Have you seen the idiotic things that licenced drivers do? If you think the government can make good parents by giving them a piece of paper, you are sadly mistaken (and that doesn't count the possibly ethnic, cultural, religious bias that could be involved in the licencing process).
Probably, the best thing to do to stop violence in young people is to treat them, for criminal purposes, as one and the same as their parents. If a parent was punished for an assault on a minor if a kid beats another kid up at school, if the parents went to prison if the kid stole a car, we will find anti-social behavior in kids would disapear overnight.
Much like a gun, everyone should have the right to have a kid, but they should be responsible for the actions of the kid. You should be allowed to own a gun, but if you shoot someone, you need to take responsibility. If you have a kid, you should be able to do it without restrictions, but you must make sure the kids doesn't harm anyone else, otherwise you are responsible.
But as long as a parent can throw up their hands and say "I don't know what to do with little Jimmy" and that is the end of their responsibility... well, people are going to allow their kids to do bad things.
Homosexual behavior is a form of homosexual behavior, BY DEFINITION. I don't care if you feel you are "born homosexual". Some people are born to be artists. Some people are born to play music. Some people seem to have an almost inate drive towards engineering, or science, or mathmatics. But all those things are voluntary behaviors. All of those are perfectly OK things to do, they are not perfectly OK things to do in all situations.
Playing music instruments is a great thing - but a movie theater is not going to allow you to play instruments during a movie, even if you are a born musician. That is well within their rights.
Even if a policy of behavior makes no sense, or is restrictive, people have a right to make such policy on private property. If I want to declare that my resterant has a "no walking" policy, and everyone must hop (even though humans are born with the urge to walk), that is OK. The policy doesn't have to make sense. That is because it is PRIVATE PROPERTY!!!
In our modern society, dominated by facist and totalitarian ideologies such as you subscribe to, it is hard to imagine that anyone who doesn't share your "ONE TRUE FAITH" is not a bigot. You are taught from a child that you are superior, your views are superior, that you are "tolerant" (without any sort of education on what the word "tolerant" actually means, here is the definition of the word: http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/tolerance.html ), and that anyone who doesn't share your political or moral views should be destroyed or violently suppressed.
It is probably extremly difficult for someone who has been brainwashed to comprehend, there are many people who think homosexuality is fine, that homosexuals should be allowed to marry and participate in all the benifits of public life free from discrimination - but yet still respect that people are free to make their own desisions over what happens on their own private property. It is extremly difficult for people who have grown up with the statist ideal to understand that tolerance means to tolerate those who you disagree with, or who are doing things that you don't like. Many homosexuals agree 100% with what I am saying. They know that a government once allowed to restrict freedom, even in order to promote a homosexual agenda, could also restrict homosexuality once the political winds change. The only way to make any sort of non-violent behavior safe from oppression is to make ALL non-violent behavior safe from oppression.
So your insults (calling me a bigot) means nothing to me. You have no concept of what bigotry is or isn't, other than you vaugly know it is an insult. If you truly want to be free of "oppression", the first thing you need to do is free yourself from your own totalitarian facist ideology.
Black is a benign physical characteristic, not a form of voluntary behavior. They are two completly different things. You should think your arguements before you post them! Banning homosexual behavior in game is the same as prohibiting cell phone conversations at a movie, or prohibiting dancing at a private resteraunt, or prohibiting eating at a private art gallery. There is nothing wrong with cell phones, there is nothing wrong with dancing, and there is nothing wrong with eating - yet any rational person realizes that cell-phone-users, or dancers, or whoever don't have a "civil-right" to do that behavior in other people's private property. Your civil rights are not being violated if you are not allowed to talk on your phone during a movie. "Hungry Snackers" are not an oppressed minority being violated because they can't eat in an art gallery.
While I think it is unfortunate that Blizzard isn't allowing homosexuals to express themselves in the game, and certainly I would not choose to give money to any company that restricts harmless sexual behavior and expression, Blizzard is well within their rights to restrict any sort of behavior they want, period.
If the government is going to micromanage the subtlties and minutia of every buisness to make sure that no artificially created "minority" such as "homosexuals", or "snowboarders", or "smokers", or "geeks" feels in any way uncomfortable or inconviencied - then lets give up the pretense of freedom of choice, and just have the government nationalize all property and have all decisions made by some supreme central authority.
