My disagreement is within after the consumer gets what they paid for. What I mean is that if your ISP advertises Speeds up to 10M always on and Hulu strikes a deal to deliver at 15M, then as long as your ISP does nothing to restrict the delivery of YouTube to below their advertised speeds or limits in usage, then everything is fine and the consumer gets more then they paid for.
Net neutrality is about purposely robbing the users and paying customers by taking acts restricting them to below their expected and advertised speeds or usage because of a payment of third parties. As long as the customer gets what they paid for and the ISP nor anyone working on their behalf, does anything to restrict that, we are fine with giving more. I also understand that network speeds can be effected by a number of things and advertised speeds aren't always possible. The point of it is that when the ISP takes steps or directs another entity to take steps to deliver less.
ALL wars could have been avoided. Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20. I'm sure in a couple tens of years we might even find a way we could have avoided some of our current problems. I might disagree with our pols, but I do think they are doing their best, generally. This isn't an excuse, but... It does lend a certain empathy to their situation.
Well, most all wars anyways. I certainly wouldn't expect a nation to lie down and take the ruler of another as their own when it also takes freedoms and liberties away. And some times, you just can't rationalize with some leaders. That being said, the 20/20 was actually foresight. The end of WWI put in place a mechanism that restricted Germany's ability to arm itself. When they started their build up, they had to rearm or re-militarize the Rhineland (I said Reinhardt earlier and was wrong) in order to get situated in what eventually became WWII. France and England was the appointed watchdogs and were supposed to use force if necessary to stop it. That was the purpose of the demilitarized area.
Instead, both "talked to Germany" and accepted the idea that they were only strengthening their borders and over looked not only the re-arming but looked the other way on the first couple of countries blitzkrieg'd. Had Brittan and France acted as their were supposed to, WWII would never have happened. Hitler himself admitted that if he had been confronted when he moved troops into the Rhineland, they would have been stopped there.
The second issue is Vietnam which was under french control after WWII and was being repatriated. When the north went commie and the south didn't, the french initially attempted to defend the south, even going into the north to do so. This proved overwhelming and we should have been sending support to them per our mutual aid agreements at the end of WWII but we were freshly out of or should I say mired in Korea and no one wanted to play. What happened was that the French declared independent nations and left, we ended up sending advisers over then had to commit large scale troops. Another problem was that we didn't initially send a large enough force over because of fresh memories of Korea and WWII which lead to foot holds and what eventually became the worst part of Vietnam.
But years before either happened, something was put in place that should have, if followed through, stopped the wars as we know them today.
I digress. I do think, though, that some further amount of disclosure is needed to the public. I also think that some degree of this would have prevented both Iraq and Afghanistan from becoming Vietnam-esque quagmires.
The biggest problem with either becoming Vietnam-esque quagmires was the politics. Harry Reed had already laid claim to Iraq being lost, it was over and said we should bring the troops home. The 2004 elections brought about some of the bloodiest fighting over there, Al Qeada even came out in support of John Kerry because he would "cut and run" as the slogan was. Well, actually, it was the democrats Bin laden supported because they were claiming to be pulling the troops out.
Anyways, the resemblance your seeing is an artifact of politicking. The politicking is still going on, it's just not as jaded now. Take the SOFA agreement, Obama's withdraw timeline mirrors the time line in the SOFA agreement spelled out by the Sovereign Iraqi government when in negotiations with Bush. And the troops don't come home, most of them get a name change from soldier to security forces. But we know who is taking credit for it.
This is besides the point, since there is no crime here. If someone wanted to make a game about Iraq they could freely with no legal problems. As we see, there would be an outcry, but nothing outside of public opinion and ethics keep them from actually making it. The debate here is one of decency rather than law.
Sure, I just threw it in to show that it is a topic/issue with other then just games though.
Even this must be balanced somewhat. I think our actual reporting of the wars is TERRIBLE since they don't let us see the real human toll. This, obviously, must be balanced, as we can agree, with respectful treatment of the casualties, and their families. Our wars are already too much like movies or videogames to us at home, for my taste. We get some nice action shots, a row of dry statistics, but no actual feeling for the consequences (both ours, and that of the people whose countries we're in). Yes, there are limits, and those limits should be obeyed, but some dose of the reality should be shown.
In a way, this is a good thing but I also see your point. The problem is that some wars actually need to be fought and the point of a defense is to protect the people from the hardships and realities of war. While we can discuss how much protection is warranted or needed, we don't really want to over expose the public and make the loss of a life something that's meaningless nor do we want them to quiver and pull out before the job is done. I hate to bring up other wars and I do risk invoking Godwin's law here but WWII could have been avoided if the french and English had the resolve to enforce the treaty of Versailles and confronted Hitler when armed the Reinhardt. Vietnam could have been avoided by the US if we properly supported the french some ten years earlier. That didn't happen and the realities of previous wars that did hit them at home prevailed leaving us with two large wars we should have been able to avoid.
This is a good point. I'm not sure how to address that. I think the information should be out there. Perhaps the problem is that it IS a game still.
The information should be out there. They have to deal with it somehow and some time. I guess the issue is more of how it is presented. I went to school with people who lost their fathers or uncles in Vietnam, they eventually deal with it but you can watch how hard it was for some or their mental wondering sometimes when we covered it in history class. I was lucky I guess and My father and uncles who served in Nam all came home.
