Liability is one of those attorney-enriching words. Buy a gun, load it, point it at your head, and hurt (if not kill) yourself, and there is no liability. This is because of several long understood characteristics about what a gun does and what happens with high-speed metal projectiles.
Should you incorrectly state the formula for something mixed with sulphuric acid rather than acetic acid stated in TFA, you might have compensatory claim for your subsequent injury.
Software is used to complete a task or stated purpose for the software. You could buy a ladder made of pasta, but it wouldn't hold your weight, once used. In the same way, licenses have legally devolved to limit the wide, mind-staggering number of possible misuses of it. People used Lotus 123 as a word processor, so Lotus came out with Symphony, which was an abject failure. This was because Symphony added a word processor to a spreadsheet product, and people didn't 'get it'.
Windows and Mac UIs worked because of interactivity, but I digress. Let me make the point.
If you open licensing to torts, the relationships between OS, software, usage, common undertanding of computer products, and the inability for people to want to be educated-- just use the stuff-- will become a quagmire of litigation unparalleled in the history of our litigious planet. License reform isn't the answer. A free press not chained to the advertiser's pressures will expose the fraud of specific software/platform/OS quality so that educated users can avoid these products like the plague. This is another good reason for the existence of slashdot, and other non-vendor-attached forms of communications.
Avoid litigation at all costs. If this means switching from one platform to another, fine, but let's also educate civilians on how to protect their stuff. They have no clue, many of them, on how to take even the most simple steps to protect themselves.
They've alread produced 360 degree lenses, and mounts for analog and digital cameras. The math's already been done to change this convex lens structure back to a linear view; it's been around for almost ten years. They have numerous licensees, and so 180 degree lenses seem like a cripple.
Yeah, the post was about as lame as they get. But here are a sample of some of my tricks:
1) probe port 80 on the last few addresses you find, and if you get a web page out of there, look at the page source to see if there are other IPs to look up. Nothing like a badly configured chain to cough some more info from. Probe for other common ports at the end of the chain to see if there's a mail server there; maybe you can make it cough more data.
2) do google or dogpile searches of the IP address, and both the dns names and reverse names; follow each hit until it ends somewhere. Always take notes.
3) try to find email addresses through index engines using the various domain names, and also its NS records, MX records and anything else in DNS that might point to hidden servers in the route(s). Take notes.
4) check various rbls, spamhaus, and so on to see if there are other complaints. Sometimes you can have fun.
5) check any phone numbers; search on those, too. Heaven loves a toll-free # in a spam.
>>Sorry to parent, but people seem to be taking this seriously so I gotta point out that this is BS so hopefully noone takes this seriously...
Oh? Read on.
>"Consider the semiconductor." >>Ok, here is the parent posts first fundamental misconception. Digital doesn't necessarily mean semiconductor. Say, for example CDs which encode digital data using light.
No, you misconstrue it. Transistor logic is what's used to do state changes that amount to the various relationships that form what a CPU does. Go back to your basics. We need the equivalent of optical accumulators in dense forms to make photonic processors feasible.
>"By adding information, you can blend things together, then demodulate them to see what happened as the change in information." >>that isn't how light works, the waves superpose ontop of each other, just like every other kind of wave... >"This modulation mimics how ALUs/accumulators/CPUs work" >>No, no it doesn't.
Yes, it can. When you modulate, endowing information, and sum the modulations, you do the same thing as changing states in the lowly semiconductor when merged modulations are seen by an optical accumulator or reflective accumulator like your own eye. Yes, you've changed the information to create new states that accumulate information. Then it needs to be stored or moved on to be changed again to suit the calculative ends of the program.
>>There is a difference between storing and transmitting information and actual computation. You need some kind of devices which emit light depending on light inputs implementing AND OR and NOT logic.
Yes, we agree that to satisfy Boole's needs, this must be done.
>>Not helping is that this guy sounds like an idiot: >>WTF does "mosh" mean anyway?
Sum, integrate, push together to form a meta value. I can tell you've never had a good punk rock experience.
>>"integer algebraic"?
How much about processor theory do you understand? Is integer algebra via binary summation foreign to you? Perhaps you're not familiar with integer algebra as the root method to obtain the basics of microprocessors.
>>"the electromagnetic spectra" (I guess theres more than one of the electromagnetic spectrum)
I can see that you're on a tangent, here. Yes, there are all sorts of subsections of the spectrum. Consider these spectra as finite sections of frequency ranges. There is one total spectrum. But Ethernet, a baseband technology, starts at 0hz and goes to varying heights of frequency; it's not modulated onto another carrier.
>>"your basic light switch is your basic computer" see above, a SWITCH is one bit of memory -- computation means implementing AND OR or NOT, at a minimum.
An SPST switch is either zero, or one. It's the most elemental binary calculator there is. Run your program and the switch closes, or it doesn't-- it's a computer and you control the logic state. But because it has either state, it isn't a static value. You can add logic onto multiple switches in numerous ways. You can then build truth tables, and so on. This is how the first computational devices were built via binary logic accumulators.
So, mod me down if you'd like. Moderation isn't the point-- photonic CPUs are the point. Building dense arrays of photonic sensors that can have state changes as a result of merging light sources (think loosely of colors, like red and yellow merging to orange, with orange as the new piece of information) can have future application. We can modulate light, change its frequency, make it do tricks by interrupting it in various modulations, then pushing them onto an observeration point to discern changes.
The modulations and summations can be programmed. The result of these inputs are an output. That's what we do in computing--> have inputs, process them, and do something with the outputs, now on a grand scale with the evolution of microprocessor integration capabilities and the surrounding chipsets that make use of I/O.
Consider the semiconductor. The way we work today is based on binary elemental logic-- on, off, unknown/neutral. Your basic light switch (SPST) is your basic computer, but it can't count too well.
The evolved state of computing uses Boolean logic to mosh states together into integer algebraic, then other kinds of math transformations.
Now, consider what light does, and how it flows. Light (actually this segment of the electromagnetic spectra) has different frequencies, at about the same data rate depending on media. No information there, except frequency differences and blendings of frequencies... lambda moshing.
You can modulate light, like any other electromagnetic phenomena. You can modulate information, therefore, onto light. It's done all the time. By adding information, you can blend things together, then demodulate them to see what happened as the change in information. This modulation mimics how ALUs/accumulators/CPUs work with logic states in some ways, but now we have to multiply the effect to get to significant digits and significant logic handling-- math by light modulation and the devices that can do that. But not densely, so far, in the calculative/logic-state change tracking sense.
