Well, you know, the best way to deal with that is clearly to enact the will of the entire fucking government. There are absolutely no other solutions, like not watching television, not watching live television, not watching stations that blare commercials (and letting them know why you're not watching them), etc.
Whatever happened to the idea that the government only gets involved in things that are imperative to us as a people and that we can not do for ourselves, without the organization and support of the government, as a whole? Now we're utilizing them to prevent people from saying naughty words before 10:00PM and controlling the decibel level of commercials?!
The problem with auto sound-leveling that they used to have in televisions is that it doesn't know the difference between a commercial and a heavy action sequence in a movie that you're watching -- "normalizing" both. Blech.
Seriously though, who even sees commercials anymore? I can't remember the last time I watched television _live_. It hasn't been in the 21st century -- I can tell you that much.
Too bad the article submission wasn't just as upfront and honest about this.
I don't see what this has to do with net neutrality, unless they're going to discriminate against traffic, which does not seem to be the point. Paying extra for better, faster, smoother, or more featured service isn't some evil thing. Hell, that's fucking capitalism. Now, if Google paid a company to give them far better service while negatively impacting other search engines -- that is an issue. But that doesn't appear to be what is happening.
I pay for a business broadband account and therefore have more speed and data transfer allotted to me than consumer users and I also get better customer and tech service available to me 24x7. Is that some evil net neutrality thing, too? After all, if I'm getting more bandwidth, more data transfer, and better customer service access, it must come at the direct cost of providing consumers with worse everything, right?
I will agree that there are possible situations where the line is harder to spot, such as in potential issues where improving one service might somehow directly degrade another -- but even then I'm not sure that's a problem, unless they are degrading specific targets (ie, instead of degrading for everyone who isn't paying extra, it ONLY degrades the experience for . . . say . . . a direct competitor of your service).
Exactly. I don't understand why this is being covered (though the AP is always just relaying press releases with no thought or questioning, whatsoever). There are plenty of former military, government, or scientific individuals of various ranks who are simply fucking nuts. They typically become regular guests on the Art Bell show and talk to him about alien autopsies that they've witnessed and how Obama is secretly a grey.
No, a successful stunt suggests that you pulled it off. Everyone knew it was a hoax from the beginning and said so, therefore, they failed.
Secondly, they would have had plenty of game press coverage if they just announced the changes without pulling this stupid stunting gimmick. Hell, RPS and Joystiq (among others) not only cover them regularly, but write about their weekend sales on a regular (almost weekly) basis.
This didn't get them more attention than it otherwise would have. The only thing this accomplished was to accumulate a lot of ill-will from their existing customers who don't take well to poor decisions like this, where they feel patronized. For me, it's not so much that they were pulling a stunt -- it's that it was so offensively stupid and poorly done. As if they really think that little of their consumers.
It's like people who pull "practical jokes" on April Fools day. Only, they're not so much jokes when their whole shtick is "hey, why are you at work today -- it's saturday! Hah! Just kidding, it's really Friday! GUFFAW GUFFAW GUFFAW HYUCK!".
I was a big fan of these guys, but I don't want to encourage or support douche-baggery. Best of luck to them in the future, and here's to hoping they figure out how to NOT suck at public relations.
Since when does ignorance of the law excuse you from it? Also, when was it determined that this was absolutely and irrefutably illegal (and it's certainly not _criminal), since it's a civil issue).
Hare dare you question Jenny McCarthy! She has been a playboy model **AND** squirted out a child, so she is clearly far more qualified in the field of science, research, and analysis than any of us!
Maybe he's a sleeze. Maybe even criminally so. You have no evidence of this, however. And fortunately, I live in a society where you are presumed innocent. Not just as some feel-good thing we say about our justice system, but as an actual fundamental element of our entire society. Until a court has found absolute evidence giving them reason to convict, neither you nor I are in any place to presume the worst of him. The same way you and I would appreciate such presumptions of innocence if we were falsely or mistakenly accused of something.