I guess maybe I'm a little more connected with this then the average person on./. I was wondering why they didn't invent a fake title to a fake battle and then just release the game as it is but under another assumption of when and where. I mean is it is just a game. They could come out with the reality of it later or let people figure it out on their own if it is just a game.
You can sugar coat it all you want, the event in history resulted in the death of that specific soldier. Owned by no one, true, but there are obligations to people who suffered from those events and those who attempt to capitalize from those events. Those obligations lessen with time. All I'm saying is that it's too soon to ignore them.
We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was any other medium besides games. If I filmed a documentary, or a fictionalized movie, or even wrote a book on our current wars (including all the nasty details), no one would care. Well, some people would care a bit claiming that my bias is wrong, but no one would be flat out against me doing it.
Sure we would. It's been discussed so many times over so many other venues that we know have laws stating that no one convicted of a crime can profit from any acts in that crime and that any profit made goes to the families of the victims. After the OJ trial, they were going to make a miniseries according to how the jury ruled and saw the events unfolding, Ron Goldman injected wanting restitution for the children and families of the victims and it was pulled. Right now there is a father of a teen who died in a car accident in California attempting to get compensation for and to stop the use of accident scene photos that somehow got leaked from the CHP (rumor is two CHP dispatchers sold copies to new media) displaying his daughter almost decapitated head hanging outside the window of a wrecked car.
This forces me to ask, why are games different?
I don't think they are. They are just something you pay more attention to giving that appearance to you.
That depends. My parents are rather boring people, but my grandfather fought in WWII, and was among the first to liberate Auschwitz. If someone made a documentary, or biography of him I would expect nothing from it. I would actually be fascinated and somewhat honored by it. If someone made a REALISTIC depiction of Iraq, I also would have no problem with it. Seeing the circumstances our troops are in would build more respect for them, and their situation, even if it might degrade some support for the war. But then again a common theme these days is painting anyone who dissents from the cause, as not supporting the individuals who are fighting for it. Which I find tragic, and absurd.
I guess the point I am making isn't really on the mobidity side but on the effects of the loss to the family. If your parents died when you were 12 and you had to grow up without them, you would eventually overcome any damage to your life as best as you can. But when your 13 and someone is profiting from your parents death a year ago, you could use that blood money to overcome the damages to your life. You should be entitled to some of it or to have them wait until you have recovered.
As for the wars, I just think more time is needed, not that it shouldn't be done.
I am strongly against the war in Iraq(or at least the original premise, I don't think we should pull out now that we own the consequences though), but I have several friends who served in it. All of them have become deeply scarred (psychologically, mostly) from the experience. I have nothing but respect for them, even if I'm against the war they fought in. The war is not the troops.
Sure, I understand and can support your position here. I personally thought the war was 12 years too late and should have happened back in 1995 when they first kicked the UN inspectors out. We would have had more support for neighboring countries which would have likely lead to a full blown confrontation in the initial attack and wiped most of the insurgency out while sending an extremely harsh message to groups like Al Qeada and possible avoiding 9/11. In the middle east, any sign of weakness is considered an insult. This is because they look at strength as the resolve to accomplish something. We spent too many years letting a two bit dictator in Iraq boss us around and pull tricks with no consequences and the rest of the world eventually claiming he is contained and not a problem when consequences were being discussed. This lead Al Qeada into believing that 9/11 would result in the death of a
It might help your argument if you actually, you know, knew the substance of the Dawkins lecture in Oklahoma before commenting on it. But then you wouldn't have much to say, because Dawkins' lecture wasn't nearly as controversial as you'd like to think. Or hope. I'll go into that more in a moment, but first...
Are you seriously attempting to claim that I need to know about something that happened after the fact of people not wanting it to happen to discount all the reason why they didn't want it to happen? I don't need to know anything about his lecture in Oklahoma, all I need to know is about his positions, his statements, and his message before he got there which is what the people were reacting to. His lecture could have been completely different specifically because of the reaction to him showing up.
Again, you might want to actually read the text of the resolution so you could actually be well informed as to what the resolution said. It was a resolution, not a censure statement -- and no, that's not hair splitting, it's a difference with meaning. The resolution says nothing about time for "competing theories," in fact, although it calls for an "open, dignified, and fair discussion of the Darwinian [sic] theory of evolution and all other scientific theories" and then proceeds to tell OU how it ought to be conducting the business of science.
A resolution and a censure statement are effectivly the same things. It doesn't matter because neither is legally binding, they just express an opinion and guide the legislature in tone. Your also being overly anal on the distinction between competing theories and other scientific theories. Obviously is one is accepted over the other, then they do or did compete for the dominant spot.
Fuck, now I know I'm right in that your observations are superficial at best.
The resolution does explicitly state that the Oklahoma legislature opposed Dawkins' visit because of the statments he's made about evolution and the opinions he's expressed about those who do not agree with his viewpoint. That's awfully "noble" of them, until you start to question why the Oklahoma legislature hasn't condemned any fundamentalist Christian clergy for the patently offensive statements they've made about the theory of evolution and its adherents. The difference here seems to be that the Oklahoma legislature thinks that mob rule serves as justification for asymmetric treatment.
I'm not sure why they would have to condemn any religious figures, the statement was about science not religion. There are alternative theories to evolution other the the picture Dawkins paints. The bubble theory of evolution is one I'm quite fond of but fell to the way side some time ago.