What of these devices-- aye, thar's the rub. Is there an advantage to using light to do math? Not yet, really. It doesn't meet the state change efficiency model. One day, it might. Today, we lack the ability to make things dense enough. That's why photonic logic may fall short of expectations.
It took a while to find it, but you've done a bad spelling job. Viz:
Re:Ha! (Score:2) by Minna Kirai (624281) on Wednesday April 06, @01:29PM (#12156224) You have accidentally boldfaced the wrong part of the US Constition. Let me help: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
When the USA was young (prior to 1860 basically), it could best promote progress by ignoring patents from other nations. If not for the patent-infringing development of factory technology in New England, the South would've won the War of Northern Aggression.
linguistics P Pronunciation Key (lng-gwstks) n. (used with a sing. verb) The study of the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics
Then says about grammar:
A formal definition of the syntactic structure of a language (see syntax), normally given in terms of production rules which specify the order of constituents and their sub-constituents in a sentence (a well-formed string in the language). Each rule has a left-hand side symbol naming a syntactic category (e.g. "noun-phrase" for a natural language grammar) and a right-hand side which is a sequence of zero or more symbols. Each symbol may be either a terminal symbol or a non-terminal symbol. A terminal symbol corresponds to one "lexeme" - a part of the sentence with no internal syntactic structure (e.g. an identifier or an operator in a computer language). A non-terminal symbol is the left-hand side of some rule.
One rule is normally designated as the top-level rule which gives the structure for a whole sentence.
A grammar can be used either to parse a sentence (see parser) or to generate one. Parsing assigns a terminal syntactic category to each input token and a non-terminal category to each appropriate group of tokens, up to the level of the whole sentence. Parsing is usually preceded by lexical analysis. Generation starts from the top-level rule and chooses one alternative production wherever there is a choice.
Finite and unbounded systems often present a conundrum when projecting either. There've been many that have made what turned out to be hilarious predictions, like the eventual world dominance of OS/2.
Using trend analysis is a good thing. Now that the permafrost is starting to thaw, we know that it can release immense amounts of trapped CO2. Add that to what we churn into the atmosphere, and it adds up to a soup that causes further heat. Unless a good volcano comes along to bounce away solar radiation, the atmosphere gets hotter and hotter. We know the effects of what can happen then.
The doomsayers can, with a deliriously wide standard deviation, say that a thermal cycle has occurred that will cause a lot of harm. The ecosystems are pretty fragile, yet they heal over thousands of years, too. Damaging them is delicate business, especially when the damage is done within a short time frame, so that the disjointed healing systems cannot re-synchronize with each other; they do this normally within their own time domain, rather than linearly across the multiple domains.
This is catastrophic, if the evidence is cited is true, because the rest of the models are pretty well known and accepted, academically.
Ignore it you say? Nero will play Great grandchildren will pray.
You're an editor? How droll. Yes, ten books. Nice sellers. But I need editors. I married one, too.
In terms of the violence of GTA, the simulation gives one the ability to control characters. One chooses to kill a cop, and presses a button to do so. No, it's not real-- but you do participate in the game's metaphor of murder. Kill to survive. How guttering. How unimaginative.
But your tight definition of violence is just, well, goofy. I don't think we can agree here. But thanks for being consistent. If a misplaced apostrophe is so important, then maybe I can do violence by missspelling, too. Getting heeted? Starting to grab yur chest yet? DIzzeee? Kwik-- diyul 911.
Linguistics my ass. It's grammar that you criticize. Linguistics is another topic altogether. Ever read Chomsky? Campbell? Other real linguists? Egads.
In the times of the ancient Greeks and Latins, and other cultures in the before (and after) Christ era, people tried to explain the phenomenon they saw in odd ways. Viz your comment "Behold! Moon goddess is eating the Sun God!"
Now we have referential scientific instrumentation to find out what's actually going on. You can ignore the evidence if you want to. In doing so, you'll be the same as the cardinals at the Inquisition.
These models aren't specious. They're derived from a lot of evidence. Like evidence? Like going into a hospital to have complicated surgery done that saves your life? No modern surgery exists today without a lot of the same scientific discipline that's gone into what you've read, if you RTFA.
Your haiku is as idiotic as your denial of the damage already done, and the likelihood that much of the ill effects will last through history.
The Bush administration has blithely ignored the problem. Clinton didn't do very well. Bush the Elder did even more poorly. Carter tried. Ford didn't have the first brain in his body. Nixon plainly stank at it. Johnson tried. Eisenhower tried. The rest is before I was born.
Oh, let's look at Kyoto, as an example. Or, rather, let's not. I detect a distinct lack of willingness on your part to concede the possibility that you might be wrong. This planet has finite resources and we're polluting the place where my sons, daughters, grandsons/daughters, etc will have to live. I would have liked to have someone several generations downstream say, gosh at that point, we'd actually evolved to where we cared about what happened because we saw a clear and present danger to the earth caused by its human populace rather than natural events. But I digress.
First, I don't "crave government branding". I'm suspect of what's done.... and will admit that some ratings are done seemingly arbitrarily; I would push towards a more conservative side from many perspectives, because I have a pacifistic philosophy. I abhor violence and see violence as an easy solution. Reading about violence and participating in its emulation are two different things. I've read many volumes on WW I & II, and the US war between the states. But that doesn't make me want to pick up a gun and volunteer for Iraq.
In the same way of thinking, I don't want to find myself actively carving up people in Wolfenstein 3D, no matter how evil I believe Nazi's are, because it's participatory violence. So is GTA, along with a sad value system. Sure, it's a game, you might say. Some people don't know where the lines are drawn (even in their 50's). But a large population of those indivduals that don't know where the lines are under 18.
And so I ally my sentiments with the legislature and governor of Michigan, who believe that selling this partipatory violence to minors warrants a fine and maybe jail. It's ok when a parent has put their (hopefully) values into the context of such participation. If an 18 year old buys an adult rated object and gives it to a minor, then that's a problem-- unless that person is a parent or guardian. Note the phrase, 'parent or guardian'.
There is no fine, and there is no jail, if a parent or other person over 18 does the buying, acknowledging the responsibility endowed by giving it to a minor, who is in fact, not supposed to get this material. The same thing goes for booze in Michigan, although the age qualifications are different still.
