Judging from the rest of the cellphones in Japan, the OS will be absolutely transparent to the user. No additional programs can be run (except Java apps, which are basically platform independent). I have a J-Phone (er, I guess technically "Vodafone" now), and no idea what OS it is. Since all I can do is what the phone manufacturer (Sharp) programmed it to do, I don't care what OS it runs either.
I do too. It really showed when I played Hitman 2 on the XBox (and loved it), and then tried to play it on the PC only to quit before I'd even finished the training tutorial. I'm just too used to the gamepad to get back into the swing of mouse and keyboard.
With the change to all digital and HDTV looming, I've heard rumours that they are expecting makeup application times for actresses to double, as all the wrinkles and blemishes hidden by current TVs will be shown in all their high definition glory otherwise. Personally, I find this amusing as hell.
Meh, the TV is just like it is anywhere else. 95% crap, 4% average stuff, and 1% awesome.
I personally like the NHK late-night atmosphere videos, and On Air Battle. 99 has some good shows, and that one super-bizarro "Black News Network" (or whatever it was) with all the North Korean exercise videos and bizarre segues was great (don't know if it's still on).
"The "problem" is with the homeless people who refuse to get a job."
The "problem" is with people with mental illnesses. I'm not sure that the free market is any better than any other economic or governmental force at curing that. If you believe the homeless are all that way because they are lazy or regulated out of easy but low paying jobs, you might want to take your nose out of a book for a while and actually look around you.
"no-one has the right to tresspass on anyone else' property, homeless or not."
Where would you suggest they sleep?
"That is slavery."
Um, no, that is not slavery. I am not a homeless person's chattel.
"you make the dubious assumption that no-one would allow the poor to sleep on their property, or help them out. This is contradicted by the reality of what we see today, where people contribute to homeless shelters"
No, I make the assumption that groups of people will pool their resources to enforce rules over areas of land surrounding where they live (witness homeowner's associations, based on preventing other people from doing something to their own property that neighbors disagree with). As long as more people who pay for the laws (or whatever the free-market equivalent is) in an area dislike having homeless people than people don't mind them, then there will be no homeless people.
"First of all, that assumes that the only concern people have is a monetary concern, and completely dismisses any moral concerns individuals may have"
For the sake of argument, it does. Apologies.
"even if the absurd scenario you suggest could happen, it is nothing that is unique to an anarcho-capitalist sytem. It could just as easily happen right now"
Now who's being absurd? You honestly think that Bill Gates could shoot me in cold blood in the middle of the street and bribe his way out of it?
"There is nothing special or magical about that that makes it best suited to solve any problem"
Nor is there anything about the free market that does the same.
"free market entities are excellent at solving problems"
...when it is profitable to do so. They are not good at fixing societal problems. Witness the fact that, as bad as you may consider socialist countries, in America I had a friend with chronic back pain who couldn't wait until he entered university so that he could visit the doctor. He didn't have enough money to pay otherwise. My Japanese friends, with their "evil fascist" socialist health care, cannot imagine this.
"all States mandate the systematic thievery from and robbery of the tax-payers (this effectively amounts to their enslavement, as they are working a portion of the year for no compensation). Nothing can justify this enslavement."
Providing for the needy justifies it, and, remember: you choose to work or not. Slaves do not choose whether or not to work. You are playing the word "slavery" loose and fast.
Actually, it means that all systems of management of groups/resources (government, anarchy, decentralization, etc.) will tend towards badness, hence the cyclical tendencies of history. And it's no more one-dimensional than the idea that the State is the cause of all our troubles and that pure free market will solve things.
I've seen too much oppression of people without money by people with money to believe that, given more freedom, people with power will use it more responsibly.
Witness bans on the homeless sleeping outside. Even with todays' frameworks, this happens. When law enforcement, courts, etc. are privatized, this type of problem will only be exacerbated. Or do you think the homeless will gather together enough money to get free market law-enforcement agencies to arrest the middle class folks who put these kinds of bans into effect? Perhaps in a free-market law enforcement scenario the rich would not be oppressing the middle class, but there is no way the lower class could gather the capital necessary to stop something supported by the combined wealth of the middle class and upper class combined.