All references to religion, religious figures, or members of any religion is completely contrived in your head. More proof of your claims being superficial at best.
Then there's the little detail that after the lecture, the legislators who engineered the aforementioned resolution weren't satisfied, and decided to go on a witch hunt because the university had the audacity to not bow to political pressure. Doesn't this response seem just a bit lacking in proportion? Or is that "justified" because you think Dawkins is a dirty name-caller?
Oh my, so all conservatives are reflective of this one guys actions in which you actually disagree with over an opinion and not anything based in his actions. If the university which is a publicly funded organization had Jerry Falwell preach instead of Dawkins lecturing, you would be in full support of the witch hunt to punish whoever was responsible. And yes, I pulled religion in there not because the censure or resolution implied it but because you already showed your animosity to religion when you thought proper to inject it where it wasn't just so you had something to bitch about ear
I think your transferring something from outside what was said to the mix here. There was nothing implied about the taste or respect or treatment of the battle. What was said is that the battle someone died in was being monetized which is different then "demonic hordes from hell".
"Art that discusses tragedy should not be sold"
I'm not sure how you even got that from my statement. I specifically listed where I though the woman and her kids should get some of the profit that is monetizing the death of their husband and father. Give it enough time that they have moved their life on and the loss isn't impacting them as much and their claim to some of the profits diminish.
"I don't understand the meaning of the word "literally""
No, their blood is figuratively, the loss of their blood and a profit attempt from that is "literally" as in real and is their relatives death that is being profited from if the game comes to the stores.
I'm glad you have karma to burn though, it looks like you were doing little more then trolling.
The paper I linked to equalized the dollar spen among the different countries in purchasing power parity and then compared the spending to the GDP of those countries. So yea, it would be as a percentage of GDP.
As for your observations, we are talking about total public and private sources so some works may not make it public for some time and the range of topics may run past the fields your in/associated with making it appear different then it is. Anyways, I was going entirely from the PDF linked to.
Sure, if the infrastructure is needed and something that can be benefited from. Building a road, tearing it out and then building it again is technically spending on infrastructure. But no one benefits and it's effects on the economy is artificial.
That's why I'm making the point that the spending in this way is something that has to be either needed or that provides a benefit to be effective.
Missing a grandfather doesn't really seem the same as missing a father when your growing up. If the children of those soldiers had not already made their own lives, I would suggest that maybe they might be entitled to something.
However, I'm not sure that a 5 and 7 year old are that separated from the incident. I could agree that it doesn't make much sense when they are fiftey but most of them don't fully understand that daddy died a violent death. that's something a 50 year old can handle from a game a lot better then a teen or preteen.
I sympathize with her, however... We've all lost someone at a point in our lives, and there's countless recreations of it in TV, video games, and movies. Take for instance, my father died years ago from a heart attack --- should we thus ban "Sanford & Son" from reruns because he constantly fakes a heart attack in a humorous manner?
I don't know about you, but I would consider a battle in war to be a little less common then a heart attack. Perhaps if they weren't advertising the battle itself.
I currently serve overseas in England, and I just returned from Iraq 3 months ago. I wasn't pleased about being sent there (from a political perspective) but I did my duty with honor, and worked my ass off while I was there. My wife knows what she signed up for when we got married, since I was already in the military. She wouldn't deserve any money or additional sympathy from anyone that you wouldn't give to a homeless man --- she said "yes, I understand your job is to kill people and break their shit" so to speak.
My hat's off to you. Seriously, I'm taking it off right now while I'm typing and saying thank you for your service with our country and thank you for fighting for the freedoms I enjoy and take advantage of (even if the fight was perverted into something you couldn't support). that being said, I'm not against this title coming out, I just think that the people who left family behind should deserve enough respect to let their children grow up and lead their own lives before the blood of their fathers is profited from.
Seriously, think about that. I'm sure you wouldn't care about someone making a profit from your death if you believed in the principle of why you where serving in the first place. But do you think your wife and kids should have to endure it before they have moved on and started lives of their own? I think that is appropriate, at least wait until the kids are out of school.
Either way, the woman described above does deserve sympathy. Loss of a loved one is hard, though eventual. But let's not put him on an unrealistic pedastal where money flows like rain for those around him. Each life is precious, and should be treated as such.... American or Iraqi, homeless or even "terrorist".
I don't think I'm putting anyone on an unrealistic pedestool, I just want the ability for the children and spouses of the service members who didn't make it to be able to get a decent footing back in life before having it thrown back in their face. I would find it perfectly acceptable for a lawsuit demanding some of the profits if that wasn't allowed.
We are a little further in history with WWII or Vietnam games. The children are grown now and aren't really deprived of a father any more then any grown person would have been.
That doesn't make it more right but it does make it a lot different then a death 4-5 years ago.
Yea, and you don't think that publishing a book in 1936, almost 80 years after the fact, softened any blows or claims to compensation. It's a good thing you posted AC.
Dieing for your country while serving it isn't really the problem here. Some people will consider that heroic while some will look at it as stupidity. Obviously the objective is to get more of them to die for their country then those willing to do it for your country. This has little to do with the like or dislike for the wars. I'm of the belief that it's heroic in that he died doing something he believed in as he was serving his country when they asked him to. The problem with creating a game out of a real life experience is the value of the lives taken and the obligation to those who made it possible (if any).