Yeah, because the US government has no history of doing anything to people that try to undermine it or piss off those within it. Especially when they have taken the time to personally attack you and your organization repeatedly in public.
Maybe they're not after him, but you certainly could not blame him if he believed they were. And certainly not for behaving pre-emptively as if they were.
Isn't crying "rape" such an awesome tool for character assassination? You don't have to be a bad person at all. You could be the most saintly person in the world, but as long as I find a female or maybe a little boy to claim you did something vague, I can ruin the rest of your entire life.
I know civics education in this country is complete shit, but I do seem to recall something about how we afford people the presumption of innocence until they are proven guilty in a court of law. For all we know, this woman is behind manufacturing accusations against Assange so that she can step in.
I'm not accusing her of doing so. I'm simply saying that she could just as well be using it as a tool for manipulation. The guy could be a complete jack-ass for all I know. I also know that it has no impact on the value of the service he started and the information that he has revealed through it.Dismantling him doesn't invalidate that knowledge.
It is sad that mere accusations are enough to demand that people step down from just about anything. His life is going to be forever altered for the simple fact that he was accused, even if there ends up being no basis for it. Even if it turns out that it was just the manufactured story of a ruthless reporter and a pissed off chick.
Considering the stories we hear all the time these days about how such accusations are often entirely fictional -- such as "I ditched a night out with my friends for drinks with this guy I met, so to deal with their scrutiny over me ditching them, I invented a story of rape and got a man jailed for a crime he was innocent of", I am not willing to ever assume guilt whatsoever.
Just because you may hate anyone who questions the United States of Amuricah, because they're freedom-hating assholes who want our heroic baby-rescuing, never-in-the-wrong troops to die . . . doesn't mean they're also guilty of rape or any crime.
Unfortunately, Bill Gates makes the careless statement that if you really want to learn, you can get an education on line and be on par with anyone else who has access to wikipedia and this guy's archives. That simply isn't so. Anyone who has a grasp of the real world knows that a degree (preferably from a prestigious and expensive university) but no knowledge trumps someone with great knowledge, but no degree. Sure, there are a few exceptions in the world, but for the most part, you're not going to walk into an interview and say that your qualifications are "learning this complex subject on some screencasts on the intarwebs".
It's amusing how there are so many people out there that will come to the guy's defense not for any real established legal or principled reason, but just because he's religious. Then again, we've essentially condoned child rape by the church, so what's a little trademark infringement, while we're at it?
You can often use the same name in different non-competing forms of business, but you definitely can't use the same logo. Apple music and Apple computers can co-exist, but they wouldn't be permitted to use/steal each other's logos and other promotional identities.
And why do videogames have a special exception? Television shows, movies, politicial officials, entire news organizations and news channels, authors, speakers, even former military persons have been capitalizing on the current military events since the day they started. That's acceptable, but a game isn't?
Busying yourself attacking videogames because people you love are dead from something unrelated is perhaps not as effective a use of your time as addressing why your child was actually killed. I know it's fanciful to say "PROTECTIN' MUH FREEDUMS!", but this isn't WWII and we're not patrolling our harbors for the red menace, eager to sneak in and set up shop.
My friend's wife is a nurse and has seen a lot of wounded returning soldiers. As a result, he found that playing Modern Warfare 2 was a very uncomfortable experience, because of a certain degree of realism and modern milieu. He didn't play the game for very long and that's that. If you think a game (or any other media, for that matter) is in bad taste or too soon or makes you uncomfortable, don't buy or participate in it.
I understand losing your child is a heartbreaking experience, even if they volunteered to be put in a situation where that was likely to happen. However, I'm pretty sure that does not destroy your capacity for thinking and rationality. This woman is like those crazy parents whose child dies in a freak drowning-in-a-bucket accident and then go on a lifelong crusade to ban buckets.
