To be fair this is Gamestop's price for the MadCatz component cable. I really doubt the Nintendo component cable will be $60, as the Gamecube component cables were $25 (though they go for about $60 on ebay now).
Component cables should be included. This isn't the 1980's.
1980's? I thought component cables only came out a few years ago? You might be thinking of composite? I'd be shocked if Wii didn't ship with at least composite cables.
I had a ton of free time in college. I didn't have a job (other than during the summers), as I paid for college with a mix of grants, loans and scholarships (my parents couldn't afford to pay for anything for me). I made the decision not to get a job during college, as I didn't want it interfering with my curriculum. Turns out I could've taken on a job easily.
I typically took about 15-16 credits a semester. Which translated to 2-3 hours of lecture a day, and probably an average of 2-3 hours of homework a night. The homework was typically less than that, but there were times when I'd spend a lot more time working on a project. I never joined any clubs and didn't have a girlfriend until late in college (that was a long-term relationship too). So, I had an average of 5 hours a day in college spoken for, the rest was total freedom. If you subtract sleep, there was still an average of 10-11 hours a day to goof off. Not to mention the weekends.
I also knew quite a few people who would try to schedule their classes on as few days as possible. So, they'd go to school on MWF, from like 8am-2pm, and the rest of their week was totally free. Or they wouldn't have any classes on Monday or Friday so they had a 4 day weekend every week.
If I could go back, I would've worked harder my first two years, but I had gotten the mix just right my last two years.
True, not all porn features simulated rape, a subset does. Yet, if the amount and accessibility of all porn has increased, it's probable (though not given) that the amount and accessibility of porn featuring simulated rape has also increased. I'm sure, if one really wanted to, find the numbers of violent porn published over the past 25 years.
does porn increase promiscuity?
How does one go about answering this? It might be hard (if not impossible) to find surveys regarding the frequency of sex in the past not to mention the difficulty in verifying the data. You could measure rates of stds but advances in medicine probably played the greatest role in their decrease. You could look at the birth rate for the US, but even ignoring all the other factors that contribute to that, it's been largely unchanged (or slightly decreasing) over the last 25 years.
but for the film to be made some child would have to have been violated
It depends on your definition of child porn. Do under-the-age-consent children need to be involved? Because there is a ton of porn out there with performers pretending to be under age (or just "barely" above age). Likewise, violent pornography (just like violent movies) AFAIK, doesn't actually feature real violence. The article mentions the ban extends to porn that "appears to be life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury". Aren't there sex scenes that end in death in Basic Instinct? Is that now illegal to own in the UK?
The smoke is not from cigarettes, I know because I toured the Capitol Building. The smoke is actually from the candles light the place. The candles produce a lot of smoke because instead of being composed primarily of wax they're made of torn pieces of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
Your original post boiled down to "It would be a shame if the PS3 failed b/c many great games on the PS2 wouldn't be the same on other consoles". Now it seems you're saying "It would be a shame if the PS3 failed b/c many great game series (especially GT) would no longer exist".
I don't believe that the Xbox is capable of producing the same results that Polyphony and Sony can produce.
I can buy that Microsoft is incapable of developing a GT killer, but I don't buy the argument that the Xbox is incapable of running a GT quality game.
In the end, I think all you're saying is that you will buy a PS3 because you know there will be at least one game on it you want to play that will not be available for any other system. To me, that's the only argument that matters, and that factor is what will decide which consoles do well and which fail.
Ok.... here's practical sex ed.: Don't want a child? Don't have sex.
That's not education. People already know how to not have sex. Abstinence should be promoted, it should be made clear that abstinence is the only 100% way to avoid getting pregnant or an STD. That doesn't solve the problem that a sex drive is innate and not all people, despite all the indoctrination society can muster, will be able to supress or ignore that urge.
So, given that some people will succumb to their natural desires at some point, what is the better choice, that people have knowledge and easy access to the tools to help mitigate or avoid the negative consequences or that people have none of those tools?
This sort of opinion always annoys me. It may be hard to believe, but people have different interests. Most people have different ways too spend extra time when they don't need or want to be productive. Some people play music in a club, some people play the video game equivalent, some people might read a book or watch a movie about musicians, some may just listen to music. The difference between actually playing in front a crowd and the other options is that playing live requires some extroversion, some amount of talent (or at least some practice) and a lot of coordination with others. Basically a lot of work.