The equations to books versus games then follows in this way: You can learn from both. You actively participate in the violence of (as an example) GTA by doing what gets you points in that game, killing cops, running over various locales in the pursuit of car theft. Negative values are rewarded strongly. You have to be pretty ruthless and prepared to kill cops. In real society, this contrasts with what we would prefer to do, no matter whether cops are liked or disliked. They have a job to do that's pretty thankless.
Did this game cause anyone to become a murderous car thief? Likely not, but it did make them behave in an emulation/simulation like one. If they're mature enough to handle it, they survive the entertainment with the experience, positive/entertaining or not/disturbing/neutral.
The difference? The increasingly real emulation/simulation of the actual experience.... these are two different media, two different experiences. When a book is read, it's finished, to be remembered. Games are designed to be played over and over again. The copy of Halo II here is over-used here, but all the players are of age. I'm not one of them; I acknowledge that adults that live here may do so. It doesn't harm me, and the adults aren't harmed, either. If they put it on while my younger child is around, that's a problem for me, and either the child gets booted out or the players do. Sometimes, they now bribe the younger to leave so they can play. That's a good thing. The young one is too tender. That'll change. Until then, that's where I, as a parent, draw the line.
Northern Indiana, while it survived the ice age, was once a huge marsh through the various river valleys that ran through the area. These marshes were drained, just ike Chicagoland was, in the 1800's and 1900's. The remaining silt made for good farm land. The withdrawal of glacial activity merely made it flat and sucseptable to contours that made the marshes and flow. It took several thousand years to make that dirt as black as it is, prarrie grasses, fowl, and trillions of shellfish lived up there. No more.
Now you can have corn chips.
We've put a SERIOUS dent into our plant's ecosystem. Look at all of the species gone, do to man. Look at all the ones on the endangered list(s).
There's overwhelming evidence. Just look at it. It's not disjointed, it's not anecdotal, it's scientific evidence.
Please go back to your job in the Bush administration and stop playing with your computer on the government's time.
You confuse liberarians with civil libertarians. The two are largely not synonomous. I can and do actively restrict what my kids will do. Somethings they'll do anyway. I realize that.
I let them read what they want; I have over 3000 books in my library and am the author of ten. I've seen Anais Nin books missing from the bookshelves, only to mysteriously return. So did the Joy of Sex for a while. I don't hide these, nor do I encourage them to read them at age 10.
Your use of metaphor to extrapolate clearly normal activities from those that are clearly the domain of mature individuals, dare I say adult, doesn't make your point.
Having a 10 year old hack another human with a joystick or game controller is a bad idea. It teaches the wrong message. I don't even like it when it's an alien.. because it too easily teaches that using one's cunning and skill to kill might be a good thing. It's my believe that violence is only proper in the presence of a clear and present danger to life and limb... and only there. All six of my kids have been to the Holocaust Museum in DC. All six were in tears, and so was I. Man is an animal, and taken to unnecessary cruelty. In a civil society, where there is governance, that governance makes rules to control the civil behavior of its adherents. Those that don't follow those rules, are often punished. Some of those rules plainly are insane, but in my personal belief, not this one. To live within that civil construct, however, I have to follow all of them or suffer the consequences.
Do I believe in government control of everything? No. But I do believe it's a parent's essential right to determine appropriate materials for their children, and excessively violent games are one of those items. Expanding the context, to summarize, doesn't prove your point... it's just bad and inappropriate metaphor.
We disagree in too many ways to make this a useful conversation.
While they get exposed to many things, it's my hope that they have the context to understand them. That's what I see and feel my parental duty and responsibility is to my kids. I know they have access to lots of adult items. They shouldn't. The causal anarchy you propose doesn't help parenting, it thwarts it. While I'm a caring parent, I know many who are not. What of their children? Do we as a society try to protect their innocence until they have the context to understand these clearly adult situations? And who sets that context? I do, as a parent. As you can see, I take it very seriously.
I expose my children to lots of different cultures, and they get exposed to even more, and the pseudo-culture of television. They soon learn that TV is far more make believe than reality. But what of school and playmate situations? Friends? They learn about the happiness and tragedy of life in spurts. I hope to be able to have helped form sufficient values that they can be taken in context. Clearly, other parents do not, and have a very laissez-faire attitude towards parenting. I see a number of those kids turn out well despite that, while others are in and out of juvenile detention and the court systems, or otherwise end up living life in a way that's clearly not the stuff of dreams. These kids needed someone that cared. No one did. And sometimes, despite the best of intentions (which the road to hell is paved with) kids don't turn out right.
The government, within a republic of a civil society, does indeed have the nexus to protect its citizenry, especially those most vulnerable. Fie on your sentiments otherwise. I'm not a fascist, I'm a strong civil libertarian. But I'm also well keenly aware of the protections needed by the citizenry from other citizens, and sometimes, themselves.
But they're also blank sheets of paper. I'm not saying they don't have rights at all. They do. But they also are unable to take responsibility for their actions until they have the values to do so. Those values are best instilled by parents. Then they can make the choices given a context, which they're not born with, and it doesn't evolve naturally, except as a dice roll of the environment one's raised in.
Young people think they own the world. Yes, I thought the same things. But I also had parents that helped instill the value system that I have, and as mentioned, prior, it's all a question of values. I don't want someone skewing that value set, and so if I give a child GTA, then it's my values that did it, and my parental right to do so. If someone else does that, then they've thwarted my right. My kids will do that on their own;)>
We all grow up. We all try and taste adult things. It's natural. No question about that.
Then stuff falls into the wrong, young hands. Kids shoot each other with guns when playing with them. Or they use them because cause and effect hasn't been mastered yet. Or they get drunk at an early driving age and do damage or death.
Yes, it's a parent's involvement that helps. The age of 18 is admittedly arbitrary, but again, as mentioned, there are no tests for maturity.
The window has to be wide because if it's narrow, the few kids that get screwed up have a lot of work to regain values, if they ever do.
I know that my children experimented with all sorts of things, some more than others as is their individuality. They can get anything these days, adult-oriented or not. Those that thwart my desire to be a guiding light in their young lives distort family relationships in an onerous way. This is a liberty that I'm not ready to give up.
And when they get hurt, and thankfully few do, there's a societal cost that's a component of the problem. Laws don't
You stated situations about a parent's beer being offered. That's fine. That's not prohibited at all-- save for getting the child drunk, which might be untenable.