Sorry if I flamed you... but you gotta know, that a lot of people hate flash. Better to get flamed on Slashdot that make potential customers mad! Besides, I didn't call you a Nazi, so all is good by Slashdot standards!:)
What the hell are you doing building a flash only site? It is easy enough nowadays to build a flash site and HTML site and run them off the same XML files or database. That way your client can be happy with a snazzy flash site, and 99% of the people on the internet can be happy with the HTML.
But seriously, you are not going to get any pity from Internet users over your Flash crap. We have all been bombarded by way too much Flashturbation. A spinning blinking company logo with faux-nu-metal soundtrack (and usually no mute button) does not make me want to buy your product, as cool as it might seem to you!
Yeah, there are ways to get around this security. You could get a sample of the DNA, resynthesize it, then manufacture a duplicate ball, and create a fake.
But the cost of counterfiet is greater than the $2000 the ball is going to go for. Which makes it a succesful deterent.
Except that the whole reason that Open Source GPL software is attractive is because it doesn't have all the restrictions. I am not looking for "Better" or "More Intelligent" or "More Reasonable" restrictions, I am looking to live without restrictions.
The Open Source world should not try to out-restrict Microsoft and Sun and Apple. The more restrictions there are, the more free software becomes free as in beer instead of free as in speech.
As a hobby, I am writing a web based strategy game. I have certain mechanisms to hide certain pieces of information in order to eliminate cheating, real life harrasment of players, or whatever. Is this DRM? Although it is not exactly like encrypting a sound file to only play on one PC, some people might consider it to be DRM. So then, I am forced to choose to eliminate some of the fairness of the game and protections for the player to satisfy some "Information wants to be free... including your credit data!" zealot?
I imagine people who are doing things with credit card transactions, or health records, or some application with REAL security needs (besides a free web game), would be even MORE frightened to use the GPLv3 lest some protection scheme be considered DRM. For example, if I send your personal financial data to you in some protected format, so only you on your PC can access it, it is DRM, isn't it. Doesn't matter how you answer, if I have to ask the question then the GPLv3 sucks.
What you are saying is true... but since environmentalists are humans, their view of what is "best for nature" is really going to be what they percieve to be in their own economic and political self-interest. There is a superficial difference, of course.
But both the far-left and far right are ludites when it comes to reproduction and genetics. It doesn't matter WHY they don't want to let us cultivate and use stem cells to treat cancer, they both agree we shouldn't do it.
I mean, if you look at the far-right Christian view of genetic engineering and biological science... and you look at the far-left enviornmentalist view of genetic engineering and biological science... they are nearly identical. So why do the far-left and the far-right stop the pretending and just admit they are the same thing? All of you people crying about GWB on Slashdot should be quiet, because you know if Greenpeace said the same thing you would be agreeing 100%!
Unfortunatly for those of us who aren't ludites about genetic engineering and such, there is no powerful politcal force to turn to.
You didn't refute the point that the origional poster made:
That Slavery is an unnatural state, only enforcable by extreme violence... and that it inevitably leads to the mis-allocation of labor and resources, and it is highly unstable. Owning people is not a natural state - it is constant warefare and struggle against the people being "owned", unlike a car, or a house, which isn't going to try to get away or smash it's owners head while they sleep.
The first half of the game COULD be considered insensitive, if taken completly out of context. But in the second half, the main character realizes he was wrong for fighting with the Apaches, that the Apaches are simply defending their land, and teams up to help them.
The main character also single handedly destroys a U.S. military base and butchers the solders inside, and kills the Marshal, and the Governor of the Terroritory, and literaly thousands of other people too, all of whom are stereotyped as bloodthirsty rednecks, so it is not like Apaches where singled out.
The story is really bad, the acting is worse, but it certainly doesn't portray any single group as the bad guys.
But we don't want to discourage them. If they weren't threatening a boycott, they would be threatening a lawsuit to have the game banned.
People threatening boycots is OK. Restricting freedom of speech is not. So lets not complain about this organization who are actually handling this in the right way.