Losing someone in a military action doesn't grant you any greater influence or control over "freedom of speech" than anyone else.
In that case, how would we differentiate it from much of the American puritan history? I guess they'd have turbans or something, so we'd know they weren't just crazy Christians?
So movies about current military events in which people on both sides who have families and friends are killed are okay. Sensationalistic commercial news organizations living for the past decade eating out of this same trough are fine. Politicians exploiting the same thing for political gain are fine. Authors writing books about it are fine. VIdeogames, however, shouldn't dare come close to it?
Videogames and other media about the current events are not undermining anything. Wanting to censor or ban those things, however, directly undermines everything that people claim the military is fighting for (I won't waste anyone's time getting into the obvious argument that shooting unarmed men and children in a van in the middle of the road and gloating about it and then covering it up doesn't seem to have anything to do with "protecting freedom").
If this type of game would make you uncomfortable, you shouldn't buy it or play it. I don't like those SAW movies, so I don't buy or watch those. I love a good horror movie, but I don't care for torture porn. Again, if I don't like it, I don't have to contribute to or consume it. Those who do, can.
I don't care about any "but my brother died in the military!" arguments. Who cares? That is very sad, but it has no relevance to free speech. This shouldn't even be a debate. We either embrace free speech or we don't. If we do, then this conversation is over. There's no caveat that says "except when it makes someone uncomfortable". And if we do, then let's do away with this bullshit notion and start censoring and banning everything.
I don't understand what the controversy is. Police departments have been publishing arrests in news papers forever. There are magazines in many states which sell for a dollar and feature current mugshots. There is The Smoking Gun, too. Many police departments post mugshots directly on their websites. If you are unfortunate enough to be arrested for anything - even wrongly - you will be named featured in numerous outlets to be laughed at and ridiculed just as if you were actually convicted of some heinous crime.
What does the fact that it's on Facebook versus all these other outlets have to do with anything? It's just one more place they're mauling your reputation on top of all the others.
I have been stating for years that the largest problem with our education systems and society in general is the lack of capacity for abstract thinking. This goes far beyond mathematics. It is pervasive in every aspect of life. Some people take what they are fed. They accept what they're told and what they read and what they see. They say things like "I'll give up some freedom in return for security". These are the overwhelming majorities who are incapable of viewing anything in the abstract and they therefore have little concept of "this does not directly benefit me or society immediately, but it is a valuable principal that is important to retain for our society as a whole, in the long term".
I've never really considered its impact on a more direct scale, as with comprehending math, but this is a clear extension of that. It's not something that is encouraged or pushed by peers or family or educational institutions for the most part, where adhering to a set structure of scoring and thinking is the only vital element.
Before releasing the data, they waited until it was aged enough that they felt it likely wasn't a threat any longer, despite whatever showboating complaints the government continues to make.
If Wikileaks steps up and acts like real journalists, that will mean embedding Assange with troops on the ground and giving out their location over the air and it'll mean giving up hard hitting investigative journalism to report on the results of last night's American Idol.
Unfortunately, you can't rely on the government to make such decisions, since it is in their interest not merely to prevent the release of data which is "dangerous" as in posing a threat to lives, but data which uncovers criminal activities and embarrassments. It's a bit like doing away with the police force and just telling criminals to report themselves for committed crimes.
That's what I always say to people when I correct their spelling or grammar. They still say "no, you're just being a douche bag". And the truth is that like most people who are annoyed by poor grammar, I am being kind of a douche bag when I do that. Otherwise I would just shut the hell up and leave the corrections for incidents more important than email, IM chats, or informal conversations.
These guys are barely a step above "local man decides to walk across the country on foot to raise awareness for Scrabble and Yahtzee". It just rubs me of this new wave of distasteful stunting.
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Well, you know, the best way to deal with that is clearly to enact the will of the entire fucking government. There are absolutely no other solutions, like not watching television, not watching live television, not watching stations that blare commercials (and letting them know why you're not watching them), etc.
