I didn't see the tape of the last killing (I don't watch much TV) but the police seemed to have a situation that would have been hard for any police force. The problem is that Cin. has had an awful lot of shootings with (in hindsight) very little cause; they just happened to be black people killed by police. Columbus (where I live) is somewhat similar in size, has a (somewhat) competent police force but has seen nowhere near the same problem with killing the wrong people. We are not on the border between North and South and probably have less of a history of direct racial issues, so that the ability of the police force is likely not the only contributor to the difference. Cincinnati police are getting better from what little I know; unfortunately they have a deep hole to crawl out of.
two stadiums for teams that have traditionally rewarded their fans with either stinginess in acquiring/keeping talent (the Reds) or just plain incompetence (the Bengals), paid for with taxpayer money (local sales tax). The Reds actually told the city where they wanted their (free) stadium and the city complied. This is fiscal conservatism, I guess...
the police seemed to have been trained by the LAPD Rampart division (although they're apparently improving...)
These are some of the glories of Cincinnati... The chili and the pigs are good ideas, though. Cincinnati is a pretty city, but I am a clueless liberal and don't understand anything their government does.
It's Digital Rights Management - or, better, Digital Rights Misappropriation, not Digital Restriction Management. It is, after all, your fair-use rights that the music industry wants - the restrictions aren't managed exactly, but are a method for the music industry to appropriate your fair-use rights (or get you to give them up without knowing it).
Digital Rights Management is accurate - the problem is of course that the music industry wants to "manage" rights that don't belong to them.
killing people or committing other violent acts doesn't help or hurt your long-term mission in the last two GTA games. Sometimes killing people you shouldn't kill (in or out of view of a police officer) can make your current mission difficult, but good behavior is not required and sometimes is contraindicated. Streets of LA/True Crime (a similar game) approaches things from the police - there is a slight bonus to not doing bad things but you can achieve your goals otherwise in most cases.
I'm not arguing against these games - I like them - but they don't penalize characters in the long run for bad choices. The consequences of bad acts can be avoided, either thorough escape (Pay'n'Spray) or redoing the missions. The morals of NARC and GTA are probably similar - in GTA there is more room for choices of all sorts and less consequences for them, but the acts that are rewarded in both are similar.
the "feminist movement" hasn't necessarily been the best arbiter of how women should behave, but the cost of contravening it is less than the cost of women trying to make analogous choices 90 years ago. Someone will always be unhappy with the choices I make, and sometimes it will be me. Having lots of bad choices isn't a real improvement either. Overall, objectification is someone else wanting to impose their will upon another, reducing their status to that of an object rather than a human with a will of its own. The strictures are still present now, but they're weaker than they were before, so the consequences of objectification are likely to be less now than previously.
I think that having a spectrum of choices is overall better - some may have preferred the old system, because the cost to them to be happy is higher now than earlier. I think that more people have better ways to be happy now than earlier, and that those ways are less costly to them than previously. The choices and our responses are imperfect because we are, and that won't change anytime soon.
but it wasn't meant to. I guess I think that GTA is the wrong target in this case, because it is explicitly (via the video game rating system) aimed at people who should be able to handle it (or shouldn't be running about free if they cannot). If society feels that games like this are wrong, I think the targeting should be far more comprehensive and consistent, so that it doesn't become a way for individuals to avoid responsibilty for their own choices. Showing the consequences of violence to others and self rather than a cartoony vision of "let's kill someone, and they'll melt away in monents with no harm done" would be a start. Perhaps this isn't the best medium for that, but it might help.
I'm not certain that people were better - they may have been but that had fewer choices and less say in what choices they had. Bad magazines could easily be noted by other people. Lack of attendance at church or other events would be known. You couldn't go online to see anything unusual - you would have to journey far (if you could afford it) or order through the mail which would be seen.
I can't argue that what society holds as good is so, but the choices people had were restrained. Knowing what they would have done in the presence of choices we have now isn't possible, and prevents me from understanding how we've improved or worsened over time.
Another point. Objectification of women might not be good now, but it existed then - just not as blatantly sexual. Women were wives, mothers, or schoolteachers. They could not be trusted with power or choice (what jobs to hold, where to live, etc.) They couldn't hold property or vote. They could sporadically express their will, but their acts were constrained by the expectations of others, for the desires of others. They may not have been exclusively sex objects, but they were likely objects just the same - vacuum cleaners, or money counters, or social ornaments. In a sense, women have more choices and fewer are likely to be objectified now than previously because they can choose their paths and do not have to conform so strongly to the wills and desires of others. There will always be objectification - people want what they want, and sometimes can't see others as anything other than a means to those ends.
more than Hannibal Lecter, Scarface, Enron, MCI/Worldcom, or Tyco executives, or tyrants the world over? Lots of people might consider selling junk bonds like Milliken, doing 18 months in prison and walking away with $250 M ($500 M - $250 M fine) for hurting an awful lot of people (I don't know his crime). Incentives exist for people to do evil - they can profit, and in certain cases (if they are popular, or can afford good lawyers) they have a better than average chance of escaping the consequences. These incentives existed long before GTA, even before the Gilded Age and criminals in suits running oligopolies. GTA variants didn't make these incentives - they were in full force when games such as Defender and Pac-Man were at their peak.
