Sorry, I still don't buy it. Silk Road sounds like a government-constructed ploy to establish a "scary monster" that justifies pushing restrictive legislation across the internet.
Watson still just seems like a fancy language parser that passes the query along to any number of plugged in databases, as far as I can tell. I don't feel nearly as impressed as I think everyone wants me to be.
So what? How many of us are a corporation with 51,000 employees? You make it sound like this is one guy pulling in five million bucks an hour in his tiny little corner office where he ships out crap for Amazon.com via UPS.
Additionally, they make it seem like the half hour outage (which by the numbers in the blurb means about $2.5m) is so massive and detrimental to Amazon. If they really make $118m/yr, that's $43,000,000,000. So the outage would have cost them about six-ten-thousandths of a percent of revenue. Assuming that nobody who visited during the outage would ever come back and buy the item later. Which they obviously will, because *I* did, as soon as the site was back.
We're all supposed to give a shit, because "guns and school shootings and . . . somehow video games have something to do with something or whatever".
Of course, the title could just as well have been "HOW RACING GAMES HELP FUND TERRORISM". You know, because they license and support the automotive industry and are often forced to portray their cars in a certain way (such as not ever being damaged). And automobiles require fuel, which helps ultimately fund terrorists or something.
But, you know, guns and school shootings and somehow video games have something to do with something or whatever is totally hot right now, so page-views.
I don't see how it's their business to regulate anything you want on your plate. If I can put "FUCK" on my car (and I can, free speech and all), then there's no reason I can't put it on my plate. Government agencies need to get out of the censorship business, in all circumstances.
I'd chastise the person who labeled the download as such. If you make a video and you rate it as "NA-17", then expect to have people make the assumption that your NA-17 denotes the same kind of content the MPAA's NA-17 does.
Does it really matter? It's a piece of theater to placate idiots into thinking anything they have to say -- even in numbers -- means a shit. Make it five people. Make it a million. It's irrelevant.
So you don't want a made-up number for the tax levied to a product that is an imaginary culprit for a freak-event that occurs with one person every couple of years?
First, that's applied to all art and entertainment.
Second, even if it DID project violence on to it -- even if it was in some minor way responsible for desensitizing people (it isn't), then so what? We're going to take an axe to the first amendment, because one person out of every fifty to one hundred million is negatively impacted by stupid shit? Of course not. Which renders all of this fucking moot.
Well, the firearms that his mother kept accessible to her crazy son, whom she knew was crazy, obviously aren't to blame. The medication obviously wasn't. It obviously wasn't the anti-depressants which often have a listed side-effect of causing suicidal thoughts in young persons prescribed them, which was at fault. It clearly wasn't the end-of-times apocalypse preparing mother who stockpiled food, weapons, and ammo who was at fault. It clearly wasn't any family or friends or school officials who may have ignored things. It definitely couldn't have been his own fault. Just because it's a thing that one out of like one-hundred-million people do, it couldn't have just been an unavoidable freak event that nobody can prepare themselves for or save themselves from and should just accept that sometimes bad shit happens out of the blue with no explanation.
It had to be the video games. Because the news said he enjoyed playing Star Craft II and everyone knows that it's a slippery slope from real-time-strategy games to murdering dozens of toddlers with firearms. And because, while the above things were all fairly unique to this guy and his family, Star Craft II is something that tens of millions of people play. So obviously, that . . . . OH WAIT A SECOND.
I'm for punishing criminals and leaving law abiding citizens the right to own whatever weapons they want. However, it would be dishonest of me to act like it was a copy of Star Craft II (the game news reports stated he played) was used to murder the 20+ people in the latest spree killing, rather than -- you know -- firearms. It'd also be dishonest to act like he was being influenced by Star Craft II, instead of medication. Or that he was influenced by Star Craft II, instead of a crazy end-of-times-preparing mother.
The only thing keeping your precious little boy from sucking on a cock is a trivial interaction in a stupid video game.
Is there a planet just for the atheists to play? I mean, you wouldn't want your precious little babies fake-breathing the same virtual air as a non-believer, would you?! For that matter, maybe there better be a separate planet to relegate the "obviously jewy" players who have names containing "burg" and "stein" in them.
Look. It's simple. Stop talking all sorts of hype and bullshit and then dumping the MPAA/RIAA a shit load of money to go see Hobbit in the theater and buy your fifth iteration of special boxed blu-ray LOTR movies. I got tired of their shit in the 90s and have not gone to see a movie or bought a CD since X-Files in 1998. You're not fucking helpless. It's just fucking movies and there are other (even legal) ways to still be entirely entertained. Your life won't end because you didn't see Looper the month it came out.
Stop willfully being someone's bitch while whining about being their bitch.
Your esteem for the modern day young person is far to great. There are some fantastic rabble-rousing young people out there with tremendous spirit and capacity for critical-thinking who act on principal, but the overwhelming majority are the sheep that they've been raised to be by the same institution you're not suggesting they counter.
Slashdot Mirror
By "privacy", they mean "from everyone except the government".
Wow, what a QA nightmare that would be.
Exactly, because what libertarians are really into is giving power to the wealthy and stripping people of their rights. Wait, whu....t?
Sorry, I still don't buy it. Silk Road sounds like a government-constructed ploy to establish a "scary monster" that justifies pushing restrictive legislation across the internet.
Watson still just seems like a fancy language parser that passes the query along to any number of plugged in databases, as far as I can tell. I don't feel nearly as impressed as I think everyone wants me to be.