In a libertarian scenario, Bill Gates, with his $30 million salary, could spend $50,000 dollars (3.5 hours of pay) to have the right to shoot me in the head in the middle of a crowded street. He could spend $100,000 per witness (let's say 20 witnesses) (for a total of 140 hours of work) to say they didn't see anything, or else they'd be next. Maybe $1 million to the private police force to have them drop the issue (a significant 70 hours of work). And then there would be no means of addressal. For a total of 213.5 hours work (a month and a half or so), he could kill me in cold blood in public and get away scott-free, guaranteed. I would have to work 61 years to have the resources to protect myself.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Putting power that is limited only by wealth in the hands of the almost limitlessly wealthy guarantees that the wealthy can do whatever they want to do with impunity. This, to me, seems like a "bad thing".
I think a major failing with most people who are politically motivated is that they have a very simplistic belief that there is some form of perfect government, and that we just haven't implemented it yet. Reality is not as simple and one-dimensional as they tend to believe.
Well, then, it looks like we've hit the philosophical core disagreement pretty quickly. I personally believe people are essentially selfish and evil (poor and rich alike), and that as wealth grants power, it also grants the ability to abuse said power, hence extending the amount of power even further just brings on worse results.
We have an unaddressable fundamental belief difference, which is a good place to stop this discussion.
"appealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments"
I wasn't aware that that is what I did. I just pointed out that your statement that a thinking person could not accept a paradox was not necessarily true. I certainly didn't mean to use it as a defense for my argument.
"To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power is laughable"
As is handing all power over to the wealthy and then asking them not to abuse that power.
"It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else."
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation.
Because you said so? Illegal in what country? Illegal in what province? What about in areas with no defined laws? Is initiation of violence illegal on Mars? I suspect you meant "immoral". If not, look up the word "illegal". If you meant "immoral", then I could as easily posit that I don't kill people because it is personally distasteful. I also avoid eating poop or having sex with blow-up dolls. It is not because either is immoral or illegal, but because I don't like it.
I've had my fill of Libertarianism, thank you. Plenty of it at home. There are some great aspects, don't get me wrong. But there are some horrible aspects as well. Libertarianism, like most ideologies, is based in reductionism. Ironically enough, it reminds me most strongly of its diametric opposite, Communism, in the disingenuous dismissal of all issues as the result of one central "original sin"-like evil.
Except that word on the street is that it isn't going to be a fragfest. It seems it will go more for the Biohazard approach of spookyness...which is problematic, as Doom is all about the superfragging.
Personally, I'm more worried that their screenshots include spider enemies...I just can't help imagining the game being full of crates and colored keycards.
While I agree with almost everything you have written, I have only one mild quibble: you said that "no amount of videogame violence will draw an AO rating in this country...no amount of violence will truly exceed the threshold of the movie screen."
If you mean that no game could get an AO for quantity of violence, I agree. However, I think it would be possible to get one for type of violence. True, no major publishers would put it out, but imagine some indie/publicity hound budget game maker creating a game called "Kindergarten Slaughter", where the goal is to capture, torture, kill, and eat kindergarteners. I'm pretty sure it would get an AO. I'm pretty sure it would get sued, too, but that's another story.
I'm sorry, but this article is so all-over-the-place I can't begin to really understand it.
First, can anyone tell me what they did to Good And Evil to make it more Gen X? I haven't played it, and he helpfully fails to provide any examples.
Second, since when is a goatee Gen X? If I remember, goatees went out of style like 4 or 5 years ago.
Third, how does Viewtiful Joe not meet these criteria of evil that he describes? It's based on an amalgam of movie and TV characters, and the author of the article himself says in his Viewtiful Joe review that "Joe, the star of the game is a Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit's singer) look alike".
The fact is just that I have no desire to continue the argument to prove my point. My dad is a libertarian. Great guy, but when it comes to politics, he can't see reality for theory. I know from experience that a discussion with him about politics generally takes several hours before we reach an essential kernel of disagreement (let's say "the axiom of choice") such as "people are essentially evil" vs. "people are essentially good", or "people want others to succeed" vs "people want to be superior to others" upon which everything else hinges. I could try to trace this back with you, but it takes a long long time, and, as I don't know you, and as this type of discussion is not about convincing people, but discovering which fundamental axiom is disagreed on, I don't feel a particularly strong desire to find that kernel.