Evil is attractive when its benefits outweigh the costs to conscience and self. In a society that values conscience inconsistently, and values money and fame more, bad actions are likely to happen. When there is less likelihood of profit in doing bad things (and less potential profit), people will do them less. Responsibility to others is disvalued, so the costs of bad acts to conscience is lower. How will getting rid of GTA make people heed their consciences, particularly when the institutions of society either 1) aren't certain what conscience should say or 2) do not profit from conscience?
Of course, it isn't like this hasn't happened before. Judas Priest, and Kojak have been targets of lawsuits arguing that they caused violent acts. Ultimately these lawsuits failed, in part because they lacked what you claim you wish to invoke - responsibility. People have the capacity to make good choices as well as bad - removing the bad choices negates the value of the good ones by negating the self that "chooses" them. Ultimately, assigning blame for societal degradation onto video games distracts us from acting substantively against it - while what we buy and vote for does things we don't like, we do little to act on what we believe (insofar as it costs us - if it costs others, we're fine with that).
Shielding people from making choices you consider bad will only impair their ability to make better choices in the future, which seems like a recipe for either Big Brother or anarchy. Getting rid of games, movies, etc. that are bad for you will not make society better - they are a reflection of us far more than a model, and the motives for their existence will find other outlets which may be even more harmful.
is to ensure that this is an issue for your customers, and to put yourself and your company at great financial risk. In a previous post (post #8435019), I posited that going into business or establishing a contractual obligation with SCO puts EV1 at more risk rather than less from SCO. If that is correct, then EV1 has given away much of their defense (their ability to dismiss a lawsuit against them by SCO) and paid their attacker off (although considering SCO's plan of suing their customers, that doesn't seem like a good defense). This sounds like Czechoslovakia in 1938 claiming that giving up part of their land to Germany relieved them of worries about Germany's territorial ambition. That worked out so well for Czechoslovakia, didn't it?
Then you are "vilified by some diehards within the industry"? No, you should be vilified for your stupidity. Paying SCO to avoid trouble in this case (where it would be both easier and more sensible to avoid it) is like committing suicide for fear of being murdered. You gave up your freedom to secure your safety only to have neither, all while putting you and your customers at risk. I can't fathom why you think this is a good idea - either your legal team failed their EEG tests or there is a big part of this that I am missing.
If the legal opinion here is correct (and it's possible that it isn't), then what EV1 has done is increased the risk to itself while damaging its reputation among the people it advertises to and appeasing the demon of IT known as SCO. Is there any legal or business opinion in which context this makes sense?
Most crime probably doesn't look like the crimes for which Rockstar is being held responsible - there aren't all that many killings by 18 year olds (but I don't have the data, so salting is appropriate). It's hard for me to see anyone killing another person without an understanding of what they have done, even children as young as eight or ten years old. The kids that kill are likely to either have had no other choice, to have been abused (in one of his books, Gavin DeBecker (ex-FBI crime person) said in one of his books that the best ways to avoid having your kids kill you is not to abuse them), or to be sociopathic. Games aren't likely to change any of these (nor are movies or music, etc.) but may determine how they are expressed. Determining how they are expressed is a lot different from determining that they are expressed, and in most cases parents have a formative role.
I think these parents have decided that since everyone else (or a lot of people in any case) is either getting away with bad things or transferring responsibility for them, that they can do so; they are probably uninformed by the idea that they might have had something to do with their child's acts. (Some kids might be sociopathic or evil, and beyond their assistance, but I don't think that's true for most). The problem that they don't understand is that while messing up an adult's life can have deep consequences, most adults either have or can get get the resources to build themselves up afterwards. Kids are just constructing themselves - if mistreated or abused, they may not understand that the abuse is not either a normal state of things or their fault. Thus, bad parenting is a mistake that may never be correctable; in the long run, it may have effects just as bad as abusing adults but be less easily dealt with.
i don't know that financial penalties for parents would help - their other kids if they have any may simply pay for their sins as well, further propagating the stupidity. Criminal penalties are likely to be seen as unfair, and I'm not certain that they are fair in any case. Society as a whole has decided that responsibility is situational, and people are taking advantage of it - in the case of child rearing, the results of this are hard if not impossible to correct, damaging to others who may have been responsible in their rearing, and long-lasting.
The title question still stands as well - why were 14-year olds playing a Mature title? Did the parents know and let them, or did they purchase it and play it secretly?
from what little I know (IANAL - I just read those on/.), the SCO licences open EV1 to potential lawsuits and diminish EV1's ability to have such lawsuits dismissed. This doesn't preemptively eliminate the threat to EV1 Linux hosting, but instead amplifies it.
By buying SCO's licenses (and their FUD), EV1 effectively is providing a hosting environment dependent on the outcome of court proceedings; if SCO wins, they could try to milk EV1 for more money, while if they lose, they could also sue EV1 for money (unless IBM and RedHat grind SCO into asphalt like a good steel-toed boot squishing a cockroach),
Am I missing something, or is EV1 not smart enough to hire good lawyers?
1) Everyone disagrees on which 10% (or less) is not crap.
2) Without the ability for unqualified people to post uninteresting content, the people who have something to express and the ability to express it well might never do so (because they might never think to do so, or because they have a lower opinion of their output than is deserved)..