Instead, this is about taking material clearly and rated unsuitable for people under 18, and giving it to them in situations not controlled by their parents. Some one sells or rents GTA to a ten year old. That's what the law says-- punish this person, unless the parent bought it, and that gives tacit and implicit parental consent.
In terms of relaxed attitude, I tend to prefer the Euro way of looking at many things. But the standard deviation is wider in the US, and I abhor it when I hear my younger kids have seen a clearly NC17 (no one under 17) movie at a stay-over at a friend's house. Yes, we try to protect children, and know that sometimes they will be exposed unwittingly. Then we wrestle with the questions that inevitably arise, or the screams from nightmares about movies they've seen that they clearly shouldn't have.
In the EU, the violence is far from what it is here, in cowboy America, where weapons are easily obtained, and street justice is faster than any other both in time and attitude. It plainly stinks. D&D is a fantasy RPG, as others. But value-less games like GTA are really for older and mature individuals. Kids act out these things that they see on TV and video games. I watch them do this. And therefore, to build a sense of values, I as a parent need control, not some twit sales clerk at the corner game shop. And so, I still back what Michigan does in this regard. And I don't want others selling my kids booze and cigarettes, either. At some point, all of my children have had beer (they say yuck at 13 and gimme at 18) as well as the stench of cigarette smoke. They learn. I teach, and expose them to life, with the values added, not the values from television or a video game.
Luck, they say, is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. So far, I'm a lucky parent.
And a good parent can evaulate their children. If they can't 18 is a good age. Some of my children were mature at 12 in very adult ways, while others didn't really get there until 19.
I accept the metric, the responsibility as a parent, and expect others to do the same.
Yes, it would be nice to have a test saying can you handle the next scene without frying your mind: hot onscreen sex, manuvering a character to slice open another human, and so on.
Or here, kid, wanna cigarette? How about a 500cl whang of wine? I don't think I want someone else making that decision for me, a parent. So I stand behind 18, odd an age as it is. There are rights of passage and general intuitiveness that make some kids more mature at younger ages. And many of them fool themselves into believing they can handle adult contexts when they clearly cannot. For those that cannot, the bar must be held high.
>>The populace, under 18, needs to be prevented from pr0n, booze, weapons, and in this particular case, violent video games or those video games with adult images in them.
>>>No, they don't. European children manage to handle nudity and alcohol at younger ages, and they're turning out all right. Hell, they have lower rates of teen pregnancy than the US.
Yes, they do.
Consider the Euros then: no doubt nice people. I've been many times across the pond in my lucky life. Have numerous friends both in the UK and on the continent. They'll disagree with you, too. They reel at GTAs use by children just as I do.
-Nudity is fine. Pr0n is not nudity-- it's adult sex. -Alcohol in moderation is fine, but when a child can get mickeys of JD at school, it's not. Social consumption culture of alcohol is decidedly different between the EC and the US. -Specious citations comparing teen pregnancy rates tries to tie unrelated issues together and isn't valid in this context.
We disagree of the age when these adult things can be considered consumed by an adult mind. 18 is arbitrary, but it's a good number until another test comes along that our nutso government can agree on. Until then, let the parent make the choice, it's their right and obligation and responsibility.
RPGs are a different endeavor in some ways, but the lines are hazy. D&D and other RPGs have violence, but we're confronted with violence at early ages. It's a parent's obligation to put such things into perspective, just like characteristics of worship, sexuality, and so on. I've had four boys and two daughters, and a bit of experience here.
Can my kids buy liquor? Only one is 22, and there's access to it at younger, e.g. illegally young ages. Should sellers to minors be put to a legal showdown? Yes. Should the punishment for sale to a minor of underage products that's the same across the board? I think it's more fair, and meets several other constitutional tests.
If I want my kids to sample liquor, that's my business, and I'm responsible for the results. If someone sells liquor or pr0n to my kids, that's not my desire and that person has wrested control of my children's upbringing from me, and as a society, we say that's wrong.
D&D and other RPGs have some onerous connotations. Do I think that kids can become obsessed with such stuff? Sure I do. I let mine play them only after setting the contexts and watching what they did. They're good players, and tough to defeat. But they're not brutal, just effective game players. So is their father, me. But GTA is out of the question until they're old enough to understand, and even then, over my objections but I may object to them buying a fat SUV, too. At some point, they assume adult responsibility for their actions and are capable of doing so-- usually far after they think they are, but children are eager to emulate adults and graduate from childhood. I want that childhood to be as long as is reasonble, no more and no less. Each of my children reached that point at a different age, with two remaining below my satisfied threshhold. They'll get there, but they also want what their older siblings have. It's natural. And I'll let them have it when they satisfy my metrics. There'll always be contention about this part of life.
In my state, under 18 people can't sell cigarettes or liquor. All the better. I like that. Some make me push a button, as though I'm doing things myself. It's a virtual but defined line that's crossed by me as an adult to effect a purchase. That's as it should be, in my estimation.
Should kids be given credit cards? Maybe.... maybe bank accounts, too. But all in context, and with guidance. That's what parents can help strongly with. My oldest went overdrawn last week. Learned a big lesson on a $29 overdraft charge on a $5.24 purchase. Ouch. But he probably won't do that again. This is how we learn.
Youth is full of learning. I lock up my flammables, and no one here used a sharp tool until they got an education its care and safety. And I know the temptations of youth, and what boredom or simple curiousity can do.
But I'm not watching Linda Lovelace have a good time discovering the supposed clitoris in her throat with my 14 year old. Pulp Fiction has to wait until he's older, too. GTA? Not the right material for a 14yo. Or most others, but that's a qualitative rather than a use problem.
To prohibit by statute, giving minors things they shouldn't have is a good idea, and I personally sanction the Michigan measure. Yes, priorities are screwed up in lots of ways, but protecting youth is a good idea. If a parent rents a game or buys it, then gives it to his/her child, then it's parentally sanctioned-- that's legal. As an adult, cogent choices can be made that don't have the same skewing of values. As Pirsig once said, it's all a question of values. Diminishing the importance of violence and adult situations to minors constitutes bad values in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Liability is one of those attorney-enriching words. Buy a gun, load it, point it at your head, and hurt (if not kill) yourself, and there is no liability. This is because of several long understood characteristics about what a gun does and what happens with high-speed metal projectiles.
Should you incorrectly state the formula for something mixed with sulphuric acid rather than acetic acid stated in TFA, you might have compensatory claim for your subsequent injury.
