If the law won't punish them, society should be obligated to do so. However, that means shunning them. Essentially branding them with a scarlet letter and outcasting them from the community for all intents and purposes. That should not mean sticking their information online anti-abortionist style for all sorts of potential criminal things (stalking, harassment, etc) to be done to them.
This story is unbelievably depressing and it really makes me sick to think that there are adults out there who are so sick and sadistic that they would find some sort of joy and amusement in essentially emotionally torturing a fifth grade kid to her death. I just hope people keep the focus on the people behind the crime and don't sensationalize the "it happened on the intarwebs!" aspect and try to pass all sorts of absurd "protect the chillin's!" laws where you have to give a squirt of DNA and your social security number just for a fucking twitter account.
Anyway, the long and short of this situation is that the continued existence of this woman (and any of her family that participated) is proof that there is no god. But there are very few cases where committing a wrong is justified in response to another wrong. And I don't really feel this is one of those cases where it is justified.
I hope that the law does find someone to deal with these people, though. And I hope that the family is somehow able to move on without their daughter, as absolutely fucking impossible as that seems it would be.
The ONLY time the identities of accused criminals are protected are when they're underage. When the hell was the last time you heard of someone accused of murdering his wife or molesting a kid or running away with her student or any other number of crimes and the media didn't put their information right out there for everyone to see? Hell, very often you'll read such a story in the newspaper and they'll not only give the person's full name but their full street address, too.
To suggest that this is the first time an accused person has had their identity made public -- or even that doing so only happens in a minority of situations -- is flat out incorrect.
I think it's wrong to make an accused person's information public until they're convicted, but since that isn't how things are done, I don't see that this particular case should be a unique exception.
The family that took advantage of a thirteen year old girl and manipulated and emotionally tortured her and even suggested suicide to her should be held civilly liable for their actions. I don't want a bunch of stupid internet laws to come out of this, because the internet wasn't the problem here. But to suggest that the problem is just a fucked up little girl is flat out stupid.
Just like an adult must be held accountable if they manipulate a child into a sexual encounter, an adult must also be held accountable for using their advantages to manipulate (and more or less torture) a little kid into killing themselves.
Just because she didn't physically wrap the noose around the girls neck doesn't mean she isn't liable for a significant percentage of the outcome.
I don't like the idea of a society where I'm responsible for other people's feelings, either. And nobody is going to hold you accountable because your ex girlfriend flips out and goes nuts. HOWEVER, you should be held accountable if you are a full grown adult taking advantage of a little kid by exploiting their known weaknesses and presenting yourself as a fellow child to gain their confidence, build them up and then tear them down overnight and suggest to them that the world would be better off if they were dead and then a few hours later, they kill themselves.
That isn't the same thing, though. We use Jabber at work almost as much as we use email and we've used instant messaging at work for a full decade now. But we use it, because it serves a purpose at times. Immediate interaction with a colleague who may be on the other side of the office, the building, the campus, the city, the country or the planet. We don't log into a proprietary website to use it as our "email" and we don't twitter every little fucking thing we're doing and distribute it to 80,000 colleagues.
Saying that IM is going to replace email is like saying that email is going to replace the telephone. How many of you -- including those of you under eighteen -- own phones? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Now, whether your use of email or IM is limited to self-involved, drivel and terrible English is up to you. Whether or not you use it for an actual conversation or to convey things or you just use it for inanity is up to you. That is why people have a problem with surveys such as this. IM isn't necessarily bad, but when you recognize the type of attitudes that come along with a lot of those who would "vote" for IM or a proprietary website over email, you see why it is something to be put off by. It's the difference between a kid with the attitude of "computers are awesome tools that can offer many solutions and features" versus "OMG, lolcasts and youtube videos of young girls bouncing their asses to rap for attention! WORD YO!"
The idea that you need "permission" to make a copy of something you own is absurd. You certainly shouldn't be able to make a copy of something and then sell it (which is what a pirate does) and you shouldn't be able to pass it off as something you created. But I don't see how it should be a criminal or even civil concern if you make a copy for free. It used to be fine to do so for, say, a friend. Now that you can do it for countless people, it's an issue. It's the same thing, but it's wider spread. That's a monetary issue. An issue of impact that such wide distribution can have. But that doesn't change the fact that it should either be legal or illegal to make a copy of media that I own. Period. DRM interferes with that.