Whatever happened to the idea that the government only gets involved in things that are imperative to us as a people and that we can not do for ourselves, without the organization and support of the government, as a whole? Now we're utilizing them to prevent people from saying naughty words before 10:00PM and controlling the decibel level of commercials?!
The problem with auto sound-leveling that they used to have in televisions is that it doesn't know the difference between a commercial and a heavy action sequence in a movie that you're watching -- "normalizing" both. Blech.
Seriously though, who even sees commercials anymore? I can't remember the last time I watched television _live_. It hasn't been in the 21st century -- I can tell you that much.
Too bad the article submission wasn't just as upfront and honest about this.
I don't see what this has to do with net neutrality, unless they're going to discriminate against traffic, which does not seem to be the point. Paying extra for better, faster, smoother, or more featured service isn't some evil thing. Hell, that's fucking capitalism. Now, if Google paid a company to give them far better service while negatively impacting other search engines -- that is an issue. But that doesn't appear to be what is happening.
I pay for a business broadband account and therefore have more speed and data transfer allotted to me than consumer users and I also get better customer and tech service available to me 24x7. Is that some evil net neutrality thing, too? After all, if I'm getting more bandwidth, more data transfer, and better customer service access, it must come at the direct cost of providing consumers with worse everything, right?
I will agree that there are possible situations where the line is harder to spot, such as in potential issues where improving one service might somehow directly degrade another -- but even then I'm not sure that's a problem, unless they are degrading specific targets (ie, instead of degrading for everyone who isn't paying extra, it ONLY degrades the experience for . . . say . . . a direct competitor of your service).
Exactly. I don't understand why this is being covered (though the AP is always just relaying press releases with no thought or questioning, whatsoever). There are plenty of former military, government, or scientific individuals of various ranks who are simply fucking nuts. They typically become regular guests on the Art Bell show and talk to him about alien autopsies that they've witnessed and how Obama is secretly a grey.
No, a successful stunt suggests that you pulled it off. Everyone knew it was a hoax from the beginning and said so, therefore, they failed.
Secondly, they would have had plenty of game press coverage if they just announced the changes without pulling this stupid stunting gimmick. Hell, RPS and Joystiq (among others) not only cover them regularly, but write about their weekend sales on a regular (almost weekly) basis.
This didn't get them more attention than it otherwise would have. The only thing this accomplished was to accumulate a lot of ill-will from their existing customers who don't take well to poor decisions like this, where they feel patronized. For me, it's not so much that they were pulling a stunt -- it's that it was so offensively stupid and poorly done. As if they really think that little of their consumers.
It's like people who pull "practical jokes" on April Fools day. Only, they're not so much jokes when their whole shtick is "hey, why are you at work today -- it's saturday! Hah! Just kidding, it's really Friday! GUFFAW GUFFAW GUFFAW HYUCK!".
I was a big fan of these guys, but I don't want to encourage or support douche-baggery. Best of luck to them in the future, and here's to hoping they figure out how to NOT suck at public relations.
Since when does ignorance of the law excuse you from it? Also, when was it determined that this was absolutely and irrefutably illegal (and it's certainly not _criminal), since it's a civil issue).
Hare dare you question Jenny McCarthy! She has been a playboy model **AND** squirted out a child, so she is clearly far more qualified in the field of science, research, and analysis than any of us!
You fail to separate fact from accusation.
Maybe he's a sleeze. Maybe even criminally so. You have no evidence of this, however. And fortunately, I live in a society where you are presumed innocent. Not just as some feel-good thing we say about our justice system, but as an actual fundamental element of our entire society. Until a court has found absolute evidence giving them reason to convict, neither you nor I are in any place to presume the worst of him. The same way you and I would appreciate such presumptions of innocence if we were falsely or mistakenly accused of something.
Yeah, because the US government has no history of doing anything to people that try to undermine it or piss off those within it. Especially when they have taken the time to personally attack you and your organization repeatedly in public.