Here is the thing: A real terrorist/covert agent isn't going to be sending unencrypted information. Mr. Terrorist and his friends can create pairs of one time pads for each of their contacts that they need to communicate with. They can then burn those one-time-pads to CD's and make them look like audio CDs... they can store them as images on their digital camera... They can drop them onto their iPods... And bring those on person into the U.S. without arrousing suspision. Then, they can simply send unbreakable encrypted messages to each other via email, usenet, web sites, etc.
So you see, the NSA spying it has NOTHING to do with catching specific terrorists, or counter intelligence, or whatever. It has everything to do with collecting massive amounts of information from the public, then aggregating it to create a profile of each person based on there communications. While this could be very useful in the Soviet Police State way (tracking dissadents, classifying people based on political beliefs, etc.), it serves no legit purpose in a free society. And so if the government has to do splices instead of grabbing vast amounts of data wholesale, then that is a victory... it DOES at least make it more difficult for the government from doing the bad things that we don't want it doing.
I think WOW is different though. In WOW getting banned means being cut off from thousands of players. WOW is a game based on player interaction.
When I ban a player from a game I am hosting, it is simply from a match with maybe 16 players, and there is still lots of other matches out there for the trouble makers. I am simply saying "I don't want to deal with this person any more, they can't play in games that I am the server", they are not being kicked off the XBOX live system - I am simply isolating myself from them.
With free games, I can ban an account based on email, or ban an IP, but those things are trivial to get around.
Every user account is tied to a credit card and a real identity. If you ban a player from your game you are hosting (or you file a complaint on a player), they can't create another ID or just switch their IP address. Sure, if you ban them from the game you are hosting, they can always pay another $50 dollars for a years membership, but most likely they aren't going to do that (especially when you can just ban THAT ID if they give you trouble... annoying people are going to go through a lot of money pretty quickly).
And, it is like anything, the fact that you pay something weeds out a lot of total losers. It doesn't get rid of all the users by any means, but that barrier to entry is enough to stop the majority of people who would just log on to be annoying.
For me, this is a FEATURE. A gaming console is a gaming console. I think Microsoft's behavior is despicable when it comes to DRM and PC Operating Systems... but when I play a video game, I want to pop in and play, and I don't want to worry about security (some sort of console virus, or just players cheating or being annoying online). I don't need to write a web server for my console, because I can use my PC to do that.
A game console is a toy. A PC is a multipurpose tool. I judge them by a different set of criteria.
No... I am saying that environmentalism is being hijacked by people who want to use it as justification for control and regulation of every aspect of life. The "solutions" to environmental problems that are suggested by many people calling themselves "environmentalists" have absolutly nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gases or protecting the enviornment. Just looking right now at the Green Party of the United State platform (certainly the least radical of all the "Green Parties" worldwide) supports in one form or another:
Government control over prices and wages. Government regulation of speech, and nationalization of all broadcast media. Government control/funding of health care, education, and the arts. Increase in gun regulation and gun bans.
And this is the half-ass watered down American version of the "Green" movement. You are simply kidding yourself if you don't think that the political movement known as "Enviornmentalism" doesn't have an agenda beyond conservation and fighting polution. And that agenda is virtually the same Marxist and "Socialist" (state-capitalist) agenda of 40 years ago.
What I am saying is that real enviornmentalism (conservation and reducing waste, reducing greenhouse emmissions) have nothing to do, and in fact are not compatible with the political goals of the radical left who call themselves "enviornmentalists". As long as these people own the term "enviornmentalist", and the term "green" means "socialist", you are going to have many people who are otherwise concerned with conservation, reducing polution and waste, being opposed to the enviornmentalist movement.
Re:Why not do something CONSTRUCTIVE?
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Mitnick on OSS
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Why do most history books focus on wars and generals and not on scientists or buisness leaders? Why do 90% of movies deal with danger or violence? Because destruction is sexy, baby!
Whenever given a choice, green power is sold out as fast as they can bring it to market. Where people have a choice in energy production (most of the time it is a government controlled monopoly), green power is always the most profitable form of energy production.