I don't want someone (not necessarily, just some power in general) telling other people what they should and shouldn't post because it isn't likely that the reviewer knows exactly what is and is not crap. The torrent of useless data isn't good, but my chance of finding something in that pile is nonzero (but low); if it isn't there, my chance of finding the desired information is exactly zero.
If your decision to kill someone is fomented by a video games, you are 1) an amoral SOB and/or 2) a complete and utter moron.
Besides, it isn't like there are any other depictions of violence accepted in our society, right, other than action movies, TV, our foreign policy... In addition there are no other ways in which one would get the impression that we don't value human life as much as we claim to, so I guess GTA:VC, etc. would have a monopoly on hypocrisy in that aspect, right? Oh, and that unlike other adults only actions (alcohol in particular) GTA is advertised far less to those who should not participate and not advertised as a key to attractiveness, happiness, and sex.
So, you have 1) sociopaths who want to kill or 2) morons who want to kill. Although GTA didn't create them and is likely to give no more encouragement than other sources of violence, it's GTA's fault. This logic has so much precedent that it's irrefutable...if you discount the Kojak case (kid claims he killed because of watching Kojak) or the Judas Priest suicide pact case (boys try to committ suicide claiming that JP led them to do so - one died, while one was horribly maimed)...or any of the other cases in this vein.
Stupid or sociopathic people + no/insufficient supervision = bad things. It's like a room full of gas waiting for a spark - blaming the spark doesn't make a whole lot of sense if one realizes that rooms were not meant to be filled with gas.
1) you open up a one-way pipe to that boundless purveyor of FUD and sewage, SCO. SCO gets advertising that they wanted - someone believes their FUD and is willing to pay. EV1 opened a one-way contractual relationship which offers them no protection against SCO lawsuits while increasing the probability that they will be sued. EV1 has likely increased rather than decreased the risks of their Linux servers and increased their legal exposure. In addition, SCO gets some of EV1's money.
2) EV1 is getting advertisements that they couldn't possible buy...because they wouldn't want to. They just told a whole bunch of Linux people (who are likely to run machines at companies who might do business with EV1 and might have input in the choice of a hosting company) that they are supporting the evil that is SCO. You might as well be a financial accounting company for churches who decided to buy indemnification from a Satanic church. it's advertising, but if it costs you business (as this might) I don't see why it's worth paying for.
SCO got money, a pipeline to lawsuits, and positive publicity. EV1 is likely to get negative publicity, lost business, and a morass of potential legal liabilities from SCO lawsuits.
Some advertising (like the advice of stupid people) is worth les than you paid. Unless I am really mistaken, it seems like EV1 bought advertising worth a lot less than they paid, with the prospect of paying even more later. Unless EV1 has investment money/part ownership in SCO this makes no sense at all.
"a***ole", "B@***rd", and "useless, talentless..." already exist, used for example in the well-known the well-known "litigious b@s**rds".
This doesn't count a whole bunch of curse words that insult homosexual people by comparing them to SCO...
my sincere hope is that we will eventually be able to accurately describe Canopy and SCO execs as felons, prisoners, and "Bubba's little b*&ches" when this is done; it doesn't describe what they've done, only what they'll be doing because of it.
1) get book and find 90 secret packages 2) get tank from base (crashing a helicopter near the tank, get to tank, back out like hell) 3) drive tank carefully to the Malibu 4) drive tank fast (point gun behind you, fire rapidly) once you start the mission 5) park tank in front of Quonset hut and kill minders 6) get Lance into tank and run like hell (Comets and tanks don't mix well...for the Comets, and the tank protects you from some of the fire from the sniper) 7) get to hospital
I did this once and it worked well - the main liability is getting to the junkyard (the tank is surprisingly unstable at high speed).
"The Driver" mission is lots of luck. You can block the road in from of the police station with cars, but most of the time it doesn't hurt him (only you). Mostly you have to hope that the other guy gets caught somewhere (like between the building) that the AI can't get him out of.
This is my experience, but YMMV.
What I would like most in SA is the ability to replay missions - when the main missions are clear, the computer assigns random or sporadic missions, either versions of earlier misions or new short-term ones.
but when people make lots of mistakes, should they continue to practice medicine? Let's say that I am an incompetent driver - that I get in lots of accidents, mostly at-fault, or have lots of tickets for reckless driving, DUI, etc. Eventually I won't be able to drive (or it will be extraordinarily expensive for me to do so), and this is probably reasonable. I have shown myself to be a danger to others, and shouldn't be allowed to impose that danger on others.
I don't think people should pursue doctors for simple errors, but (I don't know the source) a small fraction of doctors are responsible for a large fraction (30-50%) of malpractice claims. Medicine is inherent risky - mistakes carry the risks of permanent diability or death, and so any mistake is likely to be bad for someone. If a doctor continues to make mistakes, he either needs to figure out why he is making mistakes and verifiably stop, or he needs to stop being a doctor.
Incompetence at a medical level is not just single instances of errors, but repeated instances of errors (or a single error indicative of stunning stupidity or laziness). When a doctor makes lots of errors, one would have hoped that the AMA or other doctors would have responded with corrective action - but they have not for the most part. When doctors are unable and unwilling to discipline their own for demonstrated incompetence (egregious single mistakes or multiple mistakes), there is present both a legitimate legal malpractice claim (the doctor and others knew that he had problems that went uncorrected, and the knowledge by all of them that mistakes are costly) and no alternative arena to go to (other than criminal malpractice - manslaughter, etc., which may be both incorrect and more difficult to prove).
