There is no connection between real life and game violence. If you "need that kind of outlet" of violence, playing a game isn't going to do it for you. They're not that fucking realistic.
Do you believe that the crime rate drops are coincidental with video game usage, or that the two are directly related?
Assuming you believe them to be related (because otherwise there isn't anywhere else for this discussion to go), do you have a theory as to what there is about violent video games that causes a reduction in violent crime?
Crime statistics only reflects what has been reported and processed as an actual crime by the system, depending in which country you live this may accurately reflect reality or be completely off.
Barring some mafia-esque effort to actively reduce crime reporting, it's probably safe that the percentage of a given crime that gets reported remains relatively static. I would expect that, even in Japan, a reduction in the number of reported rapes likely correlates to a real world reduction in actual rapes.
Not just in Japan, actually. Last I've seen, just about anywhere where they could put some numbers on historical access to pornography, it correlates the same way with a reduction in sex crimes.
I've run across this as well, though googling for it doesn't quite yield the results I was looking for.
[some stuff about violent movies correlating with reduced crime rates]. Makes sense for the games too, if you think of it. As I was saying, the correlation was already noticed for movies.
I'd expect the effect to be stronger with games. With a movie, you can pretend and fantasize it's you doing it, but a game is much more immersive. If you need that kind of outlet, a violent game is about as close as you can get without actually doing it.
Maybe I have to turn in my nerd card now, but I'm no more comfortable with memorializing Gary Gygax than I am with a marble statue of John Wayne or Madonna.
Thinking that Gygax doesn't deserve a memorial doesn't disqualify you from geekhood any more than hating BSG and Babylon 5 would, or thinking that VB is the ultimate programming language would. Not knowing who he is (or any of the other things I mentioned) on the other hand, barring relative youth, definitely would disqualify you.
In a world where 'suicide' is legal, the government decides who has a 'right' to die, and adopts laws to hurry you along and out of the way. Those in 'charge' of the weak , the disabled, and children, decide if those vulnerable groups are wroth allowing to live.
How do you figure? People are asking for the right to have someone else help them die, without having to worry about what happens to that someone else when they're gone. That's got just about nothing to do with what you wrote.
The short of it is suicide is and should be illegal because it is immoral
Says you. Your morals are not everyone's morals. There are many cultures where suicide is/was accepted as an honorable and dignified way to go.
If the difference between a mans nose a pigs snout primarily accidental, why not butcher men like pigs?
Economics. The amount of time and effort to raise humans until they are old enough to yield a decent amount of meat dwarfs that which it takes to raise a pig.
Same experience here, and without using either of those settings. FF4 is still a hog, but not nearly as bad as FF3 was. I would restart FF3 after I'd left it running for more than 2 days. FF4 seems to get me closer to 5 or 6 days before I notice a problem.
First, let me say, exceptionally informative, thank you.
Now, what happens at the install phase, I can't say. If there were a place for shenanigans to happen, that would be it? But more often than not, any shenanigans are self-inflicted by the customer not giving us the information or physical access we need to do the work.
I had been speaking from personal experience, specifically at the install phase (Non local telco told me that install would occur in 6-8 weeks. I was advised to sign up with the local telco, then switch to my preferred telco after the install). I assumed that this sort of behavior would extend to any required work on my line, but I never had to call anything in before I moved, so I can't dispute what you've said.
They'll find other ways to screw you. If your service is interrupted and you're using Verizon lines but aren't a Verizon customer, your work order goes to the bottom of the pile. If the pile isn't large, they'll still leave some cushion room in case a flood of calls come in from their own customers. And they won't move you up when that flood doesn't arrive.
As a society, we've completely missed the narrow window of opportunity we had to change the system to prevent this kind of abuse.
Maybe I'm an optimist, but I believe that software patents are doomed. The major corporations all have little to nothing to gain from them and waste time and resources acquiring them defensively.
NYC is a single fare for the subway, regardless of how far you're going (much like Paris, or at least, what I remember being told in 7th grade French class oh so many years ago. Our teacher made this sound exotic and unique despite the fact that we lived some 20 miles from the NYC border).