So what? How many of us are a corporation with 51,000 employees? You make it sound like this is one guy pulling in five million bucks an hour in his tiny little corner office where he ships out crap for Amazon.com via UPS.
Additionally, they make it seem like the half hour outage (which by the numbers in the blurb means about $2.5m) is so massive and detrimental to Amazon. If they really make $118m/yr, that's $43,000,000,000. So the outage would have cost them about six-ten-thousandths of a percent of revenue. Assuming that nobody who visited during the outage would ever come back and buy the item later. Which they obviously will, because *I* did, as soon as the site was back.
We're all supposed to give a shit, because "guns and school shootings and . . . somehow video games have something to do with something or whatever".
Of course, the title could just as well have been "HOW RACING GAMES HELP FUND TERRORISM". You know, because they license and support the automotive industry and are often forced to portray their cars in a certain way (such as not ever being damaged). And automobiles require fuel, which helps ultimately fund terrorists or something.
But, you know, guns and school shootings and somehow video games have something to do with something or whatever is totally hot right now, so page-views.
I don't see how it's their business to regulate anything you want on your plate. If I can put "FUCK" on my car (and I can, free speech and all), then there's no reason I can't put it on my plate. Government agencies need to get out of the censorship business, in all circumstances.
I'd chastise the person who labeled the download as such. If you make a video and you rate it as "NA-17", then expect to have people make the assumption that your NA-17 denotes the same kind of content the MPAA's NA-17 does.
Because Adults Only is an ESRB rating applied to hardcore pornography in games; not games that contain mild nudity and violence.
Like every government agency, once they're formed, their goal is to become as big and expensive as possible to justify their existence.
Does it really matter? It's a piece of theater to placate idiots into thinking anything they have to say -- even in numbers -- means a shit. Make it five people. Make it a million. It's irrelevant.
Further, who needs the Death Star, when you're killing kids with drones?
For that matter, this is all pretty tasteless, considering what we're doing around the globe, right now.
Kind of fucking sick.
You mean, let's see how long until we declare that the Jamaican people need to be "liberated".
Or . . . how long until we need to send a massive force there after a "natural disaster" to help out.
So you don't want a made-up number for the tax levied to a product that is an imaginary culprit for a freak-event that occurs with one person every couple of years?
First, that's applied to all art and entertainment.
Second, even if it DID project violence on to it -- even if it was in some minor way responsible for desensitizing people (it isn't), then so what? We're going to take an axe to the first amendment, because one person out of every fifty to one hundred million is negatively impacted by stupid shit? Of course not. Which renders all of this fucking moot.
Well, the firearms that his mother kept accessible to her crazy son, whom she knew was crazy, obviously aren't to blame. The medication obviously wasn't. It obviously wasn't the anti-depressants which often have a listed side-effect of causing suicidal thoughts in young persons prescribed them, which was at fault. It clearly wasn't the end-of-times apocalypse preparing mother who stockpiled food, weapons, and ammo who was at fault. It clearly wasn't any family or friends or school officials who may have ignored things. It definitely couldn't have been his own fault. Just because it's a thing that one out of like one-hundred-million people do, it couldn't have just been an unavoidable freak event that nobody can prepare themselves for or save themselves from and should just accept that sometimes bad shit happens out of the blue with no explanation.
It had to be the video games. Because the news said he enjoyed playing Star Craft II and everyone knows that it's a slippery slope from real-time-strategy games to murdering dozens of toddlers with firearms. And because, while the above things were all fairly unique to this guy and his family, Star Craft II is something that tens of millions of people play. So obviously, that . . . . OH WAIT A SECOND.
I'm for punishing criminals and leaving law abiding citizens the right to own whatever weapons they want. However, it would be dishonest of me to act like it was a copy of Star Craft II (the game news reports stated he played) was used to murder the 20+ people in the latest spree killing, rather than -- you know -- firearms. It'd also be dishonest to act like he was being influenced by Star Craft II, instead of medication. Or that he was influenced by Star Craft II, instead of a crazy end-of-times-preparing mother.
Bioware hasn't been "Bioware" in quite awhile, sadly.
The only thing keeping your precious little boy from sucking on a cock is a trivial interaction in a stupid video game.
Is there a planet just for the atheists to play? I mean, you wouldn't want your precious little babies fake-breathing the same virtual air as a non-believer, would you?! For that matter, maybe there better be a separate planet to relegate the "obviously jewy" players who have names containing "burg" and "stein" in them.
Sorry, but if the citizens are the owners, they've long ago abandoned the property and have become negligent.
Look. It's simple. Stop talking all sorts of hype and bullshit and then dumping the MPAA/RIAA a shit load of money to go see Hobbit in the theater and buy your fifth iteration of special boxed blu-ray LOTR movies. I got tired of their shit in the 90s and have not gone to see a movie or bought a CD since X-Files in 1998. You're not fucking helpless. It's just fucking movies and there are other (even legal) ways to still be entirely entertained. Your life won't end because you didn't see Looper the month it came out.
Stop willfully being someone's bitch while whining about being their bitch.
And have them call the police on you for identify fraud.
"Every student should refuse to wear the badges."
Your esteem for the modern day young person is far to great. There are some fantastic rabble-rousing young people out there with tremendous spirit and capacity for critical-thinking who act on principal, but the overwhelming majority are the sheep that they've been raised to be by the same institution you're not suggesting they counter.