching anything else on fire.
Also in the power plant. Guy calls in to say his monitor is "rainbowy". Turns out the CPU underneath the monitor is filled with coal dust which clogged all the fans. The CPU was burning hot and was cooking the monitor. I literally burned my hand on the CPU case.
We had a support contract with HP, who was charging us upwards of 100 dollars for replacement network cards (this was years ago, but was still excessive.) We were testing some machines with 3Com cards we got at Best Buy, even though if HP found out, they wouldn't support those machines. One day, the ENTIRE network goes down. Nothing will bring it back up, until someone happens to yank the power strip connected to the new machine with a 3Com network card in it. The network IMMEDIATELY comes back up. I don't know why a 3Com network card would bring down an entire network, but it DID.
This isn't a mishap, at least not for me. I was initially hired to be an operator on the company's HP-3000. Within about a week, I had written automated scripts to literally do 90% of my job. The rest of the time I just looked at web pages and slept. I figured out that I could lie down by my desk with a screwdriver and sleep on the floor by my CPU. If anyone came by, I just started removing screws from my CPU case like I was working on it. I was behind two locked doors, so I had plenty of time to react when I heard the door latch. I loved that job. The computer mishap here was that they were paying me.
The very first game I ever played on an emulator was Sailormoon for the Famicom. In between levels, it displays the Sailor Senshi in poses. The emulator was a little buggy and had trouble rendering overlapping background layers, revealing that their clothes were a second layer over their naked (though, characteristically for anime, undetailed) bodies.
I guess you could consider that an easter egg. Only the programmers would have known about it, unless your Famicom was busted in a very particular fashion.
What the hell, are you saying Windows isn't "easy to use" because EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE thing you might want to do with it might take upwards of 10 seconds of investigation? I don't think most people could do ANY of the things on your list on ANY OS without at least some prodding around. You are asking for the Moon.
This is all about the basic tasks. And in that arena, the big three (Linux, Win and OSX) most people could figure out how to look at a web page or write a term paper on a reasonably configured machine. Linux potentially can be the hardest of all, simply because there's no obligation for it to have a GUI, icons, or even a basic notepad-style program or web-browser in the first place.
If you seriously think man pages (or any Linux documentation for that matter) were written for "dummies", you are beyond help. The vast majority of documentation, when it exists, is primarily written for a user with AT LEAST basic Linux skills already, which is a degree more complex than basic Windows skills. This is a FACT, and no amount of zealotry or negative mod points prove otherwise.
You know, when I switched to OS X, some things that actually were pretty intuitive in Windows took me quite a while to figure out. Some things I still haven't figured out how to do, such as make certain mounted drives not show up on my desktop. By your standards, I guess I couldn't say OS X isn't easy to use because I couldn't figure out immediately how to do this. The fact that it's made 95% of my daily tasks easier apparently is irrelevant. What fits your standards? PLEASE don't say Linux.
I think that the creator of Penny Arcade (whose name escapes me now) has been very up front in his belief that the market can only support a small number of popular AND financially successful web comics, so it's probably not really an alternative for most people.
I mostly agree with Groth when he sticks to actual criticism of "Reinventing Comics". Understanding Comics was about comics, and Reinventing Comics is really about Scott McCloud. Groth gets irritating when he can barely keep from insulting McCloud on his own creative abilities, as if only the most successful movie makers are allowed to be movie critics or something. The fact that Groth just can't ignore is that Understanding Comics is really, really good. Reinventing comics on the other hand is half-rehash of his first book, and the other half uncritical futurism.
In the witness protection program, a witness is given a new identity AFTER they have testified, so the accused still know who is testifying against them at their trial. What the problem with the Child Protective Services is, that an anonymous person makes a claim against you, and that evidence is accepted as full-fledged witness testimony (NOT hearsay!) in your trial, without their identity ever having been disclosed to you. (In some cases, even the INVESTIGATOR's identity is kept secret, or you only get their "first" name.)
Now, the logic behind this makes sense: they want to prevent reprisals against witnesses. What doesn't make sense it what makes these cases important enough, indeed more important than any other kind of cases in the United States that the constitutional requirement that the accused know their accuser can be outright ignored. I'm sorry, but child abuse allegations don't make the cut.