By the way, any decent Zen monk could accept that argument, and you'd be hard-pressed to find Zen monks to be "non-thinking". I need say no more.
Well, then, I will be forced to take the logically impossible stance that:
What is morally wrong may not be the wrong thing to do. Considering human nature and the ease of tweaking the system, there appear to be cases where it is better to be morally wrong than to be morally right.
Read it...and it says pretty much what I'd understood the libertarian platform to be. It's a scenario I would give anything to avoid. Right now the police at least have to give lip-service to treating everyone equally. If privatized to the degree it discusses in the link, the poor would have no protection at all. No thanks, I prefer civilization.
Re:P2P = ISP?
on
Who Is An ISP?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Er, no you can sue spammers directly. Well, probably you can't, but it looked like you had the subject and object backwards, so I just switched them for you.
I'd rather the police and courts protect me than to have to walk around with a gun everywhere like some bad Mad Max movie, thank you. The system may not be perfect as it stands, but it's better than living every day in terror.
However, in practicality, actually obeying those dictums means that any person without scruples would immediately overtake any person with scruples. You'd have immediate degradation to rule by tyrrany. Any country with nuclear weapons that felt like attacking a "morally right" country could just give their leader a cell-phone and let him call in a nuclear attack. The only fear they'd have is that we might shoot the 15 or 20 people directly responsible for the missile launch, if we could find them.
I am starting to suspect that you are (1) still in junior high, (2) not too bright, or (3) IHBT. HAND.
Slashdot Mirror
Judging from the rest of the cellphones in Japan, the OS will be absolutely transparent to the user. No additional programs can be run (except Java apps, which are basically platform independent). I have a J-Phone (er, I guess technically "Vodafone" now), and no idea what OS it is. Since all I can do is what the phone manufacturer (Sharp) programmed it to do, I don't care what OS it runs either.
I do too. It really showed when I played Hitman 2 on the XBox (and loved it), and then tried to play it on the PC only to quit before I'd even finished the training tutorial. I'm just too used to the gamepad to get back into the swing of mouse and keyboard.
With the change to all digital and HDTV looming, I've heard rumours that they are expecting makeup application times for actresses to double, as all the wrinkles and blemishes hidden by current TVs will be shown in all their high definition glory otherwise. Personally, I find this amusing as hell.
Meh, the TV is just like it is anywhere else. 95% crap, 4% average stuff, and 1% awesome.
I personally like the NHK late-night atmosphere videos, and On Air Battle. 99 has some good shows, and that one super-bizarro "Black News Network" (or whatever it was) with all the North Korean exercise videos and bizarre segues was great (don't know if it's still on).
What about it?
It sucks as much as everything else, if not worse.
"The "problem" is with the homeless people who refuse to get a job."
...when it is profitable to do so. They are not good at fixing societal problems. Witness the fact that, as bad as you may consider socialist countries, in America I had a friend with chronic back pain who couldn't wait until he entered university so that he could visit the doctor. He didn't have enough money to pay otherwise. My Japanese friends, with their "evil fascist" socialist health care, cannot imagine this.
The "problem" is with people with mental illnesses. I'm not sure that the free market is any better than any other economic or governmental force at curing that. If you believe the homeless are all that way because they are lazy or regulated out of easy but low paying jobs, you might want to take your nose out of a book for a while and actually look around you.
"no-one has the right to tresspass on anyone else' property, homeless or not."
Where would you suggest they sleep?
"That is slavery."
Um, no, that is not slavery. I am not a homeless person's chattel.
"you make the dubious assumption that no-one would allow the poor to sleep on their property, or help them out. This is contradicted by the reality of what we see today, where people contribute to homeless shelters"
No, I make the assumption that groups of people will pool their resources to enforce rules over areas of land surrounding where they live (witness homeowner's associations, based on preventing other people from doing something to their own property that neighbors disagree with). As long as more people who pay for the laws (or whatever the free-market equivalent is) in an area dislike having homeless people than people don't mind them, then there will be no homeless people.