The right thing is not all that hard in this case. People who make lots of serious errors (>=3?) should stop being doctors, either temporarily or permanently. There should be some sort of training to understand the nature of the mistakes and ways to correct them and to help doctors to prevent such mistakes. This process should be at least partially transparent to patients, so they can be able to trust their doctors. This, however, hasn't happened. Incompetent doctors aren't disciplined often by their peers (who would best understand their mistakes and how to correct them).
The growth in malpractice insurance and lawsuits, I believe, has occurred because doctors are unwilling to remove or punish incompetence - as a result, the only available place to seek justice is the courts. The courts are less likely to understand medical issues, and the more cases they see, the harder it is to separate wheat from chaff, so this leads to more bad cases - cases of people seeking compensation for a mistake undeserving of such, or people out to scam the system.
Doctors make mistakes and that is understandable. When a profession as a whole is unwilling to deal with its mistakes and make efforts to correct them, or is not willing to deal with the minority of its members who are truly and consistently incompetent, then the only means left for those aggrieved by doctors is the courts, and you get what we have now.
If my facts are wrong, please tell me. If the facts are correct, I think that my conclusions are not unreasonable.
this wouldn't be a problem. But, as with lawyers (it is supposed to be difficult to pursue lawyers for malpractice, even for such things as falling asleep during a trial) and police officers (the "blue wall of silence"), doctors decided that protecting the incompetents among them is much more professional than trying to get rid of them (or hold them responsible for their actions). What other routes do the legitimate victims of incompetence have to pursue bad doctors and/or receive compensation for their losses? The AMA probably will do little - other than criminal malpractice (which has an even higher burden of proof), there aren't any alternatives.
If people can't trust that professionals in a field will do the right thing then people resort to the judicial system; if mistakes happen often and people stop trusting professionals in a field (or anyone else), then people will rely on the courts as the sole means to remedy their issues. Once that happens, the sheer flow of complaints almost guarantees that meritless cases will be difficult to separate from valid cases and that the separation will be time-consuming.
If doctors had cared more about providing better care than covering the misdeeds of their bad apples, malpractice suits would likely be fewer, easier dismissed or carried on, and perhaps less costly.
If IBM actually (theoretically) cared about their workers, they might want to track the incidences of diseases, particularly cancer or unusual ailments, to see if their workers had any problems in greater proportion to the general population or other similar populations. If IBM saw an increase, they would know that something was wrong but not necessarily the cause; epidemiological data implicating a primary cause would be nontrivial (or impossible) to get - while they would know of increased risks, they wouldn't have a way to minimize those risks. While IANAL, I don't think a mortality file necessarily implicates IBM in this.
Another poster said that IBM's hazard minimization (at least at their Essex plant) was inconsistent with adequate performance at work. If IBM knew that there was a potential risk (as with nearly all chemicals) and yet did not try to find procedures compatible with minimizing those risks (if that was possible) would that make IBM potentially liable?
In some cases, the procedures, compounds used, etc. may be either trade secrets or confidential knowledge. Thus prospective employees would only know that they don't know what risks are included in the job, while the employer (whose obviously knows their own trade secrets) would know those risks.
Some fields (process chemistry, for example) would imply certain risks but because the company doesn't know what chemicals will be used in a process or has that knowledge under NDA or trade secret protection, you could not know and evaluate many of the specific risks associated with a job before you took it. In addition, employees might not know the risk of a job because the risk from a chemical is unknown (either willfully or innocently). In most cases now, people take precautions as if something were assumed toxic, but in earlier times, for example, workers were exposed to benzene (solvent) and p,p'-benzidine (rubber agent?) only later to find out that the compounds were carcinogens (leukemia and bladder cancer, resp.)
doesn't their authority over any domain naming come from ICANN? I thought that ICANN had authority for naming and subcontracted out some of that authority and responsibility to others such as Verisign. The rights to use unused names might depend on the terms of their agreement, but would probably not belong to Verisign unless it was explicitly given to them (IANAL).
The key part of the SS (SS = Social Security) analogy is not whether SS can open a business, but whether they can use data which they possess but do not own for purposes other than those for which they were given the data. SS could not use such data for something else because it isn't theirs to use, but belongs to the federal gov't (and ultimately the people as a whole). SS could not use or treat common property (their database) as their own; they haven't been (and will, I hope, never be) given that right. If SS can't operate another business (as you said) then the incentive for that act goes away, but the action wouldn't be right - just illegal and stupid. Verisign has not been given the right to use unused namespace as their own, and now is suing because someone prevented them from taking that right. Unfortunately, Verisign doesn't have the same restrictions as Social Security, and so has the desire (and the venality to act on their desire).
I understand your last points, but I don't really what to do about it. As for Verisign, I don't know what to do about them, but I'm hoping there's a nice warm place for them when they die...