Kudos to those that have the drive to go play live. Not everyone can do that or is willing to do that, why deride those that entertain themselves in other ways?
There's already a Trauma Center game for the DS. Although I guess it's fairly hard to find copies of now. I loved the game until level 2.2, which despite 20 or so tries, I couldn't get past. I haven't played the damned thing since.
I think it was more about two guys feeding each others disaffection.
Absoultely, they had a greater effect on each other than any song, show, movie or game did. Part of being immersed in a particular culture is being around others in that culture. For example, a person will be much more immersed in violent culture if their parents are regularly physically abusive to others than if they merely consume a lot of violent content.
I don't agree the re-enforcement of emotional signals through games/music/movies.
I wasn't arguing that violent media reinforces emotional signals I was arguing their role in normalizing otherwise perverse morals. I don't think violent media will make a person feel more violent, rather it might make violent activity seem more normal or accepted than it actually is. This is basically the common desensitized argument.
I listened to absolutely the most violent and angry music I could find. I took to violent video games like fish to water.
But was that it? Did you only listen to violent music? Did you only play violent video games? I played a lot of violent video games and watched a lot of violent TV and movies too (and still do). But I also played non-violent games, watched non-violent TV and movies and so on. Violence was also shunned by the people I've been close to. In other words, violence was not all encompasing, it was only something I experienced in a simulated envrionment in a subset of my free time. It wasn't something that ever became normal or acceptable.
I think for most people, "negative" media can act as a healthy valve for daily stress or at least as a diversion from it. In most cases, individuals are the best judge of what a healthy amount of escape is for themselves.
I think where you start to see a problem is when someone immerses themselves in a particular culture and avoids or supresses contact with anything outside of that culture. So, the angry person immerses themselves in violent media, the promiscuous person in pornographic media. Their reference point will shift from a more balanced one, to the culture they're drawn to. Instead of viewing a violent rampage in GTA as a breather, they start to view violent acts as acceptable solutions to bouts of anger. Instead of watching some hardcore porn to get a little stimulation, promiscuous and frequent sex starts to be seen as an acceptable answer to sexual urges.
For most people, we have daily routines and support structures that would probably conflict with any extreme world view. The angry person encounters situations in which violence would only make a problem worse. The promiscuous person encounters situations where sexual displays are prohibited or will lower their social standing. Young people in particular should have a family support structure which reinforces what is acceptable behavior and what is dangerous or unaccpetable behavior.
For people like Harris and Klebold, their support structure was not enough to pull them out of the culture they immersed themselves in. If they witnessed or were victims of violence in school most days, and then went home where their parents permitted them to consume an unlimited amount of violent content. Then they were drowning in violence for most of their waking hours and their world view shifted to accept violence as a reasonable solution to most problems, including life itself.
But I've always wondered... did they choose their victims, or was it really just random shooting with all that planning behind it?
It was a massacre, pure and simple. Some of the victims were jocks and may have picked on the two. There were others however that were just as nerdy and unpopular as Harris and Klebold.
Yes, I forgot that permanently damaging your brain only affects yourself.
Not all illegal drug use leads to permanent brain damage. Regardless, if we're worried about preventing brain damage, shouldn't we outlaw contact sports? Maybe we should all be required to wear helmets everywhere? Point being, there's lots of activites that have various personal risks associated with them. I think I'm better at deciding what activities are too risky than the government is.
And showing up to work high. Or not being able to hold a job.
True, there would be an effect on an employer if drug use carried over into the workplace. But the employer is no more adversley affected than if an employee was simply reckless, incompetent or quit with no notice.
Of course, you never have families, or jobs, or spouses, or children, or significant others that it would affect.
I think you're confusing addiction with drug use. Occasional drug use will probably not significantly affect anyone other than the user, and there is no guarantee that any drug causes its addiction. Addiction of anything may affect the addicted person's family. Granted drugs have a higher rate of addiction than, say, buying faberge eggs, but I don't think a particular activity should be banned based on the probable rate of addiction (unless that rate is near 100%).
Destroying your liver over the course of 30 years is much less bad than destroying your nervous system over the course of 10.
I suppose. This seems to indicate that if something adversley affects your health after 30 years of continuous use it's permissible. If the effects are felt in 10 years though, it's banned. That seems pretty arbitrary to me. Ideally, one wouldn't engage in either activity to feel those effects but why is the government a better judge of making that choice than an individual?