There are also a variety of train systems that bring commuters from various suburbs into NYC, at least some of which operate on some kind of greater distance traveled == greater fare. LIRR for example splits its stations into zones and then your fare is determined by how many zones you cross. There are however no turnstiles or any other recording mechanism. All fares are checked by an on-board ticket collector who will if necessary sell you a ticket at your seat (they don't like this though, and you end up paying an extra fee in the territory of $5 or so)
Well since I and everybody else paid to ride the bus/subway you would think they would have that data already too. Sounds like a great way to track terrorists or sheep as the case my be.
For the NYC subway, you pay at point of entry, and you walk through a turnstile on exit. There's no data on transfers, or which train you got on. There's also nothing to tie your exit to your entrance. Between knowing where each train is at any given moment and rates at which people are entering and exiting each station you could probably build a decent model of how many people are on any given train. Since in NYC pretty much everybody uses a metrocard now you can probably improve the model a bit by looking at repeated points of entry and making guesses about commuting patterns (if 49% of my entries are at point A, 49% are at point B, and 2% are random other stations, then it's likely that I regularly commute from A->B and B->A. Even more likely if the time of day is fairly consistent).
Still, that's a very bitchy model. Tracking a population sample where you know exactly where and when they got on and off, then extrapolating from that sample sounds MUCH simpler.
I've read elsewhere that it's already below 50% on weekends
That disparity is because China and Korea heavily use IE 6 and 7 which skew the numbers higher for IE. In North America IE had less than 50% marketshare for awhile. It is even lower in Europe.
Most machines in China are pirated and therefore do not get Windows Updates which mean they use IE. Korea is IE because all banks and e-commerce sites force users to use activeX controls due to the lack of SSL thanks to US export controls with encryption. This is no longer a problem but Ebay and the banks do not care and still require it.
Even if everyone but China dumped IE tomorrow, you can bet a good 25-35% of IE marketshare would still be there thanks to that market. In other words ignore the IE statistics for the world if you develop websites and just focus on North America. If you need to make an Asian site just write it for IE only.
I see IE usage drop on the weekends and I get little to no traffic from China.
The biggest difference appears to be from mobile. For most traffic we see a hefty dip on weekends and other non-business days, but our mobile traffic shows hardly any variation by day of week.
I do something similar when I'm trying to track down a bug in software. I'll check things that I don't actually think are part of the problem but I want to verify they behave the way I think they do before I move on to something that relies on that behavior.
I'm not sure I agree (I need to dwell on this some more), but I accept that's there's at least an argument to be made that he's acting consistently within his own stated philosophy.
Because some Palestinians invited him to speak and are paying for all his expenses.
This by itself is good, and I'm glad he accepted.
Because some Palestinians are not happy that their money would end up funding his speaks in Israel and would rather not pay anything if he chooses to do so.
It's their money, they can do what they want with it. It's also his life, and he can choose what conditions to accept money under. He has unequivocally stated that control belongs to the end user. Here he's been told they don't want to pay for his trip if he does something that has no bearing on what they've asked him to come and do. Accepting these terms is what makes him a hypocrite. He should have refused the terms.
The rest:
Because some Israeli can make arrangements for another visit (but instead insist in playing the hypocrisy card). Considering that if he accepts the Palestinian terms he will do what was originally agreed: talk to these Palestinians. Considering that if he doesn't accept the terms he wouldn't go to Israel anyway.
That's because there's no logic in hate-based politics.
Now that's a gross misrepresentation of this statement:
RMS is willing to accept conditions on his travel and speaking plans that he would find completely unacceptable in software.
I'd have the EXACT same position if you swapped the roles of the Palestinians and Israelis, or if it were two other random groups who happen to be geographically proximate and don't like each other.
Eddie pointed out the hypocrisy pretty accurately IMHO. RMS is willing to accept conditions on his travel and speaking plans that he would find completely unacceptable in software.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no connection between real life and game violence. If you "need that kind of outlet" of violence, playing a game isn't going to do it for you. They're not that fucking realistic.
Do you believe that the crime rate drops are coincidental with video game usage, or that the two are directly related?
Assuming you believe them to be related (because otherwise there isn't anywhere else for this discussion to go), do you have a theory as to what there is about violent video games that causes a reduction in violent crime?
Crime statistics only reflects what has been reported and processed as an actual crime by the system, depending in which country you live this may accurately reflect reality or be completely off.