If I was to profit from your parent's death, would you think you're entitled to some of that? Some people would think so which might be most of the controversy in question. I do know that the concept of a game being made from the battle opened some wounds and there are some people who think they might be entitled to some blood money from their husband's/father's death.
I'm sorry, you missed the part where I said that the US was spending 2.3%GDP already, and also the part where I complained that your article didn't say what sort of research was being funded (hint: basic R&D is important).
Yep, I missed that. But the entire article is about R&D so yes, it's about R&D which is important.
See Keynesian economics. Deficit spending when done right will increase the GDP such that we can repay our investment later - it's a business loan writ large.
When done right is the issue. I do not believe it can be done right by the government which is why I advocate the same deficit creation by tax cuts in which companies that will be implementing the technology can use directly to our benefit. The primary difference will be the government saying DO X with Y amounts of money as apposed to companies or universities (which do profit from R&D) doing Z and deducting part if not all of that from their taxes. X and Y will cause less money to be attributed to Z which is a big part of my factoring.
I'm glad you conceded that we need to rob peter to pay paul.
I'm not sure I conceded the need as much as the happening. In the end, it is basically what will be happening though. I think it will be more productive on the commercial side then the government side though.
I know a single mom of 2 who has to raise her kids by herself because her husband was killed in that specific battle. Demonic hordes of hell don't capitalize on the death of her husband or the kids fathers. It would seem that they should be owed a portion of profit made from their own blood (literally).
Oh, I'll readily admit some of what I referencing when I said that was superficial, in particular the rants on ending research on bear dna and fruitfly research without actually taking the time to figure out why the projects were proposed in the first place. And those didn't even contradict any popular faith. Once again, I know those examples were superficial in the sense that the research was carried out regardless, but that's the message I hear from the leaders of the right: If it sounds boring when reduced to a sentence fragment, it's not worthwhile.
Well, to be fair, McCain isn't really a conservative which is why both, he lost the election and thought he needed Palin to do well with the voters. Palin's comment on the other hand, is a little more rational then it's being given credit for. It wasn't fruit fly research that I saw the criticizing on, it's the research being done in Parris France instead of on the fruit flies right here in America that threaten our own crops and not just the importation of french wine and champagne. No one has yet explained to me why the research needed to be funded and conducted in France and not in the US with US scientist in US facilities and Fruit flies that the US is concerned over.
If you find her comment an attack on science, then I'm not really sure what to tell you.
Now if we wanted to look at their stance on evolutionary biology, was it really necessary to try to ban Richard Dawkins from the state of Oklahoma? Or there's the global warming position where Michelle Bachmann's science lecture in Congress 'proved' that it can't be happening because CO2 is 'natural' and is already 3% of the atmosphere (for reference, it's 0.04% CO2). That's why I think of them as having an anti-science perspective.
I don't remember a ban on Dawkins, I remember a censure statement criticizing the lack of equal time for competing theories and stating that Dawkins is too polarizing for public funded venues. Of course I see the freedom from religion in the same light as the freedom of religion which does question the state or any state resources speaking about it at all. Dawkins does speak about religion and he does call people names.
Anyways, not wanting a polarizing person speaking on the public funded dime isn't really an attack on science, It's an attack on a polarizing person. His message is secondary to say the least. Especially when the school already teaches evolutionary biology. SO obviously, it wasn't evolutionary biology that was the problem, it was his "deliverance" of it.
I still think it is mostly superficial. You should have referenced the fart filtering underwear experiments that got roughly 1 mill in public funding while you was at it. I mean there's a Science issue we can get behind.
I'm sorry I didn't draw a picture for you. The study talked about current funding, expected funding, and the expectation of outsourcing. If you would have just looked at the first few graphs, you would see the total public and private spending listed by country.
Please let me know if you need me to get an exact page number and charts identifier for you.
To what I think is worthwhile? I don't think we are too shabby right now, we are more then double of any other country in the world. In fact, if the 3% estimate is actually 420 billion and the 2009 projections hold true, then we are already 89% to the 3% numbers.
Taxing and deficit spending is my only issue. Tax credits for increased (read new and additional) research could give us the other 11% to meet the outlines goals and have a lot less of a negative impact on existing projects or the nations stability.
I'm not so sure the conservatives are really anti science unless your limiting your discovery to the inclusion of creation. However, Genesis, abiogeneses, evolution, creation and all of that has such a small fraction of influence over science in general.
What your probably really noticing is the affection for spending with a purpose apposed to spending to see what happens then applying it to a purpose. General Science R&D is a lot of both but with appropriation inside the department of energy, or the department of defense, the spending is targeted to a goal of fundamental advancements rather then finding fundamental advancements to see what goal it fits. I know a lot of science money has been sucked into the two wars so retractions from there shouldn't be indicative of anti-science biases or trends.
I seriously think the Anti-Science bias your seeing is more in appearance then anything substantial.
When you spend to get out of a depresion, you have to spend it on something society will have an advantage over. The Japanese markets collapsed and they had people dig ditches just to have another group fill them in. Well, the economy started rebounding so they stopped the program and it collapsed again. They did it again, but this time, they put sewers, water lines, utility cables, in the ditches. They built bridges that made travel easier and so on and when the economy got better, they stopped again and it continued to improve.