Software is used to complete a task or stated purpose for the software. You could buy a ladder made of pasta, but it wouldn't hold your weight, once used. In the same way, licenses have legally devolved to limit the wide, mind-staggering number of possible misuses of it. People used Lotus 123 as a word processor, so Lotus came out with Symphony, which was an abject failure. This was because Symphony added a word processor to a spreadsheet product, and people didn't 'get it'.
Windows and Mac UIs worked because of interactivity, but I digress. Let me make the point.
If you open licensing to torts, the relationships between OS, software, usage, common undertanding of computer products, and the inability for people to want to be educated-- just use the stuff-- will become a quagmire of litigation unparalleled in the history of our litigious planet. License reform isn't the answer. A free press not chained to the advertiser's pressures will expose the fraud of specific software/platform/OS quality so that educated users can avoid these products like the plague. This is another good reason for the existence of slashdot, and other non-vendor-attached forms of communications.
Avoid litigation at all costs. If this means switching from one platform to another, fine, but let's also educate civilians on how to protect their stuff. They have no clue, many of them, on how to take even the most simple steps to protect themselves.
Yes, VoIP can be good. One day it will sell on quality rather than toll-avoidance. Can you hear me now?
They've alread produced 360 degree lenses, and mounts for analog and digital cameras. The math's already been done to change this convex lens structure back to a linear view; it's been around for almost ten years. They have numerous licensees, and so 180 degree lenses seem like a cripple.
Yeah, the post was about as lame as they get. But here are a sample of some of my tricks:
1) probe port 80 on the last few addresses you find, and if you get a web page out of there, look at the page source to see if there are other IPs to look up. Nothing like a badly configured chain to cough some more info from. Probe for other common ports at the end of the chain to see if there's a mail server there; maybe you can make it cough more data.
2) do google or dogpile searches of the IP address, and both the dns names and reverse names; follow each hit until it ends somewhere. Always take notes.
3) try to find email addresses through index engines using the various domain names, and also its NS records, MX records and anything else in DNS that might point to hidden servers in the route(s). Take notes.
4) check various rbls, spamhaus, and so on to see if there are other complaints. Sometimes you can have fun.
5) check any phone numbers; search on those, too. Heaven loves a toll-free # in a spam.
And now, your tips?
>>Sorry to parent, but people seem to be taking this seriously so I gotta point out that this is BS so hopefully noone takes this seriously...
Oh? Read on.
>"Consider the semiconductor."
>>Ok, here is the parent posts first fundamental misconception. Digital doesn't necessarily mean semiconductor. Say, for example CDs which encode digital data using light.
No, you misconstrue it. Transistor logic is what's used to do state changes that amount to the various relationships that form what a CPU does. Go back to your basics. We need the equivalent of optical accumulators in dense forms to make photonic processors feasible.
>"By adding information, you can blend things together, then demodulate them to see what happened as the change in information."
>>that isn't how light works, the waves superpose ontop of each other, just like every other kind of wave...
>"This modulation mimics how ALUs/accumulators/CPUs work"
>>No, no it doesn't.
Yes, it can. When you modulate, endowing information, and sum the modulations, you do the same thing as changing states in the lowly semiconductor when merged modulations are seen by an optical accumulator or reflective accumulator like your own eye. Yes, you've changed the information to create new states that accumulate information. Then it needs to be stored or moved on to be changed again to suit the calculative ends of the program.
>>There is a difference between storing and transmitting information and actual computation. You need some kind of devices which emit light depending on light inputs implementing AND OR and NOT logic.
Yes, we agree that to satisfy Boole's needs, this must be done.
>>Not helping is that this guy sounds like an idiot:
>>WTF does "mosh" mean anyway?
Sum, integrate, push together to form a meta value. I can tell you've never had a good punk rock experience.
>>"integer algebraic"?
How much about processor theory do you understand? Is integer algebra via binary summation foreign to you? Perhaps you're not familiar with integer algebra as the root method to obtain the basics of microprocessors.
>>"the electromagnetic spectra" (I guess theres more than one of the electromagnetic spectrum)
I can see that you're on a tangent, here. Yes, there are all sorts of subsections of the spectrum. Consider these spectra as finite sections of frequency ranges. There is one total spectrum. But Ethernet, a baseband technology, starts at 0hz and goes to varying heights of frequency; it's not modulated onto another carrier.
>>"your basic light switch is your basic computer" see above, a SWITCH is one bit of memory -- computation means implementing AND OR or NOT, at a minimum.
An SPST switch is either zero, or one. It's the most elemental binary calculator there is. Run your program and the switch closes, or it doesn't-- it's a computer and you control the logic state. But because it has either state, it isn't a static value. You can add logic onto multiple switches in numerous ways. You can then build truth tables, and so on. This is how the first computational devices were built via binary logic accumulators.
So, mod me down if you'd like. Moderation isn't the point-- photonic CPUs are the point. Building dense arrays of photonic sensors that can have state changes as a result of merging light sources (think loosely of colors, like red and yellow merging to orange, with orange as the new piece of information) can have future application. We can modulate light, change its frequency, make it do tricks by interrupting it in various modulations, then pushing them onto an observeration point to discern changes.
The modulations and summations can be programmed. The result of these inputs are an output. That's what we do in computing--> have inputs, process them, and do something with the outputs, now on a grand scale with the evolution of microprocessor integration capabilities and the surrounding chipsets that make use of I/O.
Consider the semiconductor. The way we work today is based on binary elemental logic-- on, off, unknown/neutral. Your basic light switch (SPST) is your basic computer, but it can't count too well.
The evolved state of computing uses Boolean logic to mosh states together into integer algebraic, then other kinds of math transformations.
Now, consider what light does, and how it flows. Light (actually this segment of the electromagnetic spectra) has different frequencies, at about the same data rate depending on media. No information there, except frequency differences and blendings of frequencies... lambda moshing.
You can modulate light, like any other electromagnetic phenomena. You can modulate information, therefore, onto light. It's done all the time. By adding information, you can blend things together, then demodulate them to see what happened as the change in information. This modulation mimics how ALUs/accumulators/CPUs work with logic states in some ways, but now we have to multiply the effect to get to significant digits and significant logic handling-- math by light modulation and the devices that can do that. But not densely, so far, in the calculative/logic-state change tracking sense.