"First of all, that assumes that the only concern people have is a monetary concern, and completely dismisses any moral concerns individuals may have"
For the sake of argument, it does. Apologies.
"even if the absurd scenario you suggest could happen, it is nothing that is unique to an anarcho-capitalist sytem. It could just as easily happen right now"
Now who's being absurd? You honestly think that Bill Gates could shoot me in cold blood in the middle of the street and bribe his way out of it?
"There is nothing special or magical about that that makes it best suited to solve any problem"
Nor is there anything about the free market that does the same.
"free market entities are excellent at solving problems"
"all States mandate the systematic thievery from and robbery of the tax-payers (this effectively amounts to their enslavement, as they are working a portion of the year for no compensation). Nothing can justify this enslavement."
Providing for the needy justifies it, and, remember: you choose to work or not. Slaves do not choose whether or not to work. You are playing the word "slavery" loose and fast.
Actually, it means that all systems of management of groups/resources (government, anarchy, decentralization, etc.) will tend towards badness, hence the cyclical tendencies of history. And it's no more one-dimensional than the idea that the State is the cause of all our troubles and that pure free market will solve things.
I've seen too much oppression of people without money by people with money to believe that, given more freedom, people with power will use it more responsibly.
Witness bans on the homeless sleeping outside. Even with todays' frameworks, this happens. When law enforcement, courts, etc. are privatized, this type of problem will only be exacerbated. Or do you think the homeless will gather together enough money to get free market law-enforcement agencies to arrest the middle class folks who put these kinds of bans into effect? Perhaps in a free-market law enforcement scenario the rich would not be oppressing the middle class, but there is no way the lower class could gather the capital necessary to stop something supported by the combined wealth of the middle class and upper class combined.
In a libertarian scenario, Bill Gates, with his $30 million salary, could spend $50,000 dollars (3.5 hours of pay) to have the right to shoot me in the head in the middle of a crowded street. He could spend $100,000 per witness (let's say 20 witnesses) (for a total of 140 hours of work) to say they didn't see anything, or else they'd be next. Maybe $1 million to the private police force to have them drop the issue (a significant 70 hours of work). And then there would be no means of addressal. For a total of 213.5 hours work (a month and a half or so), he could kill me in cold blood in public and get away scott-free, guaranteed. I would have to work 61 years to have the resources to protect myself.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Putting power that is limited only by wealth in the hands of the almost limitlessly wealthy guarantees that the wealthy can do whatever they want to do with impunity. This, to me, seems like a "bad thing".
I think a major failing with most people who are politically motivated is that they have a very simplistic belief that there is some form of perfect government, and that we just haven't implemented it yet. Reality is not as simple and one-dimensional as they tend to believe.
Well, then, it looks like we've hit the philosophical core disagreement pretty quickly. I personally believe people are essentially selfish and evil (poor and rich alike), and that as wealth grants power, it also grants the ability to abuse said power, hence extending the amount of power even further just brings on worse results.
We have an unaddressable fundamental belief difference, which is a good place to stop this discussion.
Do you really find that most wealthy people are that way because of satisfying the consumer?
Me too...Probably exacerbating by seeing Under Siege years ago, which features Steven Segall (sp?) as a butt-kicking Navy chef.
On reflection...doh!
Sometimes I can be so easily trolled...
"appealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments"
I wasn't aware that that is what I did. I just pointed out that your statement that a thinking person could not accept a paradox was not necessarily true. I certainly didn't mean to use it as a defense for my argument.
"To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power is laughable"
As is handing all power over to the wealthy and then asking them not to abuse that power.
"It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else."
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation.
Because you said so? Illegal in what country? Illegal in what province? What about in areas with no defined laws? Is initiation of violence illegal on Mars? I suspect you meant "immoral". If not, look up the word "illegal". If you meant "immoral", then I could as easily posit that I don't kill people because it is personally distasteful. I also avoid eating poop or having sex with blow-up dolls. It is not because either is immoral or illegal, but because I don't like it.