Now, what this chick did wasn't even *that*. She didn't make a copy. She just made it available. Whatever prior precedent some may claim there is, I'm not sure how that's a significant difference. She didn't make any profit by making it available and having nobody copy it. But she wouldn't have made a profit by making it available if 1,000 people copied it, either. So what's the deal?!
On the other hand, she made it publicly available. How is intent not part of the valuation here? The only thing on her side in that case is that nobody had yet bothered to copy what she was making available.
I'm not an RIAA apologist and I'm glad to get stuff for free when I know it's from the RIAA, MPAA, etc. I have no moral problem with that. Fuck them. But fuck this chick, too. She says her case is going to be used by the RIAA as a sledgehammer to smash down other people in the future, now. Yeah, guess what? YOU MADE THAT HAPPEN, YOU BITCH. She didn't have a case. She knew she didn't have a case. She knew she couldn't justify making copyrighted material publicly available. She was just hoping on a wing and a prayer that she'd get off on a technicality. And because of that selfish hope, SHE screwed everyone else by GIVING them that sledgehammer, instead of paying a few thousand bucks and settling this civil issue outside of the court.
Nope. I love the shit out of bit torrent. I just downloaded the grindhouse movies this week.
I just don't like assholes wrapping themselves in a movie for the sole purpose of saving their own ass. There are plenty of people whose cases I have supported in the past and I'm a strong believer that citizens should not be brought up on claims of "piracy" when they're not the ones out there making massive duplicated of media to *SELL*.
But this chick? No way. I agree that the settlement is absurd, but no more absurd than the idea someone else presented here that she's some sort of copyright-freedom-Ghandi, sacrificing herself at the batons of the RIAA and the legal system all for our benefit.
So kind of like when you steal a candy bar from a store and the only punishment is to pay back the 55 cents for the candy bar?
Oh wait, that's not how it works...
The way I see it is she paid $2,000 for the activity and she paid $220,000 as a penalty for trying to run and hide under the cloak of the anti-RIAA movement to get herself out of a jam
Right. She's guilty. Just because nobody buys my pirated DVD of 3:10 to Yuma doesn't mean it's okay for me to pirate it and try to sell it. I might contest the idea that one should be liable for making something available that they are not in any way selling or profiting from, the fact is that she made copyrighted materials available.
I have absolutely no problem with her being found "guilty". I only regret that people attempted to make her the poster child for "the cause" as it did nothing but damage it.
Who cares about someone's religious or personal beliefs? They are DEAD. Dead people don't have rights. Dead people don't get to vote, drive a car or peaceably assemble. And just like no person's beliefs while living should be able to terminate the life of another innocent person, their ignorant choices should not negatively affect an innocent living person after their death, either.
Some religious practices have historically involved sending peopel out to sea on a burning raft or tacking their bodies, uncovered, to the side of a cliff. We don't allow this, for the health and well-being of our society. Likewise, rather than simply letting someone's rotting corpse consume space in the ground, it is in the interest of society to make use of their body parts.
It's not a matter of being disrespectful of heartless. It's matter of practicality.
No. This person was solely thinking of themselves and then decided to align themselves with an existing movement to gain support and assistance based solely on that association for further personal gain. This is a person damaging an existing sentiment and position by trying to make themselves "our" poster-child for being victimized. And because they are such a poor example of other real, legitimate victims in this arena, they have done nothing but deteriorate our position in the long run.
It's hard to keep all these people and cases straight, but isn't this the woman who was very clearly absolutely guilty? I may disagree with the criminalization of downloading music over the internet and all, but it is apparently currently decided that it _is_ completely illegal. And if I recall the case, she was the one who we all agreed was clearly completely guilty.
So in what way is she the victim, again? I mean, I know it's hard to imagine any parent being guilty of anything, because people who give birth are the most saintly, self-sacrificing people on the planet and all . . . but I'm pretty sure she was clearly guilty from day one. And apparently, so did the courts.
