"Whoever sells at retail or rents, or attempts to sell at retail or rent, to a minor any video game that depicts --"
(decapitation, killing, carjacking, et al)
It doesn't say "realistically" depict. Nor does it even say "graphically" depict; it's a valid statement to say that "Zork depicts a fantasy world" or that "Zork depicts the possibility of gruesome death at the claws of monsters lurking in the dark".
An aggressive, if stupid, DA could twist the law into banning, say, "Axis and Allies" (PC edition only, not board game, as only PC and video games are covered) because it's all about war and killing...
Maybe once you're more than 16, you'll realize that "argument by personal anecdote" is specious. Go find studies of significant size and rigor to make positive, statistically supported assertions one way or the other.
I don't think there is much evidence to justify supporting the bill, particularly at the Federal level instead of state or local where it probably belongs, but that doesn't mean that arguing against it with a bad argument is any good.
Hmmm. Except... why would this be a Federal matter at all, instead of states?
Frankly, I don't buy the "interstate commerce clause" argument in the bill. The ICC was not meant to be a catch-all loophole for the Fed to pass any damn law it wants on the basis that it MIGHT affect interstate trade. Somebody wants this? Fine, talk to your own state legislature for a change.
Um, technically 'Archon' would qualify, as it depicts "the killing of human beings or human-like beings by the use of an object as a lethal weapon or hand-to-hand fighting". So would BattleChess, or, for that matter, Zork I, given that it prohibits depictions in general, instead of specifically realistic graphical depictions.
Most movies aren't interactive... while most games involve rewarding the player for some behaviors and punishing other behaviors. For instance, a pacifist style of play isn't too feasible in most FPSes, because it tends to end your game rather quickly.
H.R. 4645 refers specifically to "video and computer games", not movies.
It doesn't take an expert to judge "War and Peace" or "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as better than, say, random bodice-rippers, or that "Red Mars" has far less cheesy writing than "Battlefield Earth", or even to note that "Snow Crash" has a tigher plot than "Cryptonomicon" (which appears to feature a completely unexplained resurrection, for instance).
It was probably Newsweek; they had an issue highlighting what they termed, "The Age of Muslim Wars" and noting that a disproportionate of the recent conflicts involved religiously-motivated warfare in which Muslims were the aggressors against non-Muslims.
Too a limited degree, I'd agree -- religious fanaticism is not something that lends itself to negotiation and compromise. As such, theocracies, including de facto theocracies where everything is culturally seen through the eyes of religion, are a fair bit dangerous...
But it's not just religion. Fanaticism comes in various forms, like the few remaining diehard Marxist and Maoist rebel movements scattered around the globe, or the militant wings of racial separatist movements.
Let us know when you make peace with bacteria and viruses trying to infect you. There are many abuses that do not involve war, but can only reliably be stopped by it, like genocide and tyranny...
In most one-sided wars of acquisition (instead of punishment or destruction), you would expect the losing side to capitulate rather quickly and probably suffer not that many casualties. Belgium, for instance, probably did not suffer huge casualties against the German invasion in absolute terms (which the study uses); it did not, AFAIK, have a massive army with which to have massive losses, nor did the Germans try particularly hard to obliterate the Belgian citizenry.
(Compare to the German-Russian conflict, where massive losses were pretty much inevitable because both military machines were of such enormity, and neither's government had any intention of backing down quickly...)
Iraq was an odd case because it had a quite large, as measured in persons, but their training, morale and equipment were quite deficient.
I believe that he was complaining more about the wanton inflation of the GPA by the usual extra weighting applied to AP courses, combined with the usual "most people get As and Bs" curves in high school.
Of course, grade inflation occurs at the collegiate level as well... I seem to recall a NYT article pointing out how vast numbers of Harvard students graduate with honors, and how the average collegiate GPA there is suspiciously high.
Yep. I'd hate to be on the school board, however, when harsh grades start coming back and the parents start calling the lawyers.
I'd like to see higher salaries AND much higher professional standards AND for administrators to be able to reward competence, but also purge the incompetents as rapidly as possible. The power of the NEA and the AFT would probably need to be broken, because the unions have serious difficulties owning up to the sorry state of affairs.