This is a COMPLETELY black and white issue. ALL accused have an irrevokable right to face their accuser at their trial. This is one of the most important rights we have, especially now with all this terrorist bull crap going on. How would you like to be accused of terrorism and your accuser is kept "secret?" That's Gestapo tactics you're supporting.
You spent two paragraphs poorly trashing Java with completely unsubstantiated claims, compared it to a "car made out of legos" and stated it was designed to enable three-year-olds and grandmas to program. (What makes Perl a power tool in your mind? Ponderous syntax? I guess so, since it's the only thing you mentioned about Perl that Java doesn't have.) But then you say!
You may use whatever language you like, but expect a well-deserved ass kicking if you get in our face and try to tell us you know better.
So, when do you want to schedule your ass-kicking?
It's a piece of property, and I'm not aware of any rulings that have declared a PC to be an extension of one's person like a home or car. It would be different if the police had no probable cause and were just searching people's machines, but the technician found the stuff on the machine incidentally, and notified the authorities. Should such a ruling come, I would welcome it. I wouldn't have thought that aquiring such a warrant would even have been that hard. They could have siezed the computer anyway and just not searched it until they aquired the warrant.
You seem to want to make the Consitutional rights of people be conditional on the kind of crimes they are accused of committing. Are you sure you'll want to live in such a society?
Welcome to the modern United States of America, we already do this. Check out DUIBlog's ""The DUI Exception to the Constitution"" For examples for just one type of crime. You might also check out examples relating to criminal tax fraud and drug crimes for more cases where the consitution is outright ignored. Don't forget about child protective services, which can hide the identity of your accuser in a court of law, and convict you on their testimony, which is clearly and aggriegiously a violation of one of the most important rights this country was founded over.
I don't disagree. A ton of great games came out of Europe for the Amiga. My primary concern was that I really, really like a lot of Japanese development houses, and prior to this, it was seriously underserved on the X-Box, which clearly had a lot to do with why it did so badly in Japan.
Incidentally, Wired did an article that claimed that a large, large portion of Japanese buyers of the X-Box only bought it so they could play Dead or Alive 3, since it was an exclusive on that system. Obviously, that reduces the value of their sales numbers. I'd be interested in how many GAMES are sold, that's a better indicator of the health of a system.
For not wanting to play American games. I Don't want to play american games. I spent my teenage years playing Dragon Warrior and Phantasy Star, Mario Brothers, etc. Japanese RPGs are awesome, and their puzzle games are extremely creative. On the other hand, in the USA you get a slightly updated NFL game every year, or shit like BMX:XXX, Gex, and a shitload of terrible movie licenses.
American games feel like they were designed by marketers, not artists, because they are.
It does say they have "all" Japanese publishers on board this time...Maybe it'll be different then, I hope so.
PLEASE NOTE: The preceding was a generalization, there are some good american games. But clearly not enough that appealed to the Japanese market, or me.
--Proud Dreamcast owner, still has some of the best games ever.
The only decent games of taht time period were doom and wolfenstein3d.
I remember back then too. So...What about all the original Space Quest and Kings Quest games, the Ultima series, Might and Magic, Sam and Max, Elite, Diablo, Wing Commander series, and about a billion others that I can't even remember off the top of my head? There were a shitload of good games over the years for DOS alone, way before Win95.
The SINGLE, solitary mac only game I can think of that anybody gave a crap about was Marathon. Mac ports of ANYTHING were few and far between.
I wasn't a macintosh owner back then, but seriously, I never heard anybody anywhere say they had to get a macintosh to get the best games. The games I saw on macintosh generally were stinky shareware puzzle games or (the excellent) sim city.
Dragon Quest V for the Super Famicom in Japan, early 90's. It's not only now, and it's not only the USA. It's a subset of people that are crazy over a product, and will do anything to get it.
Sorry, still not getting it. Not seeing how requiring retailers to be content-filterers actually takes away any parental responsibility, since the parent absolutely has to be involved for the transaction. Sounds like that's helping the parent more than anything.
I guess it does inconvenience the vendors who were selling M games to kids already. Who cares if they get fined? They are the problem that led to this anyway.