It's unfortunate that this was the first real attempt to prove either side in a court of law, in the vast sea of other potential cases that could have stepped up and presented the opposing side. From what I've understood of this case, it was more an issue of "oh shit, I got caught doing something clearly illegal -- I better jump on that EFF information wants to be free bandwagon thing I heard about!".
It should be the case everywhere. What am I going to do with my organs when I'm dead? Why should someone else die, because I was too lazy or ignorant to become an organ donor?
I've already given up. The internet is just turning into one giant party phone. Like the chat lines they used to advertise in the middle of the night in the late 1980s. If you can cash in on that sad state of affairs, I guess you might as well. Can't blame any company that does. Perhaps some day that will fade away and the internet will become something slightly less sophomoric and navel-gazing. Yes, part of the internet still serves a purpose other than trying to score with teenage girls and watching the video at 2girls1cup.com, but not much.
Wake me up when MMORPGs are more about "finding the perfect character template" and aren't just a bunch of linear single player stories conducted online side by side with other players and I can have a real impact on the world around me and the society and story in general.
Until then, I'll leave MMORPGs back in the dust where I left them so the house-fraus and Ritalin kids can continue spazzing over them.
I wish the focus wasn't put on the fancy-pants Compiz/Beryl crap. I suppose that stuff is nice until a certain point, but with all of the aspects of the linux (and Ubuntu/Kubuntu specifically) desktop, having window shadows and transparency is nowhere near the top. How about changes that actually impact the robustness of the user experience?
I use KDE, because a lot of the apps I like most are on it (like kate, which seems to have no peer on GNOME) and it doesn't have Compiz by default. I did compile and install it once, but found that a big negative was that while it would make windows fold up like a paper plane and fly off the window (ooh, big fucking deal), it also wouldn't let me move any windows around. At all. I suppose it was some hidden configuration somewhere. *shrug*.
Anyway, it got kind of old after about an hour and I removed it. I mean.. shadows and folding windows are nice, I guess... but entirely pointless. And a bit distracting. And the experience is just fine without them.
In a time when there are complaints of limited resources and maintainers, it seems the focus of each release should be more than "ooh, flashy crap!" which it has been the last two releases (at least).
I don't really see how this is a big deal. I have news for everyone in highschool and college -- you didn't invent the internet. You didn't even make it popular. Is it really so shocking that people 35 to 54 (about the same age as the CHILDREN of the men who popularized the internet as we currently know it) are using services on the internet?
This study just shows how self centered kids are these days. Their entire use of the internet revolves around instant messaging and posting naked photos of themselves at beer parties on myspace and they're shocked that people who were 20 when the web started to really take off are making use of it today at the gray old age of 35 to 54?!
I really don't care either way. What does it matter if I rent movies on bluray or if I rent them on HD-DVD? It's not like I'm going to own them. And it's not like I'm going to waste my money buying a movie on either format (seriously, how many fucking times can you watch the same god damn movie?!). So they can use whatever they feel like and I'll rent on that format. At least, until everything is instantly available via streaming and physical media won't matter anyway.
There have been so many games coming out recently that I can't keep up with them. If a game is online multiplayer, I tend to buy it on the release day for the release price. If a game is single player or off-line only, I am more likely to wait until I can buy a used copy for half the price or a little more.
Some games are worth $66 (with tax). Some are not. An MMO might be worth $66, even if you factor in monthly subscriptions. It's hard to justify a button masher with six hours of game play for the same price.
You can see a movie for $5. That's about $2.50 per hour of entertainment. A six hour videogame would be about $11 per hour. I just bought World War Z from Amazon and at $10, that'll give me a lot of reading entertainment at about a buck or so per hour.
Games seem disproportionately expensive. Especially as costs to produce increase and time to beat mysteriously decrease. Whatever happened to games that took forever to beat and still were a lot of fun? I don't want to sit down and beat a $66 game in a single sitting.
I love how everyone who supports candidates who are massively backed by corporations and special interests (which is the only kind of viable candidate) are attacking him for being "backed" by a corporation. I mean . . . seriously. Pot. Kettle. Black.
Books on the best seller list today are notable. But what about all of the great books that aren't on the list? There are a lot of crap movies today that won't be remembered by _anyone_ in a couple decades. But they'll still have Wikipedia entries.