I've had my fill of Libertarianism, thank you. Plenty of it at home. There are some great aspects, don't get me wrong. But there are some horrible aspects as well. Libertarianism, like most ideologies, is based in reductionism. Ironically enough, it reminds me most strongly of its diametric opposite, Communism, in the disingenuous dismissal of all issues as the result of one central "original sin"-like evil.
Except that word on the street is that it isn't going to be a fragfest. It seems it will go more for the Biohazard approach of spookyness...which is problematic, as Doom is all about the superfragging.
Personally, I'm more worried that their screenshots include spider enemies...I just can't help imagining the game being full of crates and colored keycards.
Good answers, thanks.
"I am actually slightly more disgusted with people over this subject than I am with their complicity in the bullshit going down in the Middle East."
Where I'm from, we call that "not having your priorities straight".
While I agree with almost everything you have written, I have only one mild quibble: you said that "no amount of videogame violence will draw an AO rating in this country...no amount of violence will truly exceed the threshold of the movie screen."
If you mean that no game could get an AO for quantity of violence, I agree. However, I think it would be possible to get one for type of violence. True, no major publishers would put it out, but imagine some indie/publicity hound budget game maker creating a game called "Kindergarten Slaughter", where the goal is to capture, torture, kill, and eat kindergarteners. I'm pretty sure it would get an AO. I'm pretty sure it would get sued, too, but that's another story.
The older you get, the harder it is to get into R movies? So, when I'm 50 I'm going to have to sneak in the back door?
I'm sorry, but this article is so all-over-the-place I can't begin to really understand it.
First, can anyone tell me what they did to Good And Evil to make it more Gen X? I haven't played it, and he helpfully fails to provide any examples.
Second, since when is a goatee Gen X? If I remember, goatees went out of style like 4 or 5 years ago.
Third, how does Viewtiful Joe not meet these criteria of evil that he describes? It's based on an amalgam of movie and TV characters, and the author of the article himself says in his Viewtiful Joe review that "Joe, the star of the game is a Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit's singer) look alike".
The fact is just that I have no desire to continue the argument to prove my point. My dad is a libertarian. Great guy, but when it comes to politics, he can't see reality for theory. I know from experience that a discussion with him about politics generally takes several hours before we reach an essential kernel of disagreement (let's say "the axiom of choice") such as "people are essentially evil" vs. "people are essentially good", or "people want others to succeed" vs "people want to be superior to others" upon which everything else hinges. I could try to trace this back with you, but it takes a long long time, and, as I don't know you, and as this type of discussion is not about convincing people, but discovering which fundamental axiom is disagreed on, I don't feel a particularly strong desire to find that kernel.
By the way, any decent Zen monk could accept that argument, and you'd be hard-pressed to find Zen monks to be "non-thinking". I need say no more.
Well, then, I will be forced to take the logically impossible stance that:
What is morally wrong may not be the wrong thing to do. Considering human nature and the ease of tweaking the system, there appear to be cases where it is better to be morally wrong than to be morally right.
Read it...and it says pretty much what I'd understood the libertarian platform to be. It's a scenario I would give anything to avoid. Right now the police at least have to give lip-service to treating everyone equally. If privatized to the degree it discusses in the link, the poor would have no protection at all. No thanks, I prefer civilization.
Er, no you can sue spammers directly. Well, probably you can't, but it looked like you had the subject and object backwards, so I just switched them for you.
Snopes is your friend
Brief summary: believed to be true, regarding George B. Dantzig.
Urgh...Libertarian...now I understand.
I'd rather the police and courts protect me than to have to walk around with a gun everywhere like some bad Mad Max movie, thank you. The system may not be perfect as it stands, but it's better than living every day in terror.
Morally, true.
However, in practicality, actually obeying those dictums means that any person without scruples would immediately overtake any person with scruples. You'd have immediate degradation to rule by tyrrany. Any country with nuclear weapons that felt like attacking a "morally right" country could just give their leader a cell-phone and let him call in a nuclear attack. The only fear they'd have is that we might shoot the 15 or 20 people directly responsible for the missile launch, if we could find them.
I am starting to suspect that you are (1) still in junior high, (2) not too bright, or (3) IHBT. HAND.