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't see the tape of the last killing (I don't watch much TV) but the police seemed to have a situation that would have been hard for any police force. The problem is that Cin. has had an awful lot of shootings with (in hindsight) very little cause; they just happened to be black people killed by police. Columbus (where I live) is somewhat similar in size, has a (somewhat) competent police force but has seen nowhere near the same problem with killing the wrong people. We are not on the border between North and South and probably have less of a history of direct racial issues, so that the ability of the police force is likely not the only contributor to the difference. Cincinnati police are getting better from what little I know; unfortunately they have a deep hole to crawl out of.
the Ronald Reagan Expressway...
two stadiums for teams that have traditionally rewarded their fans with either stinginess in acquiring/keeping talent (the Reds) or just plain incompetence (the Bengals), paid for with taxpayer money (local sales tax). The Reds actually told the city where they wanted their (free) stadium and the city complied. This is fiscal conservatism, I guess...
the police seemed to have been trained by the LAPD Rampart division (although they're apparently improving...)
These are some of the glories of Cincinnati... The chili and the pigs are good ideas, though. Cincinnati is a pretty city, but I am a clueless liberal and don't understand anything their government does.
It's Digital Rights Management - or, better, Digital Rights Misappropriation, not Digital Restriction Management. It is, after all, your fair-use rights that the music industry wants - the restrictions aren't managed exactly, but are a method for the music industry to appropriate your fair-use rights (or get you to give them up without knowing it).
Digital Rights Management is accurate - the problem is of course that the music industry wants to "manage" rights that don't belong to them.
I couldn't think of a better analogy. Sorry.
killing people or committing other violent acts doesn't help or hurt your long-term mission in the last two GTA games. Sometimes killing people you shouldn't kill (in or out of view of a police officer) can make your current mission difficult, but good behavior is not required and sometimes is contraindicated. Streets of LA/True Crime (a similar game) approaches things from the police - there is a slight bonus to not doing bad things but you can achieve your goals otherwise in most cases.
I'm not arguing against these games - I like them - but they don't penalize characters in the long run for bad choices. The consequences of bad acts can be avoided, either thorough escape (Pay'n'Spray) or redoing the missions. The morals of NARC and GTA are probably similar - in GTA there is more room for choices of all sorts and less consequences for them, but the acts that are rewarded in both are similar.
the "feminist movement" hasn't necessarily been the best arbiter of how women should behave, but the cost of contravening it is less than the cost of women trying to make analogous choices 90 years ago. Someone will always be unhappy with the choices I make, and sometimes it will be me. Having lots of bad choices isn't a real improvement either. Overall, objectification is someone else wanting to impose their will upon another, reducing their status to that of an object rather than a human with a will of its own. The strictures are still present now, but they're weaker than they were before, so the consequences of objectification are likely to be less now than previously.
I think that having a spectrum of choices is overall better - some may have preferred the old system, because the cost to them to be happy is higher now than earlier. I think that more people have better ways to be happy now than earlier, and that those ways are less costly to them than previously. The choices and our responses are imperfect because we are, and that won't change anytime soon.
but it wasn't meant to. I guess I think that GTA is the wrong target in this case, because it is explicitly (via the video game rating system) aimed at people who should be able to handle it (or shouldn't be running about free if they cannot). If society feels that games like this are wrong, I think the targeting should be far more comprehensive and consistent, so that it doesn't become a way for individuals to avoid responsibilty for their own choices. Showing the consequences of violence to others and self rather than a cartoony vision of "let's kill someone, and they'll melt away in monents with no harm done" would be a start. Perhaps this isn't the best medium for that, but it might help.
or labor strikes, or disease, or bad food...
I'm not certain that people were better - they may have been but that had fewer choices and less say in what choices they had. Bad magazines could easily be noted by other people. Lack of attendance at church or other events would be known. You couldn't go online to see anything unusual - you would have to journey far (if you could afford it) or order through the mail which would be seen.
I can't argue that what society holds as good is so, but the choices people had were restrained. Knowing what they would have done in the presence of choices we have now isn't possible, and prevents me from understanding how we've improved or worsened over time.
Another point. Objectification of women might not be good now, but it existed then - just not as blatantly sexual. Women were wives, mothers, or schoolteachers. They could not be trusted with power or choice (what jobs to hold, where to live, etc.) They couldn't hold property or vote. They could sporadically express their will, but their acts were constrained by the expectations of others, for the desires of others. They may not have been exclusively sex objects, but they were likely objects just the same - vacuum cleaners, or money counters, or social ornaments. In a sense, women have more choices and fewer are likely to be objectified now than previously because they can choose their paths and do not have to conform so strongly to the wills and desires of others. There will always be objectification - people want what they want, and sometimes can't see others as anything other than a means to those ends.
more than Hannibal Lecter, Scarface, Enron, MCI/Worldcom, or Tyco executives, or tyrants the world over? Lots of people might consider selling junk bonds like Milliken, doing 18 months in prison and walking away with $250 M ($500 M - $250 M fine) for hurting an awful lot of people (I don't know his crime). Incentives exist for people to do evil - they can profit, and in certain cases (if they are popular, or can afford good lawyers) they have a better than average chance of escaping the consequences. These incentives existed long before GTA, even before the Gilded Age and criminals in suits running oligopolies. GTA variants didn't make these incentives - they were in full force when games such as Defender and Pac-Man were at their peak.