But what you are saying is not going to be popular. The idea that if given a choice, people will choose not to contribute to global warming or harm the enviornment, is the antithesis to the whole enviornmental movement. "Enviornmentalism" (I put it in quotes to seperate the social movement called "Enviornmentalism", from the real scientific study of the enviornment) is being taken over by former Marxists and former Socialists... Socialism (which should really be called State Capitalism) as an economic system has failed - It didn't eliminate poverty or social injustice, and where taken to the extreme (former Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Cuba) it CREATED extreme poverty and social injustice.
So, the people with an agenda of a centrally planned, totalitarian state-capitalist economy, need to find another reason to justify total government control. And that is "Global Warming". The arguement being that "we are all consuming more than the planet can handle", and by switching to an economy controlled by the government, the government can ration national resources and keep us all from "overconsuming". There is a different justification for the end, but the end are the same: Complete government control and regulation of every aspect of life.
And the sad thing is that central planning won't eliminate enviornmental problems either. The worst enviornmental disasters, the worst polution, the worst waste and destruction of the enviornment came from command economies, or from the parts of "free-market" economies that were controlled/highly-regulated by the government (energy production, defence industry, etc). The worst thing we can do to solve the problem of global warming is to put the same self-serving politicians and government beurocrats in charge who so spectacularly failed at eliminating poverty and "social injustice" in charge to solve enviornmental problems.
The first step to solving the global warming problem is to push the totalitarians out of the "enviornmental" movement. So long as the mainstream enviornmentalist movement is being used as a mouthpeice of totalitarianism, they are going to alienate those who are concerned about the enviornment, but are also concerned about civil liberties, the economy, political freedom, etc. Once the enviornmental movement realises that personal choice and freedom are the strongest tools that can be used to fight global warming, we will have the problem solved.
The real evil people are the shareholders? Um, sorry, shareholders are overwelming anti-censorship when given a choice. Censorship is bad for buisness.
The real problem is statist and collectivist ideologies that say it is OK to eliminate the rights of individuals for collective state-determined goals. We could destroy capitalism and line up all the shareholders against the wall, but that is not going to do anything to eliminate censorship.
Seriously, why is it that so many conservatives don't trust that stupid, evil, wasteful government to run a social program (just give me my taxes back!), but trust them completely and lovingly to tap your phone or imprison you without trial?
That is a straw man arguement. Conservatives are all for the stupid, evil, wasteful government to run social programs. G. W. Bush increased government social spending more than virtually all presidents. The only presidents that can compare to Bush on social spending are F.D.R. and L.B.J. (The welfare state and warfare state seem universally linked)... Bill Clinton was a hardcore fiscial conservative by Bush standards. Hell, Hugo Chavez is a fiscial conservative by Bush stadards.
Why are so many patriots so happy to violate the constitution? You can't burn a flag, but you can listen on my phone calls without due process? Why is everyone a constitutional scholar when it comes to guns or free speech, but starts whistling and looking uncomfortable when it's comes to due process? Once again, a straw man arguement. Conservatives neither support free speech, nor oppose gun control. Conservatives are rabid for government censorship. Conservatives also supported every gun control measure, EVER. I mean, if every Republican universally stood against gun control, there would be no gun control, period. It is the rare exception to find the conservative who actually supports the second amendment for what it was intended (so that citizens could carry out an armed rebelion against the government if the government became too oppressive... NOT for "sports hunting" or "stopping prowlers").
I think you have made the mistake a lot of leftist make. They label anything that isn't part of their ideology as "Right Wing" or "Conservative". "Convervatives" and the American Right are simply right-wing totalitarians. The people who oppose censorship, gun control, the warfare state, etc., are libertarians. They often get called "right wing" by the left, but they also get called "Communists" or "left wing" by the right. But it is a completly and totally different political ideology than what you find on the right or left political spectrum.
It is all good and fine that you quote Ben Franklin like that. I agree with the statement. But do you really want liberty, or are you just another person who hates Bush who finds it convienient to talk about Liberty in this context?