"selected pressure" is perfectly anthropomorphic, and appropriate. HUMANS are the direct and single cause of tusked elephants being driven to extinction. No one is saying that humans are "mutating" elephants to have no tusks, and nothing is insinuating it. They are saying that dead-ass elephants don't fucking BREED, so their unique genetic attributes are not retained. "survival of the fittest", doesn't say anything about forcing mutation in there, does it?
Your analogy is stupid because there are no humans with gills! There are tusked elephants, and elephants without tusks, as you admit, which makes it so very easy to "force" evolution.
Evolution has no "agenda", but like hell it can't be coerced. By its very DEFINITION it's a process, and I don't see where you get that it's not. What the fuck are we "observing" then?
Evolution: The change in life over time by adaptation, variation, over-reproduction, and differential survival/reproduction.
Evolution is change, and I'm pretty sure that going from tusked elephants to no tusked elephants counts as a "change". I agree with you that it's not inherently an intelligent process, but humans can sure as hell influence it, which is all anyone was saying. Your post is extremely defensive about I don't know what, exactly.
I believe if the GTA audience were researched, we'd find that they are less likely to commit a crime than the general population.
Considering that the primary audience is the teenage to young adult male, I believe you would find that you're wrong. Statistically, this is the single most violent group of all.
Macintoshes hold their value so well because of the traditional macintosh market, not because they perform better longer. I had a fruit iMac and I currently have a B/W G3. Running OS X on the iMac was a torturous experience over all, and even on the B/W overclocked at 450Mhz, the iLife suite and iCal in particular is slow enough to be unusable.
I tried to "switch" to OS X a long time ago by buying used, but all that happened was I paid way too much for a crappy computer. Since then I have purchased a Mac Mini and the B/W is a Linux server, and it's working out great.
The fact that a mac mini sells new for only moderately more than a slowass G3 would deter most people, but I do wonder if it would deter a typical mac buyer, who is simply willing to pay more for less. On the other hand, they would still be buying a mac, so I could see what you say to be completely true.
Maybe it will bring used prices on ebay down to sane levels. People are bidding things to insane prices, and used newer Apples up to and over retail.
Yet, laws fining retailers for selling alcohol to minors has not caused convenience stores to stop selling beer. Only to stop selling beer to minors.
Blockbuster doesn't carry AO games as a matter of store policy, the same reason they don't carry NC-17.
As for resulting in less M games being made, this should have already happened if it was going to happen. Movie ratings have caused many, many originally MPAA board R-rated movies to be pared down to PG-13, and this was all with a purely voluntary, fine-free ratings system.
You know why it's not a law for movies? Generally speaking, the movie theaters have been smart enough to enforce the ratings. The video game retailers have not. Hence, legislation for video games and not movies.
Tell me again how requiring parental permission to buy a mature game is removing parents from the parenting process. It seems to me they are trying to get the parents actually involved, instead of letting kids buy these things on the sly.
You were quoting the fine for the MINOR. Let's look at the retailer's penalty for providing alcohol:
Adult Providing Alcohol to a Minor:
* Punishable by up to one year in prison and a maximum $2,500 fine.
You misrepresented the Tobacco ruling for selling to minors also:
No one may legally distribute or cause to be distributed to anyone under the age of 18 any smokeless tobacco products. Anyone in violation of this law is guilty of a business offense punishable for a first offense by a fine of $200, a second offense in a 12-month period by a fine of $400, and for a third offense and any offense thereafter in a 12-month period by a fine of $600.
What the hell? If a game is rated mature, the parent just has to buy it and give it to the kid. Explain to me again how that's telling parents what they can let their kids do???
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You seem to be having a hard time differentiating between "public" servers and "unclassified" servers. An unclassified network doesn't mean that the information is public, it means that government employees don;t need a security clearance to access it, and it's not supposed to contain classified information. It can still contain all kinds of information that's known to the government but not made public. I know a guy who worked on satellite image processing for TWO YEARS before he got his security clearance, meaning all that time his data was stored on an unclassified network.
Insinuating this is an attempt to "Classify" all these networks is idiotic. That would mean that all the employees doing all kinds of menial tasks that in any way required a computer would now had to get a security clearance, something that can take years to aquire. And for what?