The state has a right to protect people from their fellow citizens
I'd go further and argue that the state has a duty to protect people from the transgressions of others. There is no certainity that using any particular illegal drug will cause someone to commit a crime that infringes on someone else's rights. Drugs don't commit crimes, people do, heh.
I'm not sure drugs shouldn't be unregulated or some controls shouldn't be in place, but I believe a flat out ban is far worse than the effects of drug use.
Driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs is illegal. I assume if meth or coke were made legal, DUI would still be illegal.
Drugs make people do crazy shit that can and could very well hurt others.
Anger makes people do crazy shit that can and could very well hurt others. Should we ban anger? I assume if illegal drugs were legalized, hurting others would still be illegal.
It looks like others have refuted your cartel argument. So, I'll tackle your other arguments.
A lot of people do underestimate the subversive (on the person's psyche and ability to function as a productive member of society)... Not to mention the permanent damage that a drug like opium or heroin can do to a person.
So what? People can climb up on their roof which could lead to permanent damage to their health if they fell off. Should we ban roof climbing? Anyone can OD on aspirin, why isn't that illegal?
Even if they did play fair and there way governmental oversight, the damage to the user would still be there.
If the damage is already innate, why is drug prohibition needed? Wouldn't the drug's effects punish anyone who uses them? Why add to the punishment?
It's just generally a bad idea to open this all up so a few people can legally mess with their own heads.
I've got news for you, most people who would do drugs if they were legal are already doing them. The law doesn't prevent most people who want to try them from doing so, it just punishes some when they do.
If you're worried about people from becoming productive members of society, the last thing you should support is throwing people in jail for doing something which only affects themself. A drug user may or may not be able to hold a job (of the few I've known, they had no trouble staying sober when they had to work). On the other hand a prisoner has no chance of holding a job.
Note, I don't do any (illegal) drugs and I'd advise most people to stay away from them. Just like I'd advise most people from jumping off their roof. I just don't think either activity should be illegal.
Exactly. Until I find out more, it could be just like that group (of 7) that were picked up for plotting to blow up the Sears tower and start a "ground war" recently. Only problem was, they had no money, weapons or explosives nor any contacts with actual terrorists.
So, what I want to know is, did these people actually have any explosives? Did they have any flights booked? Did they have the means to do anything that they're accused of?
Don't get me wrong, people should be arrested for plotting to kill others regardless of what stage their planning is at. At the same time, I question the worthiness of announcing every arrest. There's a fine line between the public's right to know and needlessly scaring the public.
The robosapien may be cool and all, but I can't forgive their creators, WowWee, for causing endless night terrors after I saw their SEVERED ROBOTIC MONKEY HEAD.
I had a panic attack just digging up that link. Looks like I'll have to go back to the rubber sheets tonight...
For me personally, the barrier has always been HW requirements. I was a heavy PC gamer from the mid 90s to the early oughts. I really like the keyboard+mouse combo for gaming, and the mod communities are fantastic. It simply became too expensive to keep upgrading my machine every 2 years just to be able to play games.
With consoles, you have an upfront cost of $200-400 and then you're set for the remaining lifetime of the console which could be around 5 years. With an investment of $200-400 in PC parts, you'll be to play the latest games for another year, 2 max, before you have to invest more money.
PC game developers really limit their available market when they target the latest hardware and don't bother trying to scale things to older machines. It's pretty rare to see a high quality title that can run well on a 2-3 year old machine, let alone the majority of PCs out there. This is one reason why casual games are in much better shape, as they can run on 10 year old machines just fine.
I guess they could start making "reality movies," not in-depth commentaries on society like documentaries, but more along the lines of the vacuous dribble on MTV, Fox, et al.
They already started, hence The Real Cancun. Fortunately, that experiment bombed, so hopefully they've given up on that idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm also pretty surprised at it. There is a mental jump from $199 to $249, even if the material difference is fairly small.
$250 is still a good deal given the second controller I would've bought anyway and a game I probably would've got anyway.
1980's? I thought component cables only came out a few years ago? You might be thinking of composite? I'd be shocked if Wii didn't ship with at least composite cables.
I had a ton of free time in college. I didn't have a job (other than during the summers), as I paid for college with a mix of grants, loans and scholarships (my parents couldn't afford to pay for anything for me). I made the decision not to get a job during college, as I didn't want it interfering with my curriculum. Turns out I could've taken on a job easily.