Now, the water lines, bridges and all were something they needed in the areas they were placed in. It wasn't a project connecting an island of 6 families who didn't want the thing or a 20 mile longer route in a desert somewhere. The spending has to be productive or else it become a burden that benefits no one. Science R&D has historically been productive, but it's not exactly a sure thing like fixing the leaks in the sewage lines and treating all of the discharge in a town upstream that lowers the costs to purify water for public use down stream or putting a road and bridge in that cuts congestion, accidents and travel time between two points by 20 minutes.
To get an idea on spending, here is a little PDF for you. Essentially, the US outspend every other country in the world by at least twice as much if not more.
you mean like the manattan project? the apollo project? Nasa?
No, I mean private investment in the same areas that increased taxes would siphon from.
Are you going to tell me "girls gone wild" is worthwhile and productive? because a lot of money goes into making those vids and the commercials for them. How about all the R&D being put into more efficiently off-shoring exceedingly higher skilled jobs?
I'm going to tell you that in combination of public and private sources of Science R&D in the US alone is more then twice that of any other nation in the world and that taking from private investments will be taking from the exact same thing it is working for. Currently the combined public and private spending in the US is around 377 billion (projected fro 2009) Girls gone wild really has nothing to do with investments as it is the profit that will be taxed which is in turn invested and yes, some of those profits will be funding Science R&D by nature of investing.
Economics does not have a "goal" of efficiency any more than nuclear physics has a "goal" of producing the biggest, most powerful bomb possible. It needs to be leveraged to the benefit of humanity.
I think your missing the forest for all the trees. Other investments have the exact same if not more benefit over profit and I wasn't limiting my statement to the singular. Other things that can benefit humanity is greater agriculture production, more nutritious foods, disease and drought resistant crops, computer programing that makes complicated tasks easier, devices that conserve energy or recycle waste into usable and productive materials or energy, medical improvements, people keeping their jobs or being secure in knowing they have a place to live, ability to feed their families and bunches of more in which is all in some way is privately funded through investments.
Or trading a short term loss for long term gains. There is no new money, just allocations and priorities, and frankly, we've been slacking on our basic research for a couple decades at least. If it can't be linked to a weapons program, it doesn't get funded.
Short term losses for long term gains is only beneficial if the long term gains are more then the short term losses. That's pretty hard to do when worthwhile investments already contribute to a large portion of the total US's Science R&D spending.
Unfortunately, we really would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. And yes, they are working on the same goals.
Between government and private investment in the US, the US outspends every other country in the world by more then twice as much. We come in as something like 388.5 billion dollarscombined between federal and private US science R&D spending.
You wouldn't necessarily need corporations to invest a percentage of their budget but rather a portion of profits to top the 420 billion number. This can be done by targeted tax cuts like the ones BigOil enjoyed but was criticized as subsidies during the last elections (where R&D and capitol costs of equipment designed to pull energy from less profitable sources of energy like solar, wind, shale oil, and tar sands was credited).
Anyways, allowing up to 5-15% of corporate taxes owed to be placed into new R&D spending would more then increase the amount to above Obama's initiative.
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I see what your saying and agree to an extent.
My disagreement is within after the consumer gets what they paid for. What I mean is that if your ISP advertises Speeds up to 10M always on and Hulu strikes a deal to deliver at 15M, then as long as your ISP does nothing to restrict the delivery of YouTube to below their advertised speeds or limits in usage, then everything is fine and the consumer gets more then they paid for.
Net neutrality is about purposely robbing the users and paying customers by taking acts restricting them to below their expected and advertised speeds or usage because of a payment of third parties. As long as the customer gets what they paid for and the ISP nor anyone working on their behalf, does anything to restrict that, we are fine with giving more. I also understand that network speeds can be effected by a number of things and advertised speeds aren't always possible. The point of it is that when the ISP takes steps or directs another entity to take steps to deliver less.
Well, most all wars anyways. I certainly wouldn't expect a nation to lie down and take the ruler of another as their own when it also takes freedoms and liberties away. And some times, you just can't rationalize with some leaders. That being said, the 20/20 was actually foresight. The end of WWI put in place a mechanism that restricted Germany's ability to arm itself. When they started their build up, they had to rearm or re-militarize the Rhineland (I said Reinhardt earlier and was wrong) in order to get situated in what eventually became WWII. France and England was the appointed watchdogs and were supposed to use force if necessary to stop it. That was the purpose of the demilitarized area.
Instead, both "talked to Germany" and accepted the idea that they were only strengthening their borders and over looked not only the re-arming but looked the other way on the first couple of countries blitzkrieg'd. Had Brittan and France acted as their were supposed to, WWII would never have happened. Hitler himself admitted that if he had been confronted when he moved troops into the Rhineland, they would have been stopped there.
The second issue is Vietnam which was under french control after WWII and was being repatriated. When the north went commie and the south didn't, the french initially attempted to defend the south, even going into the north to do so. This proved overwhelming and we should have been sending support to them per our mutual aid agreements at the end of WWII but we were freshly out of or should I say mired in Korea and no one wanted to play. What happened was that the French declared independent nations and left, we ended up sending advisers over then had to commit large scale troops. Another problem was that we didn't initially send a large enough force over because of fresh memories of Korea and WWII which lead to foot holds and what eventually became the worst part of Vietnam.