Also, school boards and administrators would have to grow spines and not knuckle under to parental threats of lawsuits after little Jimmy gets a well-deserved D and consequently is no longer eligible for a student-athlete scholarship...
Take a group. If you're sorting, there must be some ordering, so we can say that for any pair A and B, either A comes before B, B comes before A, or it doesn't matter which you put first.
Pick a random element P from your set. Some belong before it, some after it, and some are equal. So that's three smaller sets. Apply the same process to the smaller sets, so they're sorted. Then put 'em together, and it's all sorted.
Quicksort is easy, compared to explaining Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity, or even giving some intuitive semantic idea of what an eigenvalue is, let alone singular value decomposition, if your listener does not know linear algebra...
...but it IS mildly disturbing, given that the United States is still the most powerful country on the planet.
A poor, malnourished, illiterate peasant is probably less dangerous than a highly irrational, reasonably well-off person given that the latter will be more likely to have the means to act on his delusions. I'm sure the world would cringe more if a maniac became elected POTUS than if he were head of, say, some relatively non-threatening state like Papua New Guinea.
It's the NSF -- N as in national, not international. And the US government cannot do THAT much to influence education in other countries; hell, the Federals don't do that much about education inside the United States, as its largely a local matter. From their point of view, there's not much point in studying scientific illiteracy in other countries if they cannot affect it...
I can think of a few (currently non-major) religions that involve human sacrifice, a non-zero number of which still have adherents. Under modern value systems, that tends to be considered "bad".
...and, orthogonally, it would be rather nice if e-mail clients generally had transparent support for public-key cryptography, so messages are signed and signatures are verified without significant marginal (per-message, I mean) effort on the part of the user.
Forgeries would be much less believable if such messages were detected as such automagically -- retrieve the alleged sender's public key, verify sig, flag or discard.
The church has a bigger problem since it sat on allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Well-run companies punish employees who abuse their clients; the Catholic Church appears to have protected them, by avoiding publicity through payoffs and moves (without warning the receiving parishes) and not alerting civil authorities.
He's a (former? Don't know if he's still going.) television evangelist infamous for once claiming that God would "call him home" unless he raised several million dollars from his dupes^H^H^H^H^Hviewers.
Hmmm. Adobe took a different approach with Photoshop, if memory serves. There's...
...Photoshop (main version) ...Photoshop Elements (lighter version) ...PhotoDeluxe (lightest version)
with radically different pricing. That way, people don't need to pay for features that they likely won't need.
It's not a bad approach, although for some types of software it might not make sense, and they can still sell w/o squabbling over what's non-commercial.
Note that allowing downloading, even under limited situations, also means tolerating a large number of sources, which dramatically lowers the bar of somebody infringing outside those circumstances. It wouldn't surprise me if were easier to get.MP3s of {insert boy-clone-band-name-here} latest album than it is to get a download of MLK speeches (copyright held closely by the King family, in case you're wondering), simply due to demand.
If the kid and other kids like him created a demand and the $3000 software package got duplicated at least partly because of him, he caused damage.
If he downloaded it instead of buying a cheaper alternative that he might have opted for instead, well, yes, he caused damage.
If he spreads the meme that software infringement is alright, say, "at least if it's Microsoft or {insert big-company-name here}" he's also causing damage, as he's encouraging others. People don't act in isolation. Recall that Napster worked because of numbers -- more people infringing meant lots of sources for people to download.
As for companies, well, that's why there are audits...
Might depend on the system... I seem to recall that different systems have different standards as to how many features they compare between prints, same way DNA matching is normally only done on a small number of genes instead of the whole sequence.
You do not pay me to be able to copy the code that I produce for you - once I have produced it, and have been paid, it is yours to do with as you wish.
That's covered by the usual intellectual property clauses in a contract, so yes, technically you've been compensated for transferring that right -- it's all part of the deal. After all, you COULD have written code on your own, and then struck a licensing deal that required a per-copy fee. You may not have any takers, but that's always an option.