What of these devices-- aye, thar's the rub. Is there an advantage to using light to do math? Not yet, really. It doesn't meet the state change efficiency model. One day, it might. Today, we lack the ability to make things dense enough. That's why photonic logic may fall short of expectations.
It took a while to find it, but you've done a bad spelling job. Viz:
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
by Minna Kirai (624281) on Wednesday April 06, @01:29PM (#12156224)
You have accidentally boldfaced the wrong part of the US Constition. Let me help:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
When the USA was young (prior to 1860 basically), it could best promote progress by ignoring patents from other nations. If not for the patent-infringing development of factory technology in New England, the South would've won the War of Northern Aggression.
Found at http://www.softpanorama.org/Copyright/index.shtml
Awful, awful stuff. I suggest hari kiri soon.
Let's see. Reference.com says about linguistics:
linguistics P Pronunciation Key (lng-gwstks)
n. (used with a sing. verb)
The study of the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics
Then says about grammar:
A formal definition of the syntactic structure of a language
(see syntax), normally given in terms of production rules
which specify the order of constituents and their
sub-constituents in a sentence (a well-formed string in the
language). Each rule has a left-hand side symbol naming a
syntactic category (e.g. "noun-phrase" for a natural
language grammar) and a right-hand side which is a sequence
of zero or more symbols. Each symbol may be either a
terminal symbol or a non-terminal symbol. A terminal symbol
corresponds to one "lexeme" - a part of the sentence with
no internal syntactic structure (e.g. an identifier or an
operator in a computer language). A non-terminal symbol is
the left-hand side of some rule.
One rule is normally designated as the top-level rule which
gives the structure for a whole sentence.
A grammar can be used either to parse a sentence (see
parser) or to generate one. Parsing assigns a terminal
syntactic category to each input token and a non-terminal
category to each appropriate group of tokens, up to the level
of the whole sentence. Parsing is usually preceded by
lexical analysis. Generation starts from the top-level rule
and chooses one alternative production wherever there is a
choice.
Sentence, Paragraph, page, chapter, book, trilogy. UB Trumped, Chump.
Finite and unbounded systems often present a conundrum when projecting either. There've been many that have made what turned out to be hilarious predictions, like the eventual world dominance of OS/2.
Using trend analysis is a good thing. Now that the permafrost is starting to thaw, we know that it can release immense amounts of trapped CO2. Add that to what we churn into the atmosphere, and it adds up to a soup that causes further heat. Unless a good volcano comes along to bounce away solar radiation, the atmosphere gets hotter and hotter. We know the effects of what can happen then.
The doomsayers can, with a deliriously wide standard deviation, say that a thermal cycle has occurred that will cause a lot of harm. The ecosystems are pretty fragile, yet they heal over thousands of years, too. Damaging them is delicate business, especially when the damage is done within a short time frame, so that the disjointed healing systems cannot re-synchronize with each other; they do this normally within their own time domain, rather than linearly across the multiple domains.
This is catastrophic, if the evidence is cited is true, because the rest of the models are pretty well known and accepted, academically.
Ignore it you say?
Nero will play
Great grandchildren will pray.
You're an editor? How droll. Yes, ten books. Nice sellers. But I need editors. I married one, too.
In terms of the violence of GTA, the simulation gives one the ability to control characters. One chooses to kill a cop, and presses a button to do so. No, it's not real-- but you do participate in the game's metaphor of murder. Kill to survive. How guttering. How unimaginative.
But your tight definition of violence is just, well, goofy. I don't think we can agree here. But thanks for being consistent. If a misplaced apostrophe is so important, then maybe I can do violence by missspelling, too. Getting heeted? Starting to grab yur chest yet? DIzzeee? Kwik-- diyul 911.
Linguistics my ass. It's grammar that you criticize. Linguistics is another topic altogether. Ever read Chomsky? Campbell? Other real linguists? Egads.
In the times of the ancient Greeks and Latins, and other cultures in the before (and after) Christ era, people tried to explain the phenomenon they saw in odd ways. Viz your comment "Behold! Moon goddess is eating the Sun God!"
Now we have referential scientific instrumentation to find out what's actually going on. You can ignore the evidence if you want to. In doing so, you'll be the same as the cardinals at the Inquisition.
These models aren't specious. They're derived from a lot of evidence. Like evidence? Like going into a hospital to have complicated surgery done that saves your life? No modern surgery exists today without a lot of the same scientific discipline that's gone into what you've read, if you RTFA.
Your haiku is as idiotic as your denial of the damage already done, and the likelihood that much of the ill effects will last through history.
The Bush administration has blithely ignored the problem. Clinton didn't do very well. Bush the Elder did even more poorly. Carter tried. Ford didn't have the first brain in his body. Nixon plainly stank at it. Johnson tried. Eisenhower tried. The rest is before I was born.
Oh, let's look at Kyoto, as an example. Or, rather, let's not. I detect a distinct lack of willingness on your part to concede the possibility that you might be wrong. This planet has finite resources and we're polluting the place where my sons, daughters, grandsons/daughters, etc will have to live. I would have liked to have someone several generations downstream say, gosh at that point, we'd actually evolved to where we cared about what happened because we saw a clear and present danger to the earth caused by its human populace rather than natural events. But I digress.
First, I don't "crave government branding". I'm suspect of what's done.... and will admit that some ratings are done seemingly arbitrarily; I would push towards a more conservative side from many perspectives, because I have a pacifistic philosophy. I abhor violence and see violence as an easy solution. Reading about violence and participating in its emulation are two different things. I've read many volumes on WW I & II, and the US war between the states. But that doesn't make me want to pick up a gun and volunteer for Iraq.
In the same way of thinking, I don't want to find myself actively carving up people in Wolfenstein 3D, no matter how evil I believe Nazi's are, because it's participatory violence. So is GTA, along with a sad value system. Sure, it's a game, you might say. Some people don't know where the lines are drawn (even in their 50's). But a large population of those indivduals that don't know where the lines are under 18.
And so I ally my sentiments with the legislature and governor of Michigan, who believe that selling this partipatory violence to minors warrants a fine and maybe jail. It's ok when a parent has put their (hopefully) values into the context of such participation. If an 18 year old buys an adult rated object and gives it to a minor, then that's a problem-- unless that person is a parent or guardian. Note the phrase, 'parent or guardian'.
There is no fine, and there is no jail, if a parent or other person over 18 does the buying, acknowledging the responsibility endowed by giving it to a minor, who is in fact, not supposed to get this material. The same thing goes for booze in Michigan, although the age qualifications are different still.