But years before either happened, something was put in place that should have, if followed through, stopped the wars as we know them today.
The biggest problem with either becoming Vietnam-esque quagmires was the politics. Harry Reed had already laid claim to Iraq being lost, it was over and said we should bring the troops home. The 2004 elections brought about some of the bloodiest fighting over there, Al Qeada even came out in support of John Kerry because he would "cut and run" as the slogan was. Well, actually, it was the democrats Bin laden supported because they were claiming to be pulling the troops out.
Anyways, the resemblance your seeing is an artifact of politicking. The politicking is still going on, it's just not as jaded now. Take the SOFA agreement, Obama's withdraw timeline mirrors the time line in the SOFA agreement spelled out by the Sovereign Iraqi government when in negotiations with Bush. And the troops don't come home, most of them get a name change from soldier to security forces. But we know who is taking credit for it.
Sure, I just threw it in to show that it is a topic/issue with other then just games though.
In a way, this is a good thing but I also see your point. The problem is that some wars actually need to be fought and the point of a defense is to protect the people from the hardships and realities of war. While we can discuss how much protection is warranted or needed, we don't really want to over expose the public and make the loss of a life something that's meaningless nor do we want them to quiver and pull out before the job is done. I hate to bring up other wars and I do risk invoking Godwin's law here but WWII could have been avoided if the french and English had the resolve to enforce the treaty of Versailles and confronted Hitler when armed the Reinhardt. Vietnam could have been avoided by the US if we properly supported the french some ten years earlier. That didn't happen and the realities of previous wars that did hit them at home prevailed leaving us with two large wars we should have been able to avoid.
The information should be out there. They have to deal with it somehow and some time. I guess the issue is more of how it is presented. I went to school with people who lost their fathers or uncles in Vietnam, they eventually deal with it but you can watch how hard it was for some or their mental wondering sometimes when we covered it in history class. I was lucky I guess and My father and uncles who served in Nam all came home.
I guess maybe I'm a little more connected with this then the average person on ./. I was wondering why they didn't invent a fake title to a fake battle and then just release the game as it is but under another assumption of when and where. I mean is it is just a game. They could come out with the reality of it later or let people figure it out on their own if it is just a game.
You can sugar coat it all you want, the event in history resulted in the death of that specific soldier. Owned by no one, true, but there are obligations to people who suffered from those events and those who attempt to capitalize from those events. Those obligations lessen with time. All I'm saying is that it's too soon to ignore them.
Sure we would. It's been discussed so many times over so many other venues that we know have laws stating that no one convicted of a crime can profit from any acts in that crime and that any profit made goes to the families of the victims. After the OJ trial, they were going to make a miniseries according to how the jury ruled and saw the events unfolding, Ron Goldman injected wanting restitution for the children and families of the victims and it was pulled. Right now there is a father of a teen who died in a car accident in California attempting to get compensation for and to stop the use of accident scene photos that somehow got leaked from the CHP (rumor is two CHP dispatchers sold copies to new media) displaying his daughter almost decapitated head hanging outside the window of a wrecked car.
I don't think they are. They are just something you pay more attention to giving that appearance to you.
I guess the point I am making isn't really on the mobidity side but on the effects of the loss to the family. If your parents died when you were 12 and you had to grow up without them, you would eventually overcome any damage to your life as best as you can. But when your 13 and someone is profiting from your parents death a year ago, you could use that blood money to overcome the damages to your life. You should be entitled to some of it or to have them wait until you have recovered.
As for the wars, I just think more time is needed, not that it shouldn't be done.
Sure, I understand and can support your position here. I personally thought the war was 12 years too late and should have happened back in 1995 when they first kicked the UN inspectors out. We would have had more support for neighboring countries which would have likely lead to a full blown confrontation in the initial attack and wiped most of the insurgency out while sending an extremely harsh message to groups like Al Qeada and possible avoiding 9/11. In the middle east, any sign of weakness is considered an insult. This is because they look at strength as the resolve to accomplish something. We spent too many years letting a two bit dictator in Iraq boss us around and pull tricks with no consequences and the rest of the world eventually claiming he is contained and not a problem when consequences were being discussed. This lead Al Qeada into believing that 9/11 would result in the death of a
Are you seriously attempting to claim that I need to know about something that happened after the fact of people not wanting it to happen to discount all the reason why they didn't want it to happen? I don't need to know anything about his lecture in Oklahoma, all I need to know is about his positions, his statements, and his message before he got there which is what the people were reacting to. His lecture could have been completely different specifically because of the reaction to him showing up.
A resolution and a censure statement are effectivly the same things. It doesn't matter because neither is legally binding, they just express an opinion and guide the legislature in tone. Your also being overly anal on the distinction between competing theories and other scientific theories. Obviously is one is accepted over the other, then they do or did compete for the dominant spot.
Fuck, now I know I'm right in that your observations are superficial at best.
I'm not sure why they would have to condemn any religious figures, the statement was about science not religion. There are alternative theories to evolution other the the picture Dawkins paints. The bubble theory of evolution is one I'm quite fond of but fell to the way side some time ago.
All references to religion, religious figures, or members of any religion is completely contrived in your head. More proof of your claims being superficial at best.