Barring some mafia-esque effort to actively reduce crime reporting, it's probably safe that the percentage of a given crime that gets reported remains relatively static. I would expect that, even in Japan, a reduction in the number of reported rapes likely correlates to a real world reduction in actual rapes.
Not just in Japan, actually. Last I've seen, just about anywhere where they could put some numbers on historical access to pornography, it correlates the same way with a reduction in sex crimes.
I've run across this as well, though googling for it doesn't quite yield the results I was looking for.
[some stuff about violent movies correlating with reduced crime rates]. Makes sense for the games too, if you think of it. As I was saying, the correlation was already noticed for movies.
I'd expect the effect to be stronger with games. With a movie, you can pretend and fantasize it's you doing it, but a game is much more immersive. If you need that kind of outlet, a violent game is about as close as you can get without actually doing it.
Bill Stickers is innocent!
Maybe I have to turn in my nerd card now, but I'm no more comfortable with memorializing Gary Gygax than I am with a marble statue of John Wayne or Madonna.
Thinking that Gygax doesn't deserve a memorial doesn't disqualify you from geekhood any more than hating BSG and Babylon 5 would, or thinking that VB is the ultimate programming language would. Not knowing who he is (or any of the other things I mentioned) on the other hand, barring relative youth, definitely would disqualify you.
In a world where 'suicide' is legal, the government decides who has a 'right' to die, and adopts laws to hurry you along and out of the way. Those in 'charge' of the weak , the disabled, and children, decide if those vulnerable groups are wroth allowing to live.
How do you figure? People are asking for the right to have someone else help them die, without having to worry about what happens to that someone else when they're gone. That's got just about nothing to do with what you wrote.
The short of it is suicide is and should be illegal because it is immoral
Says you. Your morals are not everyone's morals. There are many cultures where suicide is/was accepted as an honorable and dignified way to go.
If the difference between a mans nose a pigs snout primarily accidental, why not butcher men like pigs?
Economics. The amount of time and effort to raise humans until they are old enough to yield a decent amount of meat dwarfs that which it takes to raise a pig.
Thank you so much for posting this.
As an English Catholic convert, I am too scared of getting slapped down on /. to post anything on such subjects. You've got guts.
nic
While I don't share your views on the topic, SPEAK UP!
Oh no! Some guys on slashdot might say mean things to me!
Is that so terrible?
No, they just didn't use REAL counterfeit data.
Same experience here, and without using either of those settings. FF4 is still a hog, but not nearly as bad as FF3 was. I would restart FF3 after I'd left it running for more than 2 days. FF4 seems to get me closer to 5 or 6 days before I notice a problem.
First, let me say, exceptionally informative, thank you.
Now, what happens at the install phase, I can't say. If there were a place for shenanigans to happen, that would be it? But more often than not, any shenanigans are self-inflicted by the customer not giving us the information or physical access we need to do the work.
I had been speaking from personal experience, specifically at the install phase (Non local telco told me that install would occur in 6-8 weeks. I was advised to sign up with the local telco, then switch to my preferred telco after the install). I assumed that this sort of behavior would extend to any required work on my line, but I never had to call anything in before I moved, so I can't dispute what you've said.
They'll find other ways to screw you. If your service is interrupted and you're using Verizon lines but aren't a Verizon customer, your work order goes to the bottom of the pile. If the pile isn't large, they'll still leave some cushion room in case a flood of calls come in from their own customers. And they won't move you up when that flood doesn't arrive.
I agreed with you completely until right here:
As a society, we've completely missed the narrow window of opportunity we had to change the system to prevent this kind of abuse.
Maybe I'm an optimist, but I believe that software patents are doomed. The major corporations all have little to nothing to gain from them and waste time and resources acquiring them defensively.
As part of the patent application, doesn't he need to disclose how others can acquire godly powers?
NYC is a single fare for the subway, regardless of how far you're going (much like Paris, or at least, what I remember being told in 7th grade French class oh so many years ago. Our teacher made this sound exotic and unique despite the fact that we lived some 20 miles from the NYC border).