Evil is attractive when its benefits outweigh the costs to conscience and self. In a society that values conscience inconsistently, and values money and fame more, bad actions are likely to happen. When there is less likelihood of profit in doing bad things (and less potential profit), people will do them less. Responsibility to others is disvalued, so the costs of bad acts to conscience is lower. How will getting rid of GTA make people heed their consciences, particularly when the institutions of society either 1) aren't certain what conscience should say or 2) do not profit from conscience?
Of course, it isn't like this hasn't happened before. Judas Priest, and Kojak have been targets of lawsuits arguing that they caused violent acts. Ultimately these lawsuits failed, in part because they lacked what you claim you wish to invoke - responsibility. People have the capacity to make good choices as well as bad - removing the bad choices negates the value of the good ones by negating the self that "chooses" them. Ultimately, assigning blame for societal degradation onto video games distracts us from acting substantively against it - while what we buy and vote for does things we don't like, we do little to act on what we believe (insofar as it costs us - if it costs others, we're fine with that).
Shielding people from making choices you consider bad will only impair their ability to make better choices in the future, which seems like a recipe for either Big Brother or anarchy. Getting rid of games, movies, etc. that are bad for you will not make society better - they are a reflection of us far more than a model, and the motives for their existence will find other outlets which may be even more harmful.
is to ensure that this is an issue for your customers, and to put yourself and your company at great financial risk. In a previous post (post #8435019), I posited that going into business or establishing a contractual obligation with SCO puts EV1 at more risk rather than less from SCO. If that is correct, then EV1 has given away much of their defense (their ability to dismiss a lawsuit against them by SCO) and paid their attacker off (although considering SCO's plan of suing their customers, that doesn't seem like a good defense). This sounds like Czechoslovakia in 1938 claiming that giving up part of their land to Germany relieved them of worries about Germany's territorial ambition. That worked out so well for Czechoslovakia, didn't it?
Then you are "vilified by some diehards within the industry"? No, you should be vilified for your stupidity. Paying SCO to avoid trouble in this case (where it would be both easier and more sensible to avoid it) is like committing suicide for fear of being murdered. You gave up your freedom to secure your safety only to have neither, all while putting you and your customers at risk. I can't fathom why you think this is a good idea - either your legal team failed their EEG tests or there is a big part of this that I am missing.
If the legal opinion here is correct (and it's possible that it isn't), then what EV1 has done is increased the risk to itself while damaging its reputation among the people it advertises to and appeasing the demon of IT known as SCO. Is there any legal or business opinion in which context this makes sense?
there'll be spam? (see previous /. articles)
Considering lots of it is advertising US products in US units, the US is either the target and/or producer for an awful lot of spam...
Most crime probably doesn't look like the crimes for which Rockstar is being held responsible - there aren't all that many killings by 18 year olds (but I don't have the data, so salting is appropriate). It's hard for me to see anyone killing another person without an understanding of what they have done, even children as young as eight or ten years old. The kids that kill are likely to either have had no other choice, to have been abused (in one of his books, Gavin DeBecker (ex-FBI crime person) said in one of his books that the best ways to avoid having your kids kill you is not to abuse them), or to be sociopathic. Games aren't likely to change any of these (nor are movies or music, etc.) but may determine how they are expressed. Determining how they are expressed is a lot different from determining that they are expressed, and in most cases parents have a formative role.
I think these parents have decided that since everyone else (or a lot of people in any case) is either getting away with bad things or transferring responsibility for them, that they can do so; they are probably uninformed by the idea that they might have had something to do with their child's acts. (Some kids might be sociopathic or evil, and beyond their assistance, but I don't think that's true for most). The problem that they don't understand is that while messing up an adult's life can have deep consequences, most adults either have or can get get the resources to build themselves up afterwards. Kids are just constructing themselves - if mistreated or abused, they may not understand that the abuse is not either a normal state of things or their fault. Thus, bad parenting is a mistake that may never be correctable; in the long run, it may have effects just as bad as abusing adults but be less easily dealt with.
i don't know that financial penalties for parents would help - their other kids if they have any may simply pay for their sins as well, further propagating the stupidity. Criminal penalties are likely to be seen as unfair, and I'm not certain that they are fair in any case. Society as a whole has decided that responsibility is situational, and people are taking advantage of it - in the case of child rearing, the results of this are hard if not impossible to correct, damaging to others who may have been responsible in their rearing, and long-lasting.
The title question still stands as well - why were 14-year olds playing a Mature title? Did the parents know and let them, or did they purchase it and play it secretly?
from what little I know (IANAL - I just read those on /.), the SCO licences open EV1 to potential lawsuits and diminish EV1's ability to have such lawsuits dismissed. This doesn't preemptively eliminate the threat to EV1 Linux hosting, but instead amplifies it.
By buying SCO's licenses (and their FUD), EV1 effectively is providing a hosting environment dependent on the outcome of court proceedings; if SCO wins, they could try to milk EV1 for more money, while if they lose, they could also sue EV1 for money (unless IBM and RedHat grind SCO into asphalt like a good steel-toed boot squishing a cockroach),
Am I missing something, or is EV1 not smart enough to hire good lawyers?
1) Everyone disagrees on which 10% (or less) is not crap.
2) Without the ability for unqualified people to post uninteresting content, the people who have something to express and the ability to express it well might never do so (because they might never think to do so, or because they have a lower opinion of their output than is deserved)..