For that matter, while I don't think every web comic on earth deserves its own article just for existing, I would point out that just about every band on earth -- even those who have no real following and only play part time after hours in the local bar . . . have wikipedia entries.
There has to be a lot of thought put into what requirements there are for notability. Both sides have great points. Why is someone who writes for boing boing more worthy of a Wikipedia article than someone who has less of a following, but is still important to a bunch of people? Where is the line between notability and sycophantic navel-gazing appear?
Every single movie, comic book, book, song, musician and videogame is archived in the Wikipedia database (or could be -- I've never heard of one being cut off for not being 'notable'). In fact, for a lot of those things, the more obscure the subject is, the more value some people seem to put on it in Wikipedia. But then when it comes to people -- there's suddenly a big level of notability required. Are you Rob Malda? Kevin Rose? That cocaine addict who wrote a crappy book and gives sex advice to retards on G4TV's Attack of the Show? A writer for a gadget site that sold out to AOL? A party favorite like KOS? Well, you get entries.
The current requirements seem to be less about notability and more about fandom. Notability and popularity are not the same thing. Popularity seems to dictate whether you are included.
Of course there's a downside. Wikipedia is supposed to be a comprehensive online encyclopedia. It's not supposed to be an open-ended "who's who" of the world that includes your grandma and everyone on my street. There is a fine line between documenting an even slightly notable person or thing and spamming your content. Should there really be ten billion articles on wikipedia? One for every single human that lives and dies in a decade? Just because there is plenty of storage for articles doesn't mean there shouldn't be some requisite notability level to be included.
Don't get me wrong -- I hate a lot of the idiocy I've seen about "but they aren't notable enough" on wikipedia and I think they are far too extreme. . . but every tool with a comic or a blog doesn't deserve an article in Wikipedia. It's not about advertising your product. It's not a contact database. It's not a resume database.
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If the law won't punish them, society should be obligated to do so. However, that means shunning them. Essentially branding them with a scarlet letter and outcasting them from the community for all intents and purposes. That should not mean sticking their information online anti-abortionist style for all sorts of potential criminal things (stalking, harassment, etc) to be done to them.
This story is unbelievably depressing and it really makes me sick to think that there are adults out there who are so sick and sadistic that they would find some sort of joy and amusement in essentially emotionally torturing a fifth grade kid to her death. I just hope people keep the focus on the people behind the crime and don't sensationalize the "it happened on the intarwebs!" aspect and try to pass all sorts of absurd "protect the chillin's!" laws where you have to give a squirt of DNA and your social security number just for a fucking twitter account.
Anyway, the long and short of this situation is that the continued existence of this woman (and any of her family that participated) is proof that there is no god. But there are very few cases where committing a wrong is justified in response to another wrong. And I don't really feel this is one of those cases where it is justified.
I hope that the law does find someone to deal with these people, though. And I hope that the family is somehow able to move on without their daughter, as absolutely fucking impossible as that seems it would be.
The ONLY time the identities of accused criminals are protected are when they're underage. When the hell was the last time you heard of someone accused of murdering his wife or molesting a kid or running away with her student or any other number of crimes and the media didn't put their information right out there for everyone to see? Hell, very often you'll read such a story in the newspaper and they'll not only give the person's full name but their full street address, too.
To suggest that this is the first time an accused person has had their identity made public -- or even that doing so only happens in a minority of situations -- is flat out incorrect.
I think it's wrong to make an accused person's information public until they're convicted, but since that isn't how things are done, I don't see that this particular case should be a unique exception.
You are an idiot.
The family that took advantage of a thirteen year old girl and manipulated and emotionally tortured her and even suggested suicide to her should be held civilly liable for their actions. I don't want a bunch of stupid internet laws to come out of this, because the internet wasn't the problem here. But to suggest that the problem is just a fucked up little girl is flat out stupid.
Just like an adult must be held accountable if they manipulate a child into a sexual encounter, an adult must also be held accountable for using their advantages to manipulate (and more or less torture) a little kid into killing themselves.