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Note that the bill merely says
"Whoever sells at retail or rents, or attempts to sell at retail or rent, to a minor any video game that depicts --"
(decapitation, killing, carjacking, et al)
It doesn't say "realistically" depict. Nor does it even say "graphically" depict; it's a valid statement to say that "Zork depicts a fantasy world" or that "Zork depicts the possibility of gruesome death at the claws of monsters lurking in the dark".
An aggressive, if stupid, DA could twist the law into banning, say, "Axis and Allies" (PC edition only, not board game, as only PC and video games are covered) because it's all about war and killing...
Maybe once you're more than 16, you'll realize that "argument by personal anecdote" is specious. Go find studies of significant size and rigor to make positive, statistically supported assertions one way or the other.
I don't think there is much evidence to justify supporting the bill, particularly at the Federal level instead of state or local where it probably belongs, but that doesn't mean that arguing against it with a bad argument is any good.
Hmmm. Except... why would this be a Federal matter at all, instead of states?
Frankly, I don't buy the "interstate commerce clause" argument in the bill. The ICC was not meant to be a catch-all loophole for the Fed to pass any damn law it wants on the basis that it MIGHT affect interstate trade. Somebody wants this? Fine, talk to your own state legislature for a change.
MPAA (and thus, movie ratings) != government.
Um, technically 'Archon' would qualify, as it depicts "the killing of human beings or human-like beings by the use of an object as a lethal weapon or hand-to-hand fighting". So would BattleChess, or, for that matter, Zork I, given that it prohibits depictions in general, instead of specifically realistic graphical depictions.
Most movies aren't interactive... while most games involve rewarding the player for some behaviors and punishing other behaviors. For instance, a pacifist style of play isn't too feasible in most FPSes, because it tends to end your game rather quickly.
H.R. 4645 refers specifically to "video and computer games", not movies.
It doesn't take an expert to judge "War and Peace" or "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as better than, say, random bodice-rippers, or that "Red Mars" has far less cheesy writing than "Battlefield Earth", or even to note that "Snow Crash" has a tigher plot than "Cryptonomicon" (which appears to feature a completely unexplained resurrection, for instance).
It was probably Newsweek; they had an issue highlighting what they termed, "The Age of Muslim Wars" and noting that a disproportionate of the recent conflicts involved religiously-motivated warfare in which Muslims were the aggressors against non-Muslims.
Too a limited degree, I'd agree -- religious fanaticism is not something that lends itself to negotiation and compromise. As such, theocracies, including de facto theocracies where everything is culturally seen through the eyes of religion, are a fair bit dangerous...
But it's not just religion. Fanaticism comes in various forms, like the few remaining diehard Marxist and Maoist rebel movements scattered around the globe, or the militant wings of racial separatist movements.
Let us know when you make peace with bacteria and viruses trying to infect you. There are many abuses that do not involve war, but can only reliably be stopped by it, like genocide and tyranny...
In most one-sided wars of acquisition (instead of punishment or destruction), you would expect the losing side to capitulate rather quickly and probably suffer not that many casualties. Belgium, for instance, probably did not suffer huge casualties against the German invasion in absolute terms (which the study uses); it did not, AFAIK, have a massive army with which to have massive losses, nor did the Germans try particularly hard to obliterate the Belgian citizenry.
(Compare to the German-Russian conflict, where massive losses were pretty much inevitable because both military machines were of such enormity, and neither's government had any intention of backing down quickly...)
Iraq was an odd case because it had a quite large, as measured in persons, but their training, morale and equipment were quite deficient.
I believe that he was complaining more about the wanton inflation of the GPA by the usual extra weighting applied to AP courses, combined with the usual "most people get As and Bs" curves in high school.
Of course, grade inflation occurs at the collegiate level as well... I seem to recall a NYT article pointing out how vast numbers of Harvard students graduate with honors, and how the average collegiate GPA there is suspiciously high.
Yep. I'd hate to be on the school board, however, when harsh grades start coming back and the parents start calling the lawyers.
I'd like to see higher salaries AND much higher professional standards AND for administrators to be able to reward competence, but also purge the incompetents as rapidly as possible. The power of the NEA and the AFT would probably need to be broken, because the unions have serious difficulties owning up to the sorry state of affairs.