I don't want someone (not necessarily, just some power in general) telling other people what they should and shouldn't post because it isn't likely that the reviewer knows exactly what is and is not crap. The torrent of useless data isn't good, but my chance of finding something in that pile is nonzero (but low); if it isn't there, my chance of finding the desired information is exactly zero.
I don't know that impressive is the word I would use...
If your decision to kill someone is fomented by a video games, you are 1) an amoral SOB and/or 2) a complete and utter moron.
Besides, it isn't like there are any other depictions of violence accepted in our society, right, other than action movies, TV, our foreign policy... In addition there are no other ways in which one would get the impression that we don't value human life as much as we claim to, so I guess GTA:VC, etc. would have a monopoly on hypocrisy in that aspect, right? Oh, and that unlike other adults only actions (alcohol in particular) GTA is advertised far less to those who should not participate and not advertised as a key to attractiveness, happiness, and sex.
So, you have 1) sociopaths who want to kill or 2) morons who want to kill. Although GTA didn't create them and is likely to give no more encouragement than other sources of violence, it's GTA's fault. This logic has so much precedent that it's irrefutable...if you discount the Kojak case (kid claims he killed because of watching Kojak) or the Judas Priest suicide pact case (boys try to committ suicide claiming that JP led them to do so - one died, while one was horribly maimed)...or any of the other cases in this vein.
Stupid or sociopathic people + no/insufficient supervision = bad things. It's like a room full of gas waiting for a spark - blaming the spark doesn't make a whole lot of sense if one realizes that rooms were not meant to be filled with gas.
1) you open up a one-way pipe to that boundless purveyor of FUD and sewage, SCO. SCO gets advertising that they wanted - someone believes their FUD and is willing to pay. EV1 opened a one-way contractual relationship which offers them no protection against SCO lawsuits while increasing the probability that they will be sued. EV1 has likely increased rather than decreased the risks of their Linux servers and increased their legal exposure. In addition, SCO gets some of EV1's money.
2) EV1 is getting advertisements that they couldn't possible buy...because they wouldn't want to. They just told a whole bunch of Linux people (who are likely to run machines at companies who might do business with EV1 and might have input in the choice of a hosting company) that they are supporting the evil that is SCO. You might as well be a financial accounting company for churches who decided to buy indemnification from a Satanic church. it's advertising, but if it costs you business (as this might) I don't see why it's worth paying for.
SCO got money, a pipeline to lawsuits, and positive publicity. EV1 is likely to get negative publicity, lost business, and a morass of potential legal liabilities from SCO lawsuits.
Some advertising (like the advice of stupid people) is worth les than you paid. Unless I am really mistaken, it seems like EV1 bought advertising worth a lot less than they paid, with the prospect of paying even more later. Unless EV1 has investment money/part ownership in SCO this makes no sense at all.
"a***ole", "B@***rd", and "useless, talentless..." already exist, used for example in the well-known the well-known "litigious b@s**rds".
This doesn't count a whole bunch of curse words that insult homosexual people by comparing them to SCO...
my sincere hope is that we will eventually be able to accurately describe Canopy and SCO execs as felons, prisoners, and "Bubba's little b*&ches" when this is done; it doesn't describe what they've done, only what they'll be doing because of it.
1) get book and find 90 secret packages
2) get tank from base (crashing a helicopter near the tank, get to tank, back out like hell)
3) drive tank carefully to the Malibu
4) drive tank fast (point gun behind you, fire rapidly) once you start the mission
5) park tank in front of Quonset hut and kill minders
6) get Lance into tank and run like hell (Comets and tanks don't mix well...for the Comets, and the tank protects you from some of the fire from the sniper)
7) get to hospital
I did this once and it worked well - the main liability is getting to the junkyard (the tank is surprisingly unstable at high speed).
"The Driver" mission is lots of luck. You can block the road in from of the police station with cars, but most of the time it doesn't hurt him (only you). Mostly you have to hope that the other guy gets caught somewhere (like between the building) that the AI can't get him out of.
This is my experience, but YMMV.
What I would like most in SA is the ability to replay missions - when the main missions are clear, the computer assigns random or sporadic missions, either versions of earlier misions or new short-term ones.
it doesn't seem very deep, but it seems both relevant to the topic at hand and reasonable. It doesn't provide a solution, but most posts don't anyway.
but when people make lots of mistakes, should they continue to practice medicine? Let's say that I am an incompetent driver - that I get in lots of accidents, mostly at-fault, or have lots of tickets for reckless driving, DUI, etc. Eventually I won't be able to drive (or it will be extraordinarily expensive for me to do so), and this is probably reasonable. I have shown myself to be a danger to others, and shouldn't be allowed to impose that danger on others.
I don't think people should pursue doctors for simple errors, but (I don't know the source) a small fraction of doctors are responsible for a large fraction (30-50%) of malpractice claims. Medicine is inherent risky - mistakes carry the risks of permanent diability or death, and so any mistake is likely to be bad for someone. If a doctor continues to make mistakes, he either needs to figure out why he is making mistakes and verifiably stop, or he needs to stop being a doctor.