Just because she didn't physically wrap the noose around the girls neck doesn't mean she isn't liable for a significant percentage of the outcome.
I don't like the idea of a society where I'm responsible for other people's feelings, either. And nobody is going to hold you accountable because your ex girlfriend flips out and goes nuts. HOWEVER, you should be held accountable if you are a full grown adult taking advantage of a little kid by exploiting their known weaknesses and presenting yourself as a fellow child to gain their confidence, build them up and then tear them down overnight and suggest to them that the world would be better off if they were dead and then a few hours later, they kill themselves.
That isn't the same thing, though. We use Jabber at work almost as much as we use email and we've used instant messaging at work for a full decade now. But we use it, because it serves a purpose at times. Immediate interaction with a colleague who may be on the other side of the office, the building, the campus, the city, the country or the planet. We don't log into a proprietary website to use it as our "email" and we don't twitter every little fucking thing we're doing and distribute it to 80,000 colleagues.
Saying that IM is going to replace email is like saying that email is going to replace the telephone. How many of you -- including those of you under eighteen -- own phones? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Now, whether your use of email or IM is limited to self-involved, drivel and terrible English is up to you. Whether or not you use it for an actual conversation or to convey things or you just use it for inanity is up to you. That is why people have a problem with surveys such as this. IM isn't necessarily bad, but when you recognize the type of attitudes that come along with a lot of those who would "vote" for IM or a proprietary website over email, you see why it is something to be put off by. It's the difference between a kid with the attitude of "computers are awesome tools that can offer many solutions and features" versus "OMG, lolcasts and youtube videos of young girls bouncing their asses to rap for attention! WORD YO!"
The idea that you need "permission" to make a copy of something you own is absurd. You certainly shouldn't be able to make a copy of something and then sell it (which is what a pirate does) and you shouldn't be able to pass it off as something you created. But I don't see how it should be a criminal or even civil concern if you make a copy for free. It used to be fine to do so for, say, a friend. Now that you can do it for countless people, it's an issue. It's the same thing, but it's wider spread. That's a monetary issue. An issue of impact that such wide distribution can have. But that doesn't change the fact that it should either be legal or illegal to make a copy of media that I own. Period. DRM interferes with that.
Now, what this chick did wasn't even *that*. She didn't make a copy. She just made it available. Whatever prior precedent some may claim there is, I'm not sure how that's a significant difference. She didn't make any profit by making it available and having nobody copy it. But she wouldn't have made a profit by making it available if 1,000 people copied it, either. So what's the deal?!
On the other hand, she made it publicly available. How is intent not part of the valuation here? The only thing on her side in that case is that nobody had yet bothered to copy what she was making available.
I'm not an RIAA apologist and I'm glad to get stuff for free when I know it's from the RIAA, MPAA, etc. I have no moral problem with that. Fuck them. But fuck this chick, too. She says her case is going to be used by the RIAA as a sledgehammer to smash down other people in the future, now. Yeah, guess what? YOU MADE THAT HAPPEN, YOU BITCH. She didn't have a case. She knew she didn't have a case. She knew she couldn't justify making copyrighted material publicly available. She was just hoping on a wing and a prayer that she'd get off on a technicality. And because of that selfish hope, SHE screwed everyone else by GIVING them that sledgehammer, instead of paying a few thousand bucks and settling this civil issue outside of the court.
Nope. I love the shit out of bit torrent. I just downloaded the grindhouse movies this week.
I just don't like assholes wrapping themselves in a movie for the sole purpose of saving their own ass. There are plenty of people whose cases I have supported in the past and I'm a strong believer that citizens should not be brought up on claims of "piracy" when they're not the ones out there making massive duplicated of media to *SELL*.
But this chick? No way. I agree that the settlement is absurd, but no more absurd than the idea someone else presented here that she's some sort of copyright-freedom-Ghandi, sacrificing herself at the batons of the RIAA and the legal system all for our benefit.
So kind of like when you steal a candy bar from a store and the only punishment is to pay back the 55 cents for the candy bar?
Oh wait, that's not how it works...