Incidentally, I don't even work for the government, but this last year I've logged THOUSANDS of attacks from China on machines I work with. FYI, they're dictionary attacks on SSH ports, and buffer overflow exploits on a variety of other common ports, like 80. This isn't people "looking up information", they're trying to break in.
What am I supposed to call it then? I guess I could call it the case :-| However, that does bring up another good tech support story.
Manager notifies us that one of the graphic designers computers is on the fritz. I go down there, and it's the monitor. So, I take the monitor and have it sent in. In the meantime, another one is put into place. When I notify the manager that I sent the monitor in for repairs, I swear she screams "DID YOU GET THE FILES OFF IT FIRST?????", because, apparently, the files are kept in the freaking MONITOR.
I have asthma as well. Strictly speaking, I did not work at the power plant, but I had to go there about every other day. I was usually only there for an hour or so at a time. Not any major problems. One of the stories I like to tell about it is, watching a janitor (who DID wear a respirator) sweeping coal dust, and by the time he'd gotten to the other side of the plant, you could see the coal dust was already starting to collect again where he started.
Working tech support, guy dumps entire glass of Orange juice into his IBM Thinkpad. It won't boot, and he wants me to fix it over the PHONE. He was obviously scared to death to tell his boss he trashed a 2K dollar notebook. When he FINALLY sent it in, it took two people to yank the battery, as it was glued in place with crusty orange juice
Again, tech support. Salesman's laptop comes in won't boot. Reason: buggy porno screen saver. We remind scared, contrite salesman "not to install unapproved software on company machines."
Worked in a power plant for a few years. Tape drive caught on fire from being caked with coal dust. While it was still flaming, I grabbed the drive by the parallel cable and whipped it into the middle of the parking lot where it could burn without catching anything else on fire.
Also in the power plant. Guy calls in to say his monitor is "rainbowy". Turns out the CPU underneath the monitor is filled with coal dust which clogged all the fans. The CPU was burning hot and was cooking the monitor. I literally burned my hand on the CPU case.
We had a support contract with HP, who was charging us upwards of 100 dollars for replacement network cards (this was years ago, but was still excessive.) We were testing some machines with 3Com cards we got at Best Buy, even though if HP found out, they wouldn't support those machines. One day, the ENTIRE network goes down. Nothing will bring it back up, until someone happens to yank the power strip connected to the new machine with a 3Com network card in it. The network IMMEDIATELY comes back up. I don't know why a 3Com network card would bring down an entire network, but it DID.
This isn't a mishap, at least not for me. I was initially hired to be an operator on the company's HP-3000. Within about a week, I had written automated scripts to literally do 90% of my job. The rest of the time I just looked at web pages and slept. I figured out that I could lie down by my desk with a screwdriver and sleep on the floor by my CPU. If anyone came by, I just started removing screws from my CPU case like I was working on it. I was behind two locked doors, so I had plenty of time to react when I heard the door latch. I loved that job. The computer mishap here was that they were paying me.
I guess you could consider that an easter egg. Only the programmers would have known about it, unless your Famicom was busted in a very particular fashion.
What the hell, are you saying Windows isn't "easy to use" because EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE thing you might want to do with it might take upwards of 10 seconds of investigation? I don't think most people could do ANY of the things on your list on ANY OS without at least some prodding around. You are asking for the Moon.
This is all about the basic tasks. And in that arena, the big three (Linux, Win and OSX) most people could figure out how to look at a web page or write a term paper on a reasonably configured machine. Linux potentially can be the hardest of all, simply because there's no obligation for it to have a GUI, icons, or even a basic notepad-style program or web-browser in the first place.
If you seriously think man pages (or any Linux documentation for that matter) were written for "dummies", you are beyond help. The vast majority of documentation, when it exists, is primarily written for a user with AT LEAST basic Linux skills already, which is a degree more complex than basic Windows skills. This is a FACT, and no amount of zealotry or negative mod points prove otherwise.
You know, when I switched to OS X, some things that actually were pretty intuitive in Windows took me quite a while to figure out. Some things I still haven't figured out how to do, such as make certain mounted drives not show up on my desktop. By your standards, I guess I couldn't say OS X isn't easy to use because I couldn't figure out immediately how to do this. The fact that it's made 95% of my daily tasks easier apparently is irrelevant. What fits your standards? PLEASE don't say Linux.