A lot of the people outraged about the loss of "Essential Liberty" with the government wiretaps, would not be will to legalize drugs and prostitution, would not be willing to give up their support of gun control, would not be willing to give up the massive welfare state that requires you be "guilty" until you can prove to the IRS you are innocent. Heck, some of the loudest voices against Bush want the government to tax sugary foods to provide disincentives for overconsumption, want the government to set up sobriety check points, want the government to ban speech that women or minorities may find offensive, and want a government health care monopoly.
If you really are for Liberty, there are all sorts of unpopular policies that are implied. Most of the people who are all upset about some "lost liberty" couldn't possibly be more eager to give away Liberty on just about every other issue.
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Have you seen the idiotic things that licenced drivers do? If you think the government can make good parents by giving them a piece of paper, you are sadly mistaken (and that doesn't count the possibly ethnic, cultural, religious bias that could be involved in the licencing process).
Probably, the best thing to do to stop violence in young people is to treat them, for criminal purposes, as one and the same as their parents. If a parent was punished for an assault on a minor if a kid beats another kid up at school, if the parents went to prison if the kid stole a car, we will find anti-social behavior in kids would disapear overnight.
Much like a gun, everyone should have the right to have a kid, but they should be responsible for the actions of the kid. You should be allowed to own a gun, but if you shoot someone, you need to take responsibility. If you have a kid, you should be able to do it without restrictions, but you must make sure the kids doesn't harm anyone else, otherwise you are responsible.
But as long as a parent can throw up their hands and say "I don't know what to do with little Jimmy" and that is the end of their responsibility... well, people are going to allow their kids to do bad things.
Homosexual behavior is a form of homosexual behavior, BY DEFINITION. I don't care if you feel you are "born homosexual". Some people are born to be artists. Some people are born to play music. Some people seem to have an almost inate drive towards engineering, or science, or mathmatics. But all those things are voluntary behaviors. All of those are perfectly OK things to do, they are not perfectly OK things to do in all situations.
Playing music instruments is a great thing - but a movie theater is not going to allow you to play instruments during a movie, even if you are a born musician. That is well within their rights.
Even if a policy of behavior makes no sense, or is restrictive, people have a right to make such policy on private property. If I want to declare that my resterant has a "no walking" policy, and everyone must hop (even though humans are born with the urge to walk), that is OK. The policy doesn't have to make sense. That is because it is PRIVATE PROPERTY!!!
In our modern society, dominated by facist and totalitarian ideologies such as you subscribe to, it is hard to imagine that anyone who doesn't share your "ONE TRUE FAITH" is not a bigot. You are taught from a child that you are superior, your views are superior, that you are "tolerant" (without any sort of education on what the word "tolerant" actually means, here is the definition of the word: http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/tolerance.html ), and that anyone who doesn't share your political or moral views should be destroyed or violently suppressed.
It is probably extremly difficult for someone who has been brainwashed to comprehend, there are many people who think homosexuality is fine, that homosexuals should be allowed to marry and participate in all the benifits of public life free from discrimination - but yet still respect that people are free to make their own desisions over what happens on their own private property. It is extremly difficult for people who have grown up with the statist ideal to understand that tolerance means to tolerate those who you disagree with, or who are doing things that you don't like. Many homosexuals agree 100% with what I am saying. They know that a government once allowed to restrict freedom, even in order to promote a homosexual agenda, could also restrict homosexuality once the political winds change. The only way to make any sort of non-violent behavior safe from oppression is to make ALL non-violent behavior safe from oppression.
So your insults (calling me a bigot) means nothing to me. You have no concept of what bigotry is or isn't, other than you vaugly know it is an insult. If you truly want to be free of "oppression", the first thing you need to do is free yourself from your own totalitarian facist ideology.
Black is a benign physical characteristic, not a form of voluntary behavior. They are two completly different things. You should think your arguements before you post them! Banning homosexual behavior in game is the same as prohibiting cell phone conversations at a movie, or prohibiting dancing at a private resteraunt, or prohibiting eating at a private art gallery. There is nothing wrong with cell phones, there is nothing wrong with dancing, and there is nothing wrong with eating - yet any rational person realizes that cell-phone-users, or dancers, or whoever don't have a "civil-right" to do that behavior in other people's private property. Your civil rights are not being violated if you are not allowed to talk on your phone during a movie. "Hungry Snackers" are not an oppressed minority being violated because they can't eat in an art gallery.