Also, school boards and administrators would have to grow spines and not knuckle under to parental threats of lawsuits after little Jimmy gets a well-deserved D and consequently is no longer eligible for a student-athlete scholarship...
Take a group. If you're sorting, there must be some ordering, so we can say that for any pair A and B, either A comes before B, B comes before A, or it doesn't matter which you put first.
Pick a random element P from your set. Some belong before it, some after it, and some are equal. So that's three smaller sets. Apply the same process to the smaller sets, so they're sorted. Then put 'em together, and it's all sorted.
Quicksort is easy, compared to explaining Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity, or even giving some intuitive semantic idea of what an eigenvalue is, let alone singular value decomposition, if your listener does not know linear algebra...
...but it IS mildly disturbing, given that the United States is still the most powerful country on the planet.
A poor, malnourished, illiterate peasant is probably less dangerous than a highly irrational, reasonably well-off person given that the latter will be more likely to have the means to act on his delusions. I'm sure the world would cringe more if a maniac became elected POTUS than if he were head of, say, some relatively non-threatening state like Papua New Guinea.
*shrug*
It's the NSF -- N as in national, not international. And the US government cannot do THAT much to influence education in other countries; hell, the Federals don't do that much about education inside the United States, as its largely a local matter. From their point of view, there's not much point in studying scientific illiteracy in other countries if they cannot affect it...
I can think of a few (currently non-major) religions that involve human sacrifice, a non-zero number of which still have adherents. Under modern value systems, that tends to be considered "bad".
...and, orthogonally, it would be rather nice if e-mail clients generally had transparent support for public-key cryptography, so messages are signed and signatures are verified without significant marginal (per-message, I mean) effort on the part of the user.
Forgeries would be much less believable if such messages were detected as such automagically -- retrieve the alleged sender's public key, verify sig, flag or discard.
Just pray that no spammer gets infected with Klez. It's not just friends that keep lists of e-mail addresses...
The church has a bigger problem since it sat on allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Well-run companies punish employees who abuse their clients; the Catholic Church appears to have protected them, by avoiding publicity through payoffs and moves (without warning the receiving parishes) and not alerting civil authorities.
He's a (former? Don't know if he's still going.) television evangelist infamous for once claiming that God would "call him home" unless he raised several million dollars from his dupes^H^H^H^H^Hviewers.
Hmmm. Adobe took a different approach with Photoshop, if memory serves. There's...
.MP3s of {insert boy-clone-band-name-here} latest album than it is to get a download of MLK speeches (copyright held closely by the King family, in case you're wondering), simply due to demand.
...Photoshop (main version)
...Photoshop Elements (lighter version)
...PhotoDeluxe (lightest version)
with radically different pricing. That way, people don't need to pay for features that they likely won't need.
It's not a bad approach, although for some types of software it might not make sense, and they can still sell w/o squabbling over what's non-commercial.
Note that allowing downloading, even under limited situations, also means tolerating a large number of sources, which dramatically lowers the bar of somebody infringing outside those circumstances. It wouldn't surprise me if were easier to get
If the kid and other kids like him created a demand and the $3000 software package got duplicated at least partly because of him, he caused damage.
If he downloaded it instead of buying a cheaper alternative that he might have opted for instead, well, yes, he caused damage.
If he spreads the meme that software infringement is alright, say, "at least if it's Microsoft or {insert big-company-name here}" he's also causing damage, as he's encouraging others. People don't act in isolation. Recall that Napster worked because of numbers -- more people infringing meant lots of sources for people to download.
As for companies, well, that's why there are audits...
Might depend on the system... I seem to recall that different systems have different standards as to how many features they compare between prints, same way DNA matching is normally only done on a small number of genes instead of the whole sequence.
You do not pay me to be able to copy the code that I produce for you - once I have produced it, and have been paid, it is yours to do with as you wish.
That's covered by the usual intellectual property clauses in a contract, so yes, technically you've been compensated for transferring that right -- it's all part of the deal. After all, you COULD have written code on your own, and then struck a licensing deal that required a per-copy fee. You may not have any takers, but that's always an option.