There are also a variety of train systems that bring commuters from various suburbs into NYC, at least some of which operate on some kind of greater distance traveled == greater fare. LIRR for example splits its stations into zones and then your fare is determined by how many zones you cross. There are however no turnstiles or any other recording mechanism. All fares are checked by an on-board ticket collector who will if necessary sell you a ticket at your seat (they don't like this though, and you end up paying an extra fee in the territory of $5 or so)
Well since I and everybody else paid to ride the bus/subway you would think they would have that data already too.
Sounds like a great way to track terrorists or sheep as the case my be.
For the NYC subway, you pay at point of entry, and you walk through a turnstile on exit. There's no data on transfers, or which train you got on. There's also nothing to tie your exit to your entrance. Between knowing where each train is at any given moment and rates at which people are entering and exiting each station you could probably build a decent model of how many people are on any given train. Since in NYC pretty much everybody uses a metrocard now you can probably improve the model a bit by looking at repeated points of entry and making guesses about commuting patterns (if 49% of my entries are at point A, 49% are at point B, and 2% are random other stations, then it's likely that I regularly commute from A->B and B->A. Even more likely if the time of day is fairly consistent).
Still, that's a very bitchy model. Tracking a population sample where you know exactly where and when they got on and off, then extrapolating from that sample sounds MUCH simpler.
I've read elsewhere that it's already below 50% on weekends
That disparity is because China and Korea heavily use IE 6 and 7 which skew the numbers higher for IE. In North America IE had less than 50% marketshare for awhile. It is even lower in Europe.
Most machines in China are pirated and therefore do not get Windows Updates which mean they use IE. Korea is IE because all banks and e-commerce sites force users to use activeX controls due to the lack of SSL thanks to US export controls with encryption. This is no longer a problem but Ebay and the banks do not care and still require it.
Even if everyone but China dumped IE tomorrow, you can bet a good 25-35% of IE marketshare would still be there thanks to that market. In other words ignore the IE statistics for the world if you develop websites and just focus on North America. If you need to make an Asian site just write it for IE only.
I see IE usage drop on the weekends and I get little to no traffic from China.
The biggest difference appears to be from mobile. For most traffic we see a hefty dip on weekends and other non-business days, but our mobile traffic shows hardly any variation by day of week.
I can confirm that -- IE numbers for my employer (mainstream, VERY high volume) hover around 51% Mon-Fri, and around 46% Sat/Sun and Holidays.
I do something similar when I'm trying to track down a bug in software. I'll check things that I don't actually think are part of the problem but I want to verify they behave the way I think they do before I move on to something that relies on that behavior.
Free Software doesn't impose any obligation on "to whom" you can/must distribute.
If I've released some code under the GPL, I can't tell anyone who NOT to distribute it to.
I'm not sure I agree (I need to dwell on this some more), but I accept that's there's at least an argument to be made that he's acting consistently within his own stated philosophy.
Because some Palestinians invited him to speak and are paying for all his expenses.
This by itself is good, and I'm glad he accepted.
Because some Palestinians are not happy that their money would end up funding his speaks in Israel and would rather not pay anything if he chooses to do so.
It's their money, they can do what they want with it.
It's also his life, and he can choose what conditions to accept money under.
He has unequivocally stated that control belongs to the end user. Here he's been told they don't want to pay for his trip if he does something that has no bearing on what they've asked him to come and do. Accepting these terms is what makes him a hypocrite. He should have refused the terms.
The rest:
Because some Israeli can make arrangements for another visit (but instead insist in playing the hypocrisy card).
Considering that if he accepts the Palestinian terms he will do what was originally agreed: talk to these Palestinians.
Considering that if he doesn't accept the terms he wouldn't go to Israel anyway.
is irrelevant.
That's because there's no logic in hate-based politics.
Now that's a gross misrepresentation of this statement:
RMS is willing to accept conditions on his travel and speaking plans that he would find completely unacceptable in software.
I'd have the EXACT same position if you swapped the roles of the Palestinians and Israelis, or if it were two other random groups who happen to be geographically proximate and don't like each other.
Eddie pointed out the hypocrisy pretty accurately IMHO. RMS is willing to accept conditions on his travel and speaking plans that he would find completely unacceptable in software.
That's actually more than I remember.
Read it once around 15 years ago. Never felt the urge to pick it up again. Can no longer remember what it's about.