Maybe they're not after him, but you certainly could not blame him if he believed they were. And certainly not for behaving pre-emptively as if they were.
Isn't crying "rape" such an awesome tool for character assassination? You don't have to be a bad person at all. You could be the most saintly person in the world, but as long as I find a female or maybe a little boy to claim you did something vague, I can ruin the rest of your entire life.
I know civics education in this country is complete shit, but I do seem to recall something about how we afford people the presumption of innocence until they are proven guilty in a court of law. For all we know, this woman is behind manufacturing accusations against Assange so that she can step in.
I'm not accusing her of doing so. I'm simply saying that she could just as well be using it as a tool for manipulation. The guy could be a complete jack-ass for all I know. I also know that it has no impact on the value of the service he started and the information that he has revealed through it.Dismantling him doesn't invalidate that knowledge.
It is sad that mere accusations are enough to demand that people step down from just about anything. His life is going to be forever altered for the simple fact that he was accused, even if there ends up being no basis for it. Even if it turns out that it was just the manufactured story of a ruthless reporter and a pissed off chick.
Considering the stories we hear all the time these days about how such accusations are often entirely fictional -- such as "I ditched a night out with my friends for drinks with this guy I met, so to deal with their scrutiny over me ditching them, I invented a story of rape and got a man jailed for a crime he was innocent of", I am not willing to ever assume guilt whatsoever.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206325/Woman-rape-allegation-faces-jail.html
http://gothamist.com/2010/02/24/woman_who_lied_about_rape_sentenced.php
Just because you may hate anyone who questions the United States of Amuricah, because they're freedom-hating assholes who want our heroic baby-rescuing, never-in-the-wrong troops to die . . . doesn't mean they're also guilty of rape or any crime.
Unfortunately, Bill Gates makes the careless statement that if you really want to learn, you can get an education on line and be on par with anyone else who has access to wikipedia and this guy's archives. That simply isn't so. Anyone who has a grasp of the real world knows that a degree (preferably from a prestigious and expensive university) but no knowledge trumps someone with great knowledge, but no degree. Sure, there are a few exceptions in the world, but for the most part, you're not going to walk into an interview and say that your qualifications are "learning this complex subject on some screencasts on the intarwebs".
It's amusing how there are so many people out there that will come to the guy's defense not for any real established legal or principled reason, but just because he's religious. Then again, we've essentially condoned child rape by the church, so what's a little trademark infringement, while we're at it?
You can often use the same name in different non-competing forms of business, but you definitely can't use the same logo. Apple music and Apple computers can co-exist, but they wouldn't be permitted to use/steal each other's logos and other promotional identities.
Yeah, but when you think rationally, the stupidity is all lumped together.
What is the moratorium on free speech, then?
And why do videogames have a special exception? Television shows, movies, politicial officials, entire news organizations and news channels, authors, speakers, even former military persons have been capitalizing on the current military events since the day they started. That's acceptable, but a game isn't?
Busying yourself attacking videogames because people you love are dead from something unrelated is perhaps not as effective a use of your time as addressing why your child was actually killed. I know it's fanciful to say "PROTECTIN' MUH FREEDUMS!", but this isn't WWII and we're not patrolling our harbors for the red menace, eager to sneak in and set up shop.
My friend's wife is a nurse and has seen a lot of wounded returning soldiers. As a result, he found that playing Modern Warfare 2 was a very uncomfortable experience, because of a certain degree of realism and modern milieu. He didn't play the game for very long and that's that. If you think a game (or any other media, for that matter) is in bad taste or too soon or makes you uncomfortable, don't buy or participate in it.
I don't see why she would be upset.
I understand losing your child is a heartbreaking experience, even if they volunteered to be put in a situation where that was likely to happen. However, I'm pretty sure that does not destroy your capacity for thinking and rationality. This woman is like those crazy parents whose child dies in a freak drowning-in-a-bucket accident and then go on a lifelong crusade to ban buckets.