I think that the creator of Penny Arcade (whose name escapes me now) has been very up front in his belief that the market can only support a small number of popular AND financially successful web comics, so it's probably not really an alternative for most people.
I mostly agree with Groth when he sticks to actual criticism of "Reinventing Comics". Understanding Comics was about comics, and Reinventing Comics is really about Scott McCloud. Groth gets irritating when he can barely keep from insulting McCloud on his own creative abilities, as if only the most successful movie makers are allowed to be movie critics or something. The fact that Groth just can't ignore is that Understanding Comics is really, really good. Reinventing comics on the other hand is half-rehash of his first book, and the other half uncritical futurism.
In the witness protection program, a witness is given a new identity AFTER they
have testified, so the accused still know who is testifying against them at
their trial. What the problem with the Child Protective Services is, that an
anonymous person makes a claim against you, and that evidence is accepted
as full-fledged witness testimony (NOT hearsay!) in your trial, without their
identity ever having been disclosed to you. (In some cases, even the
INVESTIGATOR's identity is kept secret, or you only get their "first" name.)
Now, the logic behind this makes sense: they want to prevent reprisals
against witnesses. What doesn't make sense it what makes these cases
important enough, indeed more important than any other kind of cases
in the United States that the constitutional requirement that the
accused know their accuser can be outright ignored. I'm sorry, but
child abuse allegations don't make the cut.
This is a COMPLETELY black and white issue. ALL accused have an
irrevokable right to face their accuser at their trial. This is one of
the most important rights we have, especially now with all this
terrorist bull crap going on. How would you like to be accused of
terrorism and your accuser is kept "secret?" That's Gestapo tactics
you're supporting.
You may use whatever language you like, but expect a well-deserved ass kicking if you get in our face and try to tell us you know better.
So, when do you want to schedule your ass-kicking?
You seem to want to make the Consitutional rights of people be conditional on the kind of crimes they are accused of committing. Are you sure you'll want to live in such a society?
Welcome to the modern United States of America, we already do this. Check out DUIBlog's ""The DUI Exception to the Constitution"" For examples for just one type of crime. You might also check out examples relating to criminal tax fraud and drug crimes for more cases where the consitution is outright ignored. Don't forget about child protective services, which can hide the identity of your accuser in a court of law, and convict you on their testimony, which is clearly and aggriegiously a violation of one of the most important rights this country was founded over.
I don't disagree. A ton of great games came out of Europe for the Amiga. My primary concern was that I really, really like a lot of Japanese development houses, and prior to this, it was seriously underserved on the X-Box, which clearly had a lot to do with why it did so badly in Japan.
Incidentally, Wired did an article that claimed that a large, large portion of Japanese buyers of the X-Box only bought it so they could play Dead or Alive 3, since it was an exclusive on that system. Obviously, that reduces the value of their sales numbers. I'd be interested in how many GAMES are sold, that's a better indicator of the health of a system.
American games feel like they were designed by marketers, not artists, because they are.
It does say they have "all" Japanese publishers on board this time...Maybe it'll be different then, I hope so.
PLEASE NOTE: The preceding was a generalization, there are some good american games. But clearly not enough that appealed to the Japanese market, or me.
--Proud Dreamcast owner, still has some of the best games ever.
I remember back then too. So...What about all the original Space Quest and Kings Quest games, the Ultima series, Might and Magic, Sam and Max, Elite, Diablo, Wing Commander series, and about a billion others that I can't even remember off the top of my head? There were a shitload of good games over the years for DOS alone, way before Win95.
The SINGLE, solitary mac only game I can think of that anybody gave a crap about was Marathon. Mac ports of ANYTHING were few and far between.
I wasn't a macintosh owner back then, but seriously, I never heard anybody anywhere say they had to get a macintosh to get the best games. The games I saw on macintosh generally were stinky shareware puzzle games or (the excellent) sim city.
Dragon Quest V for the Super Famicom in Japan, early 90's. It's not only now, and it's not only the USA. It's a subset of people that are crazy over a product, and will do anything to get it.