The way I see it is she paid $2,000 for the activity and she paid $220,000 as a penalty for trying to run and hide under the cloak of the anti-RIAA movement to get herself out of a jam
Right. She's guilty. Just because nobody buys my pirated DVD of 3:10 to Yuma doesn't mean it's okay for me to pirate it and try to sell it. I might contest the idea that one should be liable for making something available that they are not in any way selling or profiting from, the fact is that she made copyrighted materials available.
I have absolutely no problem with her being found "guilty". I only regret that people attempted to make her the poster child for "the cause" as it did nothing but damage it.
Who cares about someone's religious or personal beliefs? They are DEAD. Dead people don't have rights. Dead people don't get to vote, drive a car or peaceably assemble. And just like no person's beliefs while living should be able to terminate the life of another innocent person, their ignorant choices should not negatively affect an innocent living person after their death, either.
Some religious practices have historically involved sending peopel out to sea on a burning raft or tacking their bodies, uncovered, to the side of a cliff. We don't allow this, for the health and well-being of our society. Likewise, rather than simply letting someone's rotting corpse consume space in the ground, it is in the interest of society to make use of their body parts.
It's not a matter of being disrespectful of heartless. It's matter of practicality.
No. This person was solely thinking of themselves and then decided to align themselves with an existing movement to gain support and assistance based solely on that association for further personal gain. This is a person damaging an existing sentiment and position by trying to make themselves "our" poster-child for being victimized. And because they are such a poor example of other real, legitimate victims in this arena, they have done nothing but deteriorate our position in the long run.
It's hard to keep all these people and cases straight, but isn't this the woman who was very clearly absolutely guilty? I may disagree with the criminalization of downloading music over the internet and all, but it is apparently currently decided that it _is_ completely illegal. And if I recall the case, she was the one who we all agreed was clearly completely guilty.
So in what way is she the victim, again? I mean, I know it's hard to imagine any parent being guilty of anything, because people who give birth are the most saintly, self-sacrificing people on the planet and all . . . but I'm pretty sure she was clearly guilty from day one. And apparently, so did the courts.
It's unfortunate that this was the first real attempt to prove either side in a court of law, in the vast sea of other potential cases that could have stepped up and presented the opposing side. From what I've understood of this case, it was more an issue of "oh shit, I got caught doing something clearly illegal -- I better jump on that EFF information wants to be free bandwagon thing I heard about!".
It should be the case everywhere. What am I going to do with my organs when I'm dead? Why should someone else die, because I was too lazy or ignorant to become an organ donor?
I've already given up. The internet is just turning into one giant party phone. Like the chat lines they used to advertise in the middle of the night in the late 1980s. If you can cash in on that sad state of affairs, I guess you might as well. Can't blame any company that does. Perhaps some day that will fade away and the internet will become something slightly less sophomoric and navel-gazing. Yes, part of the internet still serves a purpose other than trying to score with teenage girls and watching the video at 2girls1cup.com, but not much.
Wake me up when MMORPGs are more about "finding the perfect character template" and aren't just a bunch of linear single player stories conducted online side by side with other players and I can have a real impact on the world around me and the society and story in general.
Until then, I'll leave MMORPGs back in the dust where I left them so the house-fraus and Ritalin kids can continue spazzing over them.
By "flexibility", you mean "use javascript or MSVbActiveFlashScript"?
I wish the focus wasn't put on the fancy-pants Compiz/Beryl crap. I suppose that stuff is nice until a certain point, but with all of the aspects of the linux (and Ubuntu/Kubuntu specifically) desktop, having window shadows and transparency is nowhere near the top. How about changes that actually impact the robustness of the user experience?
I use KDE, because a lot of the apps I like most are on it (like kate, which seems to have no peer on GNOME) and it doesn't have Compiz by default. I did compile and install it once, but found that a big negative was that while it would make windows fold up like a paper plane and fly off the window (ooh, big fucking deal), it also wouldn't let me move any windows around. At all. I suppose it was some hidden configuration somewhere. *shrug*.
Anyway, it got kind of old after about an hour and I removed it. I mean.. shadows and folding windows are nice, I guess... but entirely pointless. And a bit distracting. And the experience is just fine without them.
In a time when there are complaints of limited resources and maintainers, it seems the focus of each release should be more than "ooh, flashy crap!" which it has been the last two releases (at least).