I typically took about 15-16 credits a semester. Which translated to 2-3 hours of lecture a day, and probably an average of 2-3 hours of homework a night. The homework was typically less than that, but there were times when I'd spend a lot more time working on a project. I never joined any clubs and didn't have a girlfriend until late in college (that was a long-term relationship too). So, I had an average of 5 hours a day in college spoken for, the rest was total freedom. If you subtract sleep, there was still an average of 10-11 hours a day to goof off. Not to mention the weekends.
I also knew quite a few people who would try to schedule their classes on as few days as possible. So, they'd go to school on MWF, from like 8am-2pm, and the rest of their week was totally free. Or they wouldn't have any classes on Monday or Friday so they had a 4 day weekend every week.
If I could go back, I would've worked harder my first two years, but I had gotten the mix just right my last two years.
How does one go about answering this? It might be hard (if not impossible) to find surveys regarding the frequency of sex in the past not to mention the difficulty in verifying the data. You could measure rates of stds but advances in medicine probably played the greatest role in their decrease. You could look at the birth rate for the US, but even ignoring all the other factors that contribute to that, it's been largely unchanged (or slightly decreasing) over the last 25 years.
The smoke is not from cigarettes, I know because I toured the Capitol Building. The smoke is actually from the candles light the place. The candles produce a lot of smoke because instead of being composed primarily of wax they're made of torn pieces of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
Maybe Jack The Ripper and the Boston Strangler would've had their needs satisfied by violent porn and hence never gone out on their killing sprees.
I can buy that Microsoft is incapable of developing a GT killer, but I don't buy the argument that the Xbox is incapable of running a GT quality game.
In the end, I think all you're saying is that you will buy a PS3 because you know there will be at least one game on it you want to play that will not be available for any other system. To me, that's the only argument that matters, and that factor is what will decide which consoles do well and which fail.
I don't know, but I'm 100% sure I will buy this game.
Why was this modded troll?
So, given that some people will succumb to their natural desires at some point, what is the better choice, that people have knowledge and easy access to the tools to help mitigate or avoid the negative consequences or that people have none of those tools?
This sort of opinion always annoys me. It may be hard to believe, but people have different interests. Most people have different ways too spend extra time when they don't need or want to be productive. Some people play music in a club, some people play the video game equivalent, some people might read a book or watch a movie about musicians, some may just listen to music. The difference between actually playing in front a crowd and the other options is that playing live requires some extroversion, some amount of talent (or at least some practice) and a lot of coordination with others. Basically a lot of work.
Kudos to those that have the drive to go play live. Not everyone can do that or is willing to do that, why deride those that entertain themselves in other ways?
There's already a Trauma Center game for the DS. Although I guess it's fairly hard to find copies of now. I loved the game until level 2.2, which despite 20 or so tries, I couldn't get past. I haven't played the damned thing since.
I wasn't arguing that violent media reinforces emotional signals I was arguing their role in normalizing otherwise perverse morals. I don't think violent media will make a person feel more violent, rather it might make violent activity seem more normal or accepted than it actually is. This is basically the common desensitized argument.
But was that it? Did you only listen to violent music? Did you only play violent video games? I played a lot of violent video games and watched a lot of violent TV and movies too (and still do). But I also played non-violent games, watched non-violent TV and movies and so on. Violence was also shunned by the people I've been close to. In other words, violence was not all encompasing, it was only something I experienced in a simulated envrionment in a subset of my free time. It wasn't something that ever became normal or acceptable.
I think for most people, "negative" media can act as a healthy valve for daily stress or at least as a diversion from it. In most cases, individuals are the best judge of what a healthy amount of escape is for themselves.
I think where you start to see a problem is when someone immerses themselves in a particular culture and avoids or supresses contact with anything outside of that culture. So, the angry person immerses themselves in violent media, the promiscuous person in pornographic media. Their reference point will shift from a more balanced one, to the culture they're drawn to. Instead of viewing a violent rampage in GTA as a breather, they start to view violent acts as acceptable solutions to bouts of anger. Instead of watching some hardcore porn to get a little stimulation, promiscuous and frequent sex starts to be seen as an acceptable answer to sexual urges.