Oh my, so all conservatives are reflective of this one guys actions in which you actually disagree with over an opinion and not anything based in his actions. If the university which is a publicly funded organization had Jerry Falwell preach instead of Dawkins lecturing, you would be in full support of the witch hunt to punish whoever was responsible. And yes, I pulled religion in there not because the censure or resolution implied it but because you already showed your animosity to religion when you thought proper to inject it where it wasn't just so you had something to bitch about ear
I think your transferring something from outside what was said to the mix here. There was nothing implied about the taste or respect or treatment of the battle. What was said is that the battle someone died in was being monetized which is different then "demonic hordes from hell".
I'm not sure how you even got that from my statement. I specifically listed where I though the woman and her kids should get some of the profit that is monetizing the death of their husband and father. Give it enough time that they have moved their life on and the loss isn't impacting them as much and their claim to some of the profits diminish.
No, their blood is figuratively, the loss of their blood and a profit attempt from that is "literally" as in real and is their relatives death that is being profited from if the game comes to the stores.
I'm glad you have karma to burn though, it looks like you were doing little more then trolling.
The paper I linked to equalized the dollar spen among the different countries in purchasing power parity and then compared the spending to the GDP of those countries. So yea, it would be as a percentage of GDP.
As for your observations, we are talking about total public and private sources so some works may not make it public for some time and the range of topics may run past the fields your in/associated with making it appear different then it is. Anyways, I was going entirely from the PDF linked to.
Sure, if the infrastructure is needed and something that can be benefited from. Building a road, tearing it out and then building it again is technically spending on infrastructure. But no one benefits and it's effects on the economy is artificial.
That's why I'm making the point that the spending in this way is something that has to be either needed or that provides a benefit to be effective.
Missing a grandfather doesn't really seem the same as missing a father when your growing up. If the children of those soldiers had not already made their own lives, I would suggest that maybe they might be entitled to something.
However, I'm not sure that a 5 and 7 year old are that separated from the incident. I could agree that it doesn't make much sense when they are fiftey but most of them don't fully understand that daddy died a violent death. that's something a 50 year old can handle from a game a lot better then a teen or preteen.
I don't know about you, but I would consider a battle in war to be a little less common then a heart attack. Perhaps if they weren't advertising the battle itself.
My hat's off to you. Seriously, I'm taking it off right now while I'm typing and saying thank you for your service with our country and thank you for fighting for the freedoms I enjoy and take advantage of (even if the fight was perverted into something you couldn't support). that being said, I'm not against this title coming out, I just think that the people who left family behind should deserve enough respect to let their children grow up and lead their own lives before the blood of their fathers is profited from.
Seriously, think about that. I'm sure you wouldn't care about someone making a profit from your death if you believed in the principle of why you where serving in the first place. But do you think your wife and kids should have to endure it before they have moved on and started lives of their own? I think that is appropriate, at least wait until the kids are out of school.
I don't think I'm putting anyone on an unrealistic pedestool, I just want the ability for the children and spouses of the service members who didn't make it to be able to get a decent footing back in life before having it thrown back in their face. I would find it perfectly acceptable for a lawsuit demanding some of the profits if that wasn't allowed.
We are a little further in history with WWII or Vietnam games. The children are grown now and aren't really deprived of a father any more then any grown person would have been.
That doesn't make it more right but it does make it a lot different then a death 4-5 years ago.
Yea, and you don't think that publishing a book in 1936, almost 80 years after the fact, softened any blows or claims to compensation. It's a good thing you posted AC.
Dieing for your country while serving it isn't really the problem here. Some people will consider that heroic while some will look at it as stupidity. Obviously the objective is to get more of them to die for their country then those willing to do it for your country. This has little to do with the like or dislike for the wars. I'm of the belief that it's heroic in that he died doing something he believed in as he was serving his country when they asked him to. The problem with creating a game out of a real life experience is the value of the lives taken and the obligation to those who made it possible (if any).
If I was to profit from your parent's death, would you think you're entitled to some of that? Some people would think so which might be most of the controversy in question. I do know that the concept of a game being made from the battle opened some wounds and there are some people who think they might be entitled to some blood money from their husband's/father's death.
Yep, I missed that. But the entire article is about R&D so yes, it's about R&D which is important.
When done right is the issue. I do not believe it can be done right by the government which is why I advocate the same deficit creation by tax cuts in which companies that will be implementing the technology can use directly to our benefit. The primary difference will be the government saying DO X with Y amounts of money as apposed to companies or universities (which do profit from R&D) doing Z and deducting part if not all of that from their taxes. X and Y will cause less money to be attributed to Z which is a big part of my factoring.
I'm not sure I conceded the need as much as the happening. In the end, it is basically what will be happening though. I think it will be more productive on the commercial side then the government side though.
I know a single mom of 2 who has to raise her kids by herself because her husband was killed in that specific battle. Demonic hordes of hell don't capitalize on the death of her husband or the kids fathers. It would seem that they should be owed a portion of profit made from their own blood (literally).
Perhaps there is a difference?
Sure I am. But not knowing the difference isn't the problem. Not knowing how to spell and letting spell check do the work is.
But I'm sure that if you can figure out the difference between your and you're, you already knew that right?