Losing someone in a military action doesn't grant you any greater influence or control over "freedom of speech" than anyone else.
In that case, how would we differentiate it from much of the American puritan history? I guess they'd have turbans or something, so we'd know they weren't just crazy Christians?
So movies about current military events in which people on both sides who have families and friends are killed are okay. Sensationalistic commercial news organizations living for the past decade eating out of this same trough are fine. Politicians exploiting the same thing for political gain are fine. Authors writing books about it are fine. VIdeogames, however, shouldn't dare come close to it?
Videogames and other media about the current events are not undermining anything. Wanting to censor or ban those things, however, directly undermines everything that people claim the military is fighting for (I won't waste anyone's time getting into the obvious argument that shooting unarmed men and children in a van in the middle of the road and gloating about it and then covering it up doesn't seem to have anything to do with "protecting freedom").
If this type of game would make you uncomfortable, you shouldn't buy it or play it. I don't like those SAW movies, so I don't buy or watch those. I love a good horror movie, but I don't care for torture porn. Again, if I don't like it, I don't have to contribute to or consume it. Those who do, can.
I don't care about any "but my brother died in the military!" arguments. Who cares? That is very sad, but it has no relevance to free speech. This shouldn't even be a debate. We either embrace free speech or we don't. If we do, then this conversation is over. There's no caveat that says "except when it makes someone uncomfortable". And if we do, then let's do away with this bullshit notion and start censoring and banning everything.
I don't understand what the controversy is. Police departments have been publishing arrests in news papers forever. There are magazines in many states which sell for a dollar and feature current mugshots. There is The Smoking Gun, too. Many police departments post mugshots directly on their websites. If you are unfortunate enough to be arrested for anything - even wrongly - you will be named featured in numerous outlets to be laughed at and ridiculed just as if you were actually convicted of some heinous crime.
What does the fact that it's on Facebook versus all these other outlets have to do with anything? It's just one more place they're mauling your reputation on top of all the others.
When I was in school, the only use for computers in middle school were learning to touch-type.
I have been stating for years that the largest problem with our education systems and society in general is the lack of capacity for abstract thinking. This goes far beyond mathematics. It is pervasive in every aspect of life. Some people take what they are fed. They accept what they're told and what they read and what they see. They say things like "I'll give up some freedom in return for security". These are the overwhelming majorities who are incapable of viewing anything in the abstract and they therefore have little concept of "this does not directly benefit me or society immediately, but it is a valuable principal that is important to retain for our society as a whole, in the long term".
I've never really considered its impact on a more direct scale, as with comprehending math, but this is a clear extension of that. It's not something that is encouraged or pushed by peers or family or educational institutions for the most part, where adhering to a set structure of scoring and thinking is the only vital element.
Before releasing the data, they waited until it was aged enough that they felt it likely wasn't a threat any longer, despite whatever showboating complaints the government continues to make.
If Wikileaks steps up and acts like real journalists, that will mean embedding Assange with troops on the ground and giving out their location over the air and it'll mean giving up hard hitting investigative journalism to report on the results of last night's American Idol.
Unfortunately, you can't rely on the government to make such decisions, since it is in their interest not merely to prevent the release of data which is "dangerous" as in posing a threat to lives, but data which uncovers criminal activities and embarrassments. It's a bit like doing away with the police force and just telling criminals to report themselves for committed crimes.
That's what I always say to people when I correct their spelling or grammar. They still say "no, you're just being a douche bag". And the truth is that like most people who are annoyed by poor grammar, I am being kind of a douche bag when I do that. Otherwise I would just shut the hell up and leave the corrections for incidents more important than email, IM chats, or informal conversations.
These guys are barely a step above "local man decides to walk across the country on foot to raise awareness for Scrabble and Yahtzee". It just rubs me of this new wave of distasteful stunting.