Sorry, still not getting it. Not seeing how requiring retailers to be content-filterers actually takes away any parental responsibility, since the parent absolutely has to be involved for the transaction. Sounds like that's helping the parent more than anything.
I guess it does inconvenience the vendors who were selling M games to kids already. Who cares if they get fined? They are the problem that led to this anyway.
What the hell, your post doesn't even make sense.
"selected pressure" is perfectly anthropomorphic, and appropriate. HUMANS are the direct and single cause of tusked elephants being driven to extinction. No one is saying that humans are "mutating" elephants to have no tusks, and nothing is insinuating it. They are saying that dead-ass elephants don't fucking BREED, so their unique genetic attributes are not retained. "survival of the fittest", doesn't say anything about forcing mutation in there, does it?
Your analogy is stupid because there are no humans with gills! There are tusked elephants, and elephants without tusks, as you admit, which makes it so very easy to "force" evolution.
Evolution has no "agenda", but like hell it can't be coerced. By its very DEFINITION it's a process, and I don't see where you get that it's not. What the fuck are we "observing" then?
Evolution: The change in life over time by adaptation, variation, over-reproduction, and differential survival/reproduction.
Evolution is change, and I'm pretty sure that going from tusked elephants to no tusked elephants counts as a "change". I agree with you that it's not inherently an intelligent process, but humans can sure as hell influence it, which is all anyone was saying. Your post is extremely defensive about I don't know what, exactly.
Considering that the primary audience is the teenage to young adult male, I believe you would find that you're wrong. Statistically, this is the single most violent group of all.
I'm pretty sure that every video game console still does this (I know for a fact the GBA does), but legally it's a lame threat in the USA.
OK, so it's not a literally perfectly free market. The Original Post is still perfectly wrong about games being a monopoly.
Macintoshes hold their value so well because of the traditional macintosh market, not because they perform better longer. I had a fruit iMac and I currently have a B/W G3. Running OS X on the iMac was a torturous experience over all, and even on the B/W overclocked at 450Mhz, the iLife suite and iCal in particular is slow enough to be unusable.
I tried to "switch" to OS X a long time ago by buying used, but all that happened was I paid way too much for a crappy computer. Since then I have purchased a Mac Mini and the B/W is a Linux server, and it's working out great.
The fact that a mac mini sells new for only moderately more than a slowass G3 would deter most people, but I do wonder if it would deter a typical mac buyer, who is simply willing to pay more for less. On the other hand, they would still be buying a mac, so I could see what you say to be completely true.
Maybe it will bring used prices on ebay down to sane levels. People are bidding things to insane prices, and used newer Apples up to and over retail.
Yet, laws fining retailers for selling alcohol to minors has not caused convenience stores to stop selling beer. Only to stop selling beer to minors.
Blockbuster doesn't carry AO games as a matter of store policy, the same reason they don't carry NC-17.
As for resulting in less M games being made, this should have already happened if it was going to happen. Movie ratings have caused many, many originally MPAA board R-rated movies to be pared down to PG-13, and this was all with a purely voluntary, fine-free ratings system.
You know why it's not a law for movies? Generally speaking, the movie theaters have been smart enough to enforce the ratings. The video game retailers have not. Hence, legislation for video games and not movies.
Tell me again how requiring parental permission to buy a mature game is removing parents from the parenting process. It seems to me they are trying to get the parents actually involved, instead of letting kids buy these things on the sly.
You were quoting the fine for the MINOR. Let's look at the retailer's penalty for providing alcohol:
Adult Providing Alcohol to a Minor:
* Punishable by up to one year in prison and a maximum $2,500 fine.
You misrepresented the Tobacco ruling for selling to minors also:
No one may legally distribute or cause to be distributed to anyone under the age of 18 any smokeless tobacco products. Anyone in violation of this law is guilty of a business offense punishable for a first offense by a fine of $200, a second offense in a 12-month period by a fine of $400, and for a third offense and any offense thereafter in a 12-month period by a fine of $600.
The 50 dollar law was superceded by that one.
What the hell? If a game is rated mature, the parent just has to buy it and give it to the kid. Explain to me again how that's telling parents what they can let their kids do???