While I think it is unfortunate that Blizzard isn't allowing homosexuals to express themselves in the game, and certainly I would not choose to give money to any company that restricts harmless sexual behavior and expression, Blizzard is well within their rights to restrict any sort of behavior they want, period.
If the government is going to micromanage the subtlties and minutia of every buisness to make sure that no artificially created "minority" such as "homosexuals", or "snowboarders", or "smokers", or "geeks" feels in any way uncomfortable or inconviencied - then lets give up the pretense of freedom of choice, and just have the government nationalize all property and have all decisions made by some supreme central authority.
Sorry if I flamed you... but you gotta know, that a lot of people hate flash. Better to get flamed on Slashdot that make potential customers mad! Besides, I didn't call you a Nazi, so all is good by Slashdot standards! :)
What the hell are you doing building a flash only site? It is easy enough nowadays to build a flash site and HTML site and run them off the same XML files or database. That way your client can be happy with a snazzy flash site, and 99% of the people on the internet can be happy with the HTML.
But seriously, you are not going to get any pity from Internet users over your Flash crap. We have all been bombarded by way too much Flashturbation. A spinning blinking company logo with faux-nu-metal soundtrack (and usually no mute button) does not make me want to buy your product, as cool as it might seem to you!
Yeah, there are ways to get around this security. You could get a sample of the DNA, resynthesize it, then manufacture a duplicate ball, and create a fake.
But the cost of counterfiet is greater than the $2000 the ball is going to go for. Which makes it a succesful deterent.
Except that the whole reason that Open Source GPL software is attractive is because it doesn't have all the restrictions. I am not looking for "Better" or "More Intelligent" or "More Reasonable" restrictions, I am looking to live without restrictions.
The Open Source world should not try to out-restrict Microsoft and Sun and Apple. The more restrictions there are, the more free software becomes free as in beer instead of free as in speech.
As a hobby, I am writing a web based strategy game. I have certain mechanisms to hide certain pieces of information in order to eliminate cheating, real life harrasment of players, or whatever. Is this DRM? Although it is not exactly like encrypting a sound file to only play on one PC, some people might consider it to be DRM. So then, I am forced to choose to eliminate some of the fairness of the game and protections for the player to satisfy some "Information wants to be free... including your credit data!" zealot?
I imagine people who are doing things with credit card transactions, or health records, or some application with REAL security needs (besides a free web game), would be even MORE frightened to use the GPLv3 lest some protection scheme be considered DRM. For example, if I send your personal financial data to you in some protected format, so only you on your PC can access it, it is DRM, isn't it. Doesn't matter how you answer, if I have to ask the question then the GPLv3 sucks.
Plenty of Europeans were coming FROM Africa to the Americas at the time? Sorry, I would say you are wrong.
What you are saying is true... but since environmentalists are humans, their view of what is "best for nature" is really going to be what they percieve to be in their own economic and political self-interest. There is a superficial difference, of course.
But both the far-left and far right are ludites when it comes to reproduction and genetics. It doesn't matter WHY they don't want to let us cultivate and use stem cells to treat cancer, they both agree we shouldn't do it.
I mean, if you look at the far-right Christian view of genetic engineering and biological science... and you look at the far-left enviornmentalist view of genetic engineering and biological science... they are nearly identical. So why do the far-left and the far-right stop the pretending and just admit they are the same thing? All of you people crying about GWB on Slashdot should be quiet, because you know if Greenpeace said the same thing you would be agreeing 100%!
Unfortunatly for those of us who aren't ludites about genetic engineering and such, there is no powerful politcal force to turn to.
You didn't refute the point that the origional poster made:
That Slavery is an unnatural state, only enforcable by extreme violence... and that it inevitably leads to the mis-allocation of labor and resources, and it is highly unstable. Owning people is not a natural state - it is constant warefare and struggle against the people being "owned", unlike a car, or a house, which isn't going to try to get away or smash it's owners head while they sleep.
The first half of the game COULD be considered insensitive, if taken completly out of context. But in the second half, the main character realizes he was wrong for fighting with the Apaches, that the Apaches are simply defending their land, and teams up to help them.