The equations to books versus games then follows in this way:
You can learn from both. You actively participate in the violence of (as an example) GTA by doing what gets you points in that game, killing cops, running over various locales in the pursuit of car theft. Negative values are rewarded strongly. You have to be pretty ruthless and prepared to kill cops. In real society, this contrasts with what we would prefer to do, no matter whether cops are liked or disliked. They have a job to do that's pretty thankless.
Did this game cause anyone to become a murderous car thief? Likely not, but it did make them behave in an emulation/simulation like one. If they're mature enough to handle it, they survive the entertainment with the experience, positive/entertaining or not/disturbing/neutral.
The difference? The increasingly real emulation/simulation of the actual experience.... these are two different media, two different experiences. When a book is read, it's finished, to be remembered. Games are designed to be played over and over again. The copy of Halo II here is over-used here, but all the players are of age. I'm not one of them; I acknowledge that adults that live here may do so. It doesn't harm me, and the adults aren't harmed, either. If they put it on while my younger child is around, that's a problem for me, and either the child gets booted out or the players do. Sometimes, they now bribe the younger to leave so they can play. That's a good thing. The young one is too tender. That'll change. Until then, that's where I, as a parent, draw the line.
Northern Indiana, while it survived the ice age, was once a huge marsh through the various river valleys that ran through the area. These marshes were drained, just ike Chicagoland was, in the 1800's and 1900's. The remaining silt made for good farm land. The withdrawal of glacial activity merely made it flat and sucseptable to contours that made the marshes and flow. It took several thousand years to make that dirt as black as it is, prarrie grasses, fowl, and trillions of shellfish lived up there. No more.
Now you can have corn chips.
We've put a SERIOUS dent into our plant's ecosystem. Look at all of the species gone, do to man. Look at all the ones on the endangered list(s).
There's overwhelming evidence. Just look at it. It's not disjointed, it's not anecdotal, it's scientific evidence.
Please go back to your job in the Bush administration and stop playing with your computer on the government's time.
You confuse liberarians with civil libertarians. The two are largely not synonomous. I can and do actively restrict what my kids will do. Somethings they'll do anyway. I realize that.
I let them read what they want; I have over 3000 books in my library and am the author of ten. I've seen Anais Nin books missing from the bookshelves, only to mysteriously return. So did the Joy of Sex for a while. I don't hide these, nor do I encourage them to read them at age 10.
Your use of metaphor to extrapolate clearly normal activities from those that are clearly the domain of mature individuals, dare I say adult, doesn't make your point.
Having a 10 year old hack another human with a joystick or game controller is a bad idea. It teaches the wrong message. I don't even like it when it's an alien.. because it too easily teaches that using one's cunning and skill to kill might be a good thing. It's my believe that violence is only proper in the presence of a clear and present danger to life and limb... and only there. All six of my kids have been to the Holocaust Museum in DC. All six were in tears, and so was I. Man is an animal, and taken to unnecessary cruelty. In a civil society, where there is governance, that governance makes rules to control the civil behavior of its adherents. Those that don't follow those rules, are often punished. Some of those rules plainly are insane, but in my personal belief, not this one. To live within that civil construct, however, I have to follow all of them or suffer the consequences.
Do I believe in government control of everything? No. But I do believe it's a parent's essential right to determine appropriate materials for their children, and excessively violent games are one of those items. Expanding the context, to summarize, doesn't prove your point... it's just bad and inappropriate metaphor.
We disagree in too many ways to make this a useful conversation.
While they get exposed to many things, it's my hope that they have the context to understand them. That's what I see and feel my parental duty and responsibility is to my kids. I know they have access to lots of adult items. They shouldn't. The causal anarchy you propose doesn't help parenting, it thwarts it. While I'm a caring parent, I know many who are not. What of their children? Do we as a society try to protect their innocence until they have the context to understand these clearly adult situations? And who sets that context? I do, as a parent. As you can see, I take it very seriously.
I expose my children to lots of different cultures, and they get exposed to even more, and the pseudo-culture of television. They soon learn that TV is far more make believe than reality. But what of school and playmate situations? Friends? They learn about the happiness and tragedy of life in spurts. I hope to be able to have helped form sufficient values that they can be taken in context. Clearly, other parents do not, and have a very laissez-faire attitude towards parenting. I see a number of those kids turn out well despite that, while others are in and out of juvenile detention and the court systems, or otherwise end up living life in a way that's clearly not the stuff of dreams. These kids needed someone that cared. No one did. And sometimes, despite the best of intentions (which the road to hell is paved with) kids don't turn out right.
The government, within a republic of a civil society, does indeed have the nexus to protect its citizenry, especially those most vulnerable. Fie on your sentiments otherwise. I'm not a fascist, I'm a strong civil libertarian. But I'm also well keenly aware of the protections needed by the citizenry from other citizens, and sometimes, themselves.
We certainly agree that they are. No doubt.
;)>
But they're also blank sheets of paper. I'm not saying they don't have rights at all. They do. But they also are unable to take responsibility for their actions until they have the values to do so. Those values are best instilled by parents. Then they can make the choices given a context, which they're not born with, and it doesn't evolve naturally, except as a dice roll of the environment one's raised in.
Young people think they own the world. Yes, I thought the same things. But I also had parents that helped instill the value system that I have, and as mentioned, prior, it's all a question of values. I don't want someone skewing that value set, and so if I give a child GTA, then it's my values that did it, and my parental right to do so. If someone else does that, then they've thwarted my right. My kids will do that on their own
The delicate line between control and guidance is acknowledged. Were we here before? Perhaps.
How silly.
I don't think we can agree in most any way. Sorry. Your sense of juvenile liberty is alien to me.
We all grow up. We all try and taste adult things. It's natural. No question about that.
Then stuff falls into the wrong, young hands. Kids shoot each other with guns when playing with them. Or they use them because cause and effect hasn't been mastered yet. Or they get drunk at an early driving age and do damage or death.
Yes, it's a parent's involvement that helps. The age of 18 is admittedly arbitrary, but again, as mentioned, there are no tests for maturity.
The window has to be wide because if it's narrow, the few kids that get screwed up have a lot of work to regain values, if they ever do.
I know that my children experimented with all sorts of things, some more than others as is their individuality. They can get anything these days, adult-oriented or not. Those that thwart my desire to be a guiding light in their young lives distort family relationships in an onerous way. This is a liberty that I'm not ready to give up.