For most people, we have daily routines and support structures that would probably conflict with any extreme world view. The angry person encounters situations in which violence would only make a problem worse. The promiscuous person encounters situations where sexual displays are prohibited or will lower their social standing. Young people in particular should have a family support structure which reinforces what is acceptable behavior and what is dangerous or unaccpetable behavior.
For people like Harris and Klebold, their support structure was not enough to pull them out of the culture they immersed themselves in. If they witnessed or were victims of violence in school most days, and then went home where their parents permitted them to consume an unlimited amount of violent content. Then they were drowning in violence for most of their waking hours and their world view shifted to accept violence as a reasonable solution to most problems, including life itself.
True, there would be an effect on an employer if drug use carried over into the workplace. But the employer is no more adversley affected than if an employee was simply reckless, incompetent or quit with no notice.
I think you're confusing addiction with drug use. Occasional drug use will probably not significantly affect anyone other than the user, and there is no guarantee that any drug causes its addiction. Addiction of anything may affect the addicted person's family. Granted drugs have a higher rate of addiction than, say, buying faberge eggs, but I don't think a particular activity should be banned based on the probable rate of addiction (unless that rate is near 100%).
I suppose. This seems to indicate that if something adversley affects your health after 30 years of continuous use it's permissible. If the effects are felt in 10 years though, it's banned. That seems pretty arbitrary to me. Ideally, one wouldn't engage in either activity to feel those effects but why is the government a better judge of making that choice than an individual?
I'd go further and argue that the state has a duty to protect people from the transgressions of others. There is no certainity that using any particular illegal drug will cause someone to commit a crime that infringes on someone else's rights. Drugs don't commit crimes, people do, heh.
I'm not sure drugs shouldn't be unregulated or some controls shouldn't be in place, but I believe a flat out ban is far worse than the effects of drug use.
Anger makes people do crazy shit that can and could very well hurt others. Should we ban anger? I assume if illegal drugs were legalized, hurting others would still be illegal.
So what? People can climb up on their roof which could lead to permanent damage to their health if they fell off. Should we ban roof climbing? Anyone can OD on aspirin, why isn't that illegal?
If the damage is already innate, why is drug prohibition needed? Wouldn't the drug's effects punish anyone who uses them? Why add to the punishment?
I've got news for you, most people who would do drugs if they were legal are already doing them. The law doesn't prevent most people who want to try them from doing so, it just punishes some when they do.
If you're worried about people from becoming productive members of society, the last thing you should support is throwing people in jail for doing something which only affects themself. A drug user may or may not be able to hold a job (of the few I've known, they had no trouble staying sober when they had to work). On the other hand a prisoner has no chance of holding a job.
Note, I don't do any (illegal) drugs and I'd advise most people to stay away from them. Just like I'd advise most people from jumping off their roof. I just don't think either activity should be illegal.
Exactly. Until I find out more, it could be just like that group (of 7) that were picked up for plotting to blow up the Sears tower and start a "ground war" recently. Only problem was, they had no money, weapons or explosives nor any contacts with actual terrorists.
So, what I want to know is, did these people actually have any explosives? Did they have any flights booked? Did they have the means to do anything that they're accused of?
Don't get me wrong, people should be arrested for plotting to kill others regardless of what stage their planning is at. At the same time, I question the worthiness of announcing every arrest. There's a fine line between the public's right to know and needlessly scaring the public.
The robosapien may be cool and all, but I can't forgive their creators, WowWee, for causing endless night terrors after I saw their SEVERED ROBOTIC MONKEY HEAD.
I had a panic attack just digging up that link. Looks like I'll have to go back to the rubber sheets tonight...
For me personally, the barrier has always been HW requirements. I was a heavy PC gamer from the mid 90s to the early oughts. I really like the keyboard+mouse combo for gaming, and the mod communities are fantastic. It simply became too expensive to keep upgrading my machine every 2 years just to be able to play games.
With consoles, you have an upfront cost of $200-400 and then you're set for the remaining lifetime of the console which could be around 5 years. With an investment of $200-400 in PC parts, you'll be to play the latest games for another year, 2 max, before you have to invest more money.
PC game developers really limit their available market when they target the latest hardware and don't bother trying to scale things to older machines. It's pretty rare to see a high quality title that can run well on a 2-3 year old machine, let alone the majority of PCs out there. This is one reason why casual games are in much better shape, as they can run on 10 year old machines just fine.