Incompetence at a medical level is not just single instances of errors, but repeated instances of errors (or a single error indicative of stunning stupidity or laziness). When a doctor makes lots of errors, one would have hoped that the AMA or other doctors would have responded with corrective action - but they have not for the most part. When doctors are unable and unwilling to discipline their own for demonstrated incompetence (egregious single mistakes or multiple mistakes), there is present both a legitimate legal malpractice claim (the doctor and others knew that he had problems that went uncorrected, and the knowledge by all of them that mistakes are costly) and no alternative arena to go to (other than criminal malpractice - manslaughter, etc., which may be both incorrect and more difficult to prove).
The right thing is not all that hard in this case. People who make lots of serious errors (>=3?) should stop being doctors, either temporarily or permanently. There should be some sort of training to understand the nature of the mistakes and ways to correct them and to help doctors to prevent such mistakes. This process should be at least partially transparent to patients, so they can be able to trust their doctors. This, however, hasn't happened. Incompetent doctors aren't disciplined often by their peers (who would best understand their mistakes and how to correct them).
The growth in malpractice insurance and lawsuits, I believe, has occurred because doctors are unwilling to remove or punish incompetence - as a result, the only available place to seek justice is the courts. The courts are less likely to understand medical issues, and the more cases they see, the harder it is to separate wheat from chaff, so this leads to more bad cases - cases of people seeking compensation for a mistake undeserving of such, or people out to scam the system.
Doctors make mistakes and that is understandable. When a profession as a whole is unwilling to deal with its mistakes and make efforts to correct them, or is not willing to deal with the minority of its members who are truly and consistently incompetent, then the only means left for those aggrieved by doctors is the courts, and you get what we have now.
If my facts are wrong, please tell me. If the facts are correct, I think that my conclusions are not unreasonable.
this wouldn't be a problem. But, as with lawyers (it is supposed to be difficult to pursue lawyers for malpractice, even for such things as falling asleep during a trial) and police officers (the "blue wall of silence"), doctors decided that protecting the incompetents among them is much more professional than trying to get rid of them (or hold them responsible for their actions). What other routes do the legitimate victims of incompetence have to pursue bad doctors and/or receive compensation for their losses? The AMA probably will do little - other than criminal malpractice (which has an even higher burden of proof), there aren't any alternatives.
If people can't trust that professionals in a field will do the right thing then people resort to the judicial system; if mistakes happen often and people stop trusting professionals in a field (or anyone else), then people will rely on the courts as the sole means to remedy their issues. Once that happens, the sheer flow of complaints almost guarantees that meritless cases will be difficult to separate from valid cases and that the separation will be time-consuming.
If doctors had cared more about providing better care than covering the misdeeds of their bad apples, malpractice suits would likely be fewer, easier dismissed or carried on, and perhaps less costly.
If IBM actually (theoretically) cared about their workers, they might want to track the incidences of diseases, particularly cancer or unusual ailments, to see if their workers had any problems in greater proportion to the general population or other similar populations. If IBM saw an increase, they would know that something was wrong but not necessarily the cause; epidemiological data implicating a primary cause would be nontrivial (or impossible) to get - while they would know of increased risks, they wouldn't have a way to minimize those risks. While IANAL, I don't think a mortality file necessarily implicates IBM in this.
Another poster said that IBM's hazard minimization (at least at their Essex plant) was inconsistent with adequate performance at work. If IBM knew that there was a potential risk (as with nearly all chemicals) and yet did not try to find procedures compatible with minimizing those risks (if that was possible) would that make IBM potentially liable?
In some cases, the procedures, compounds used, etc. may be either trade secrets or confidential knowledge. Thus prospective employees would only know that they don't know what risks are included in the job, while the employer (whose obviously knows their own trade secrets) would know those risks.
Some fields (process chemistry, for example) would imply certain risks but because the company doesn't know what chemicals will be used in a process or has that knowledge under NDA or trade secret protection, you could not know and evaluate many of the specific risks associated with a job before you took it. In addition, employees might not know the risk of a job because the risk from a chemical is unknown (either willfully or innocently). In most cases now, people take precautions as if something were assumed toxic, but in earlier times, for example, workers were exposed to benzene (solvent) and p,p'-benzidine (rubber agent?) only later to find out that the compounds were carcinogens (leukemia and bladder cancer, resp.)
doesn't their authority over any domain naming come from ICANN? I thought that ICANN had authority for naming and subcontracted out some of that authority and responsibility to others such as Verisign. The rights to use unused names might depend on the terms of their agreement, but would probably not belong to Verisign unless it was explicitly given to them (IANAL).
The key part of the SS (SS = Social Security) analogy is not whether SS can open a business, but whether they can use data which they possess but do not own for purposes other than those for which they were given the data. SS could not use such data for something else because it isn't theirs to use, but belongs to the federal gov't (and ultimately the people as a whole). SS could not use or treat common property (their database) as their own; they haven't been (and will, I hope, never be) given that right. If SS can't operate another business (as you said) then the incentive for that act goes away, but the action wouldn't be right - just illegal and stupid. Verisign has not been given the right to use unused namespace as their own, and now is suing because someone prevented them from taking that right. Unfortunately, Verisign doesn't have the same restrictions as Social Security, and so has the desire (and the venality to act on their desire).
I understand your last points, but I don't really what to do about it. As for Verisign, I don't know what to do about them, but I'm hoping there's a nice warm place for them when they die...