Well, to be fair, McCain isn't really a conservative which is why both, he lost the election and thought he needed Palin to do well with the voters. Palin's comment on the other hand, is a little more rational then it's being given credit for. It wasn't fruit fly research that I saw the criticizing on, it's the research being done in Parris France instead of on the fruit flies right here in America that threaten our own crops and not just the importation of french wine and champagne. No one has yet explained to me why the research needed to be funded and conducted in France and not in the US with US scientist in US facilities and Fruit flies that the US is concerned over.
If you find her comment an attack on science, then I'm not really sure what to tell you.
I don't remember a ban on Dawkins, I remember a censure statement criticizing the lack of equal time for competing theories and stating that Dawkins is too polarizing for public funded venues. Of course I see the freedom from religion in the same light as the freedom of religion which does question the state or any state resources speaking about it at all. Dawkins does speak about religion and he does call people names.
Anyways, not wanting a polarizing person speaking on the public funded dime isn't really an attack on science, It's an attack on a polarizing person. His message is secondary to say the least. Especially when the school already teaches evolutionary biology. SO obviously, it wasn't evolutionary biology that was the problem, it was his "deliverance" of it.
I still think it is mostly superficial. You should have referenced the fart filtering underwear experiments that got roughly 1 mill in public funding while you was at it. I mean there's a Science issue we can get behind.
I'm sorry I didn't draw a picture for you. The study talked about current funding, expected funding, and the expectation of outsourcing. If you would have just looked at the first few graphs, you would see the total public and private spending listed by country.
Please let me know if you need me to get an exact page number and charts identifier for you.
To what I think is worthwhile? I don't think we are too shabby right now, we are more then double of any other country in the world. In fact, if the 3% estimate is actually 420 billion and the 2009 projections hold true, then we are already 89% to the 3% numbers.
Taxing and deficit spending is my only issue. Tax credits for increased (read new and additional) research could give us the other 11% to meet the outlines goals and have a lot less of a negative impact on existing projects or the nations stability.
I'm not so sure the conservatives are really anti science unless your limiting your discovery to the inclusion of creation. However, Genesis, abiogeneses, evolution, creation and all of that has such a small fraction of influence over science in general.
What your probably really noticing is the affection for spending with a purpose apposed to spending to see what happens then applying it to a purpose. General Science R&D is a lot of both but with appropriation inside the department of energy, or the department of defense, the spending is targeted to a goal of fundamental advancements rather then finding fundamental advancements to see what goal it fits. I know a lot of science money has been sucked into the two wars so retractions from there shouldn't be indicative of anti-science biases or trends.
I seriously think the Anti-Science bias your seeing is more in appearance then anything substantial.
When you spend to get out of a depresion, you have to spend it on something society will have an advantage over. The Japanese markets collapsed and they had people dig ditches just to have another group fill them in. Well, the economy started rebounding so they stopped the program and it collapsed again. They did it again, but this time, they put sewers, water lines, utility cables, in the ditches. They built bridges that made travel easier and so on and when the economy got better, they stopped again and it continued to improve.
Now, the water lines, bridges and all were something they needed in the areas they were placed in. It wasn't a project connecting an island of 6 families who didn't want the thing or a 20 mile longer route in a desert somewhere. The spending has to be productive or else it become a burden that benefits no one. Science R&D has historically been productive, but it's not exactly a sure thing like fixing the leaks in the sewage lines and treating all of the discharge in a town upstream that lowers the costs to purify water for public use down stream or putting a road and bridge in that cuts congestion, accidents and travel time between two points by 20 minutes.
5% of $10 is a lot less then 3% of $100.
To get an idea on spending, here is a little PDF for you. Essentially, the US outspend every other country in the world by at least twice as much if not more.
No, I mean private investment in the same areas that increased taxes would siphon from.
I'm going to tell you that in combination of public and private sources of Science R&D in the US alone is more then twice that of any other nation in the world and that taking from private investments will be taking from the exact same thing it is working for. Currently the combined public and private spending in the US is around 377 billion (projected fro 2009) Girls gone wild really has nothing to do with investments as it is the profit that will be taxed which is in turn invested and yes, some of those profits will be funding Science R&D by nature of investing.
I think your missing the forest for all the trees. Other investments have the exact same if not more benefit over profit and I wasn't limiting my statement to the singular. Other things that can benefit humanity is greater agriculture production, more nutritious foods, disease and drought resistant crops, computer programing that makes complicated tasks easier, devices that conserve energy or recycle waste into usable and productive materials or energy, medical improvements, people keeping their jobs or being secure in knowing they have a place to live, ability to feed their families and bunches of more in which is all in some way is privately funded through investments.
Short term losses for long term gains is only beneficial if the long term gains are more then the short term losses. That's pretty hard to do when worthwhile investments already contribute to a large portion of the total US's Science R&D spending.
Unfortunately, we really would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. And yes, they are working on the same goals.
Between government and private investment in the US, the US outspends every other country in the world by more then twice as much. We come in as something like 388.5 billion dollarscombined between federal and private US science R&D spending.
You wouldn't necessarily need corporations to invest a percentage of their budget but rather a portion of profits to top the 420 billion number. This can be done by targeted tax cuts like the ones BigOil enjoyed but was criticized as subsidies during the last elections (where R&D and capitol costs of equipment designed to pull energy from less profitable sources of energy like solar, wind, shale oil, and tar sands was credited).
Anyways, allowing up to 5-15% of corporate taxes owed to be placed into new R&D spending would more then increase the amount to above Obama's initiative.