I don't really see how this is a big deal. I have news for everyone in highschool and college -- you didn't invent the internet. You didn't even make it popular. Is it really so shocking that people 35 to 54 (about the same age as the CHILDREN of the men who popularized the internet as we currently know it) are using services on the internet?
This study just shows how self centered kids are these days. Their entire use of the internet revolves around instant messaging and posting naked photos of themselves at beer parties on myspace and they're shocked that people who were 20 when the web started to really take off are making use of it today at the gray old age of 35 to 54?!
Who the hell goes to see a movie during prime time?! More money, bigger crowds and more kids? No thanks.
I really don't care either way. What does it matter if I rent movies on bluray or if I rent them on HD-DVD? It's not like I'm going to own them. And it's not like I'm going to waste my money buying a movie on either format (seriously, how many fucking times can you watch the same god damn movie?!). So they can use whatever they feel like and I'll rent on that format. At least, until everything is instantly available via streaming and physical media won't matter anyway.
Don't forget, Microsoft now also charges $50 for online play for the **PC**, too.
There have been so many games coming out recently that I can't keep up with them. If a game is online multiplayer, I tend to buy it on the release day for the release price. If a game is single player or off-line only, I am more likely to wait until I can buy a used copy for half the price or a little more.
Some games are worth $66 (with tax). Some are not. An MMO might be worth $66, even if you factor in monthly subscriptions. It's hard to justify a button masher with six hours of game play for the same price.
You can see a movie for $5. That's about $2.50 per hour of entertainment. A six hour videogame would be about $11 per hour. I just bought World War Z from Amazon and at $10, that'll give me a lot of reading entertainment at about a buck or so per hour.
Games seem disproportionately expensive. Especially as costs to produce increase and time to beat mysteriously decrease. Whatever happened to games that took forever to beat and still were a lot of fun? I don't want to sit down and beat a $66 game in a single sitting.
I love how everyone who supports candidates who are massively backed by corporations and special interests (which is the only kind of viable candidate) are attacking him for being "backed" by a corporation. I mean . . . seriously. Pot. Kettle. Black.
That was my point.
Books on the best seller list today are notable. But what about all of the great books that aren't on the list? There are a lot of crap movies today that won't be remembered by _anyone_ in a couple decades. But they'll still have Wikipedia entries.
For that matter, while I don't think every web comic on earth deserves its own article just for existing, I would point out that just about every band on earth -- even those who have no real following and only play part time after hours in the local bar . . . have wikipedia entries.
There has to be a lot of thought put into what requirements there are for notability. Both sides have great points. Why is someone who writes for boing boing more worthy of a Wikipedia article than someone who has less of a following, but is still important to a bunch of people? Where is the line between notability and sycophantic navel-gazing appear?
Every single movie, comic book, book, song, musician and videogame is archived in the Wikipedia database (or could be -- I've never heard of one being cut off for not being 'notable'). In fact, for a lot of those things, the more obscure the subject is, the more value some people seem to put on it in Wikipedia. But then when it comes to people -- there's suddenly a big level of notability required. Are you Rob Malda? Kevin Rose? That cocaine addict who wrote a crappy book and gives sex advice to retards on G4TV's Attack of the Show? A writer for a gadget site that sold out to AOL? A party favorite like KOS? Well, you get entries.
The current requirements seem to be less about notability and more about fandom. Notability and popularity are not the same thing. Popularity seems to dictate whether you are included.
Of course there's a downside. Wikipedia is supposed to be a comprehensive online encyclopedia. It's not supposed to be an open-ended "who's who" of the world that includes your grandma and everyone on my street. There is a fine line between documenting an even slightly notable person or thing and spamming your content. Should there really be ten billion articles on wikipedia? One for every single human that lives and dies in a decade? Just because there is plenty of storage for articles doesn't mean there shouldn't be some requisite notability level to be included.
Don't get me wrong -- I hate a lot of the idiocy I've seen about "but they aren't notable enough" on wikipedia and I think they are far too extreme. . . but every tool with a comic or a blog doesn't deserve an article in Wikipedia. It's not about advertising your product. It's not a contact database. It's not a resume database.