And when they get hurt, and thankfully few do, there's a societal cost that's a component of the problem. Laws don't
The mentalities are closer than you think.
You stated situations about a parent's beer being offered. That's fine. That's not prohibited at all-- save for getting the child drunk, which might be untenable.
Instead, this is about taking material clearly and rated unsuitable for people under 18, and giving it to them in situations not controlled by their parents. Some one sells or rents GTA to a ten year old. That's what the law says-- punish this person, unless the parent bought it, and that gives tacit and implicit parental consent.
In terms of relaxed attitude, I tend to prefer the Euro way of looking at many things. But the standard deviation is wider in the US, and I abhor it when I hear my younger kids have seen a clearly NC17 (no one under 17) movie at a stay-over at a friend's house. Yes, we try to protect children, and know that sometimes they will be exposed unwittingly. Then we wrestle with the questions that inevitably arise, or the screams from nightmares about movies they've seen that they clearly shouldn't have.
In the EU, the violence is far from what it is here, in cowboy America, where weapons are easily obtained, and street justice is faster than any other both in time and attitude. It plainly stinks. D&D is a fantasy RPG, as others. But value-less games like GTA are really for older and mature individuals. Kids act out these things that they see on TV and video games. I watch them do this. And therefore, to build a sense of values, I as a parent need control, not some twit sales clerk at the corner game shop. And so, I still back what Michigan does in this regard. And I don't want others selling my kids booze and cigarettes, either. At some point, all of my children have had beer (they say yuck at 13 and gimme at 18) as well as the stench of cigarette smoke. They learn. I teach, and expose them to life, with the values added, not the values from television or a video game.
Luck, they say, is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. So far, I'm a lucky parent.
And a good parent can evaulate their children. If they can't 18 is a good age. Some of my children were mature at 12 in very adult ways, while others didn't really get there until 19.
I accept the metric, the responsibility as a parent, and expect others to do the same.
Yes, it would be nice to have a test saying can you handle the next scene without frying your mind: hot onscreen sex, manuvering a character to slice open another human, and so on.
Or here, kid, wanna cigarette? How about a 500cl whang of wine? I don't think I want someone else making that decision for me, a parent. So I stand behind 18, odd an age as it is. There are rights of passage and general intuitiveness that make some kids more mature at younger ages. And many of them fool themselves into believing they can handle adult contexts when they clearly cannot. For those that cannot, the bar must be held high.
>>The populace, under 18, needs to be prevented from pr0n, booze, weapons, and in this particular case, violent video games or those video games with adult images in them.
>>>No, they don't. European children manage to handle nudity and alcohol at younger ages, and they're turning out all right. Hell, they have lower rates of teen pregnancy than the US.
Yes, they do.
Consider the Euros then: no doubt nice people. I've been many times across the pond in my lucky life. Have numerous friends both in the UK and on the continent. They'll disagree with you, too. They reel at GTAs use by children just as I do.
-Nudity is fine. Pr0n is not nudity-- it's adult sex.
-Alcohol in moderation is fine, but when a child can get mickeys of JD at school, it's not. Social consumption culture of alcohol is decidedly different between the EC and the US.
-Specious citations comparing teen pregnancy rates tries to tie unrelated issues together and isn't valid in this context.
We disagree of the age when these adult things can be considered consumed by an adult mind. 18 is arbitrary, but it's a good number until another test comes along that our nutso government can agree on. Until then, let the parent make the choice, it's their right and obligation and responsibility.
RPGs are a different endeavor in some ways, but the lines are hazy. D&D and other RPGs have violence, but we're confronted with violence at early ages. It's a parent's obligation to put such things into perspective, just like characteristics of worship, sexuality, and so on. I've had four boys and two daughters, and a bit of experience here.
Can my kids buy liquor? Only one is 22, and there's access to it at younger, e.g. illegally young ages. Should sellers to minors be put to a legal showdown? Yes. Should the punishment for sale to a minor of underage products that's the same across the board? I think it's more fair, and meets several other constitutional tests.
If I want my kids to sample liquor, that's my business, and I'm responsible for the results. If someone sells liquor or pr0n to my kids, that's not my desire and that person has wrested control of my children's upbringing from me, and as a society, we say that's wrong.
D&D and other RPGs have some onerous connotations. Do I think that kids can become obsessed with such stuff? Sure I do. I let mine play them only after setting the contexts and watching what they did. They're good players, and tough to defeat. But they're not brutal, just effective game players. So is their father, me. But GTA is out of the question until they're old enough to understand, and even then, over my objections but I may object to them buying a fat SUV, too. At some point, they assume adult responsibility for their actions and are capable of doing so-- usually far after they think they are, but children are eager to emulate adults and graduate from childhood. I want that childhood to be as long as is reasonble, no more and no less. Each of my children reached that point at a different age, with two remaining below my satisfied threshhold. They'll get there, but they also want what their older siblings have. It's natural. And I'll let them have it when they satisfy my metrics. There'll always be contention about this part of life.
In my state, under 18 people can't sell cigarettes or liquor. All the better. I like that. Some make me push a button, as though I'm doing things myself. It's a virtual but defined line that's crossed by me as an adult to effect a purchase. That's as it should be, in my estimation.
Should kids be given credit cards? Maybe.... maybe bank accounts, too. But all in context, and with guidance. That's what parents can help strongly with. My oldest went overdrawn last week. Learned a big lesson on a $29 overdraft charge on a $5.24 purchase. Ouch. But he probably won't do that again. This is how we learn.
Youth is full of learning. I lock up my flammables, and no one here used a sharp tool until they got an education its care and safety. And I know the temptations of youth, and what boredom or simple curiousity can do.
But I'm not watching Linda Lovelace have a good time discovering the supposed clitoris in her throat with my 14 year old. Pulp Fiction has to wait until he's older, too. GTA? Not the right material for a 14yo. Or most others, but that's a qualitative rather than a use problem.
To prohibit by statute, giving minors things they shouldn't have is a good idea, and I personally sanction the Michigan measure. Yes, priorities are screwed up in lots of ways, but protecting youth is a good idea. If a parent rents a game or buys it, then gives it to his/her child, then it's parentally sanctioned-- that's legal. As an adult, cogent choices can be made that don't have the same skewing of values. As Pirsig once said, it's all a question of values. Diminishing the importance of violence and adult situations to minors constitutes bad values in my opinion.