The main character also single handedly destroys a U.S. military base and butchers the solders inside, and kills the Marshal, and the Governor of the Terroritory, and literaly thousands of other people too, all of whom are stereotyped as bloodthirsty rednecks, so it is not like Apaches where singled out.
The story is really bad, the acting is worse, but it certainly doesn't portray any single group as the bad guys.
But we don't want to discourage them. If they weren't threatening a boycott, they would be threatening a lawsuit to have the game banned.
People threatening boycots is OK. Restricting freedom of speech is not. So lets not complain about this organization who are actually handling this in the right way.
Because 99% (at least) of immigration from Africa to the New World at the time was slavery. It is possibly they weren't slaves, but not very likely.
Here is the thing: A real terrorist/covert agent isn't going to be sending unencrypted information. Mr. Terrorist and his friends can create pairs of one time pads for each of their contacts that they need to communicate with. They can then burn those one-time-pads to CD's and make them look like audio CDs... they can store them as images on their digital camera... They can drop them onto their iPods... And bring those on person into the U.S. without arrousing suspision. Then, they can simply send unbreakable encrypted messages to each other via email, usenet, web sites, etc.
So you see, the NSA spying it has NOTHING to do with catching specific terrorists, or counter intelligence, or whatever. It has everything to do with collecting massive amounts of information from the public, then aggregating it to create a profile of each person based on there communications. While this could be very useful in the Soviet Police State way (tracking dissadents, classifying people based on political beliefs, etc.), it serves no legit purpose in a free society. And so if the government has to do splices instead of grabbing vast amounts of data wholesale, then that is a victory... it DOES at least make it more difficult for the government from doing the bad things that we don't want it doing.
I think WOW is different though. In WOW getting banned means being cut off from thousands of players. WOW is a game based on player interaction.
When I ban a player from a game I am hosting, it is simply from a match with maybe 16 players, and there is still lots of other matches out there for the trouble makers. I am simply saying "I don't want to deal with this person any more, they can't play in games that I am the server", they are not being kicked off the XBOX live system - I am simply isolating myself from them.
With free games, I can ban an account based on email, or ban an IP, but those things are trivial to get around.
Pay is nice, and here is why:
Every user account is tied to a credit card and a real identity. If you ban a player from your game you are hosting (or you file a complaint on a player), they can't create another ID or just switch their IP address. Sure, if you ban them from the game you are hosting, they can always pay another $50 dollars for a years membership, but most likely they aren't going to do that (especially when you can just ban THAT ID if they give you trouble... annoying people are going to go through a lot of money pretty quickly).
And, it is like anything, the fact that you pay something weeds out a lot of total losers. It doesn't get rid of all the users by any means, but that barrier to entry is enough to stop the majority of people who would just log on to be annoying.
For me, this is a FEATURE. A gaming console is a gaming console. I think Microsoft's behavior is despicable when it comes to DRM and PC Operating Systems... but when I play a video game, I want to pop in and play, and I don't want to worry about security (some sort of console virus, or just players cheating or being annoying online). I don't need to write a web server for my console, because I can use my PC to do that.
A game console is a toy. A PC is a multipurpose tool. I judge them by a different set of criteria.
No... I am saying that environmentalism is being hijacked by people who want to use it as justification for control and regulation of every aspect of life. The "solutions" to environmental problems that are suggested by many people calling themselves "environmentalists" have absolutly nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gases or protecting the enviornment. Just looking right now at the Green Party of the United State platform (certainly the least radical of all the "Green Parties" worldwide) supports in one form or another:
Government control over prices and wages.
Government regulation of speech, and nationalization of all broadcast media.
Government control/funding of health care, education, and the arts.
Increase in gun regulation and gun bans.
And this is the half-ass watered down American version of the "Green" movement. You are simply kidding yourself if you don't think that the political movement known as "Enviornmentalism" doesn't have an agenda beyond conservation and fighting polution. And that agenda is virtually the same Marxist and "Socialist" (state-capitalist) agenda of 40 years ago.
What I am saying is that real enviornmentalism (conservation and reducing waste, reducing greenhouse emmissions) have nothing to do, and in fact are not compatible with the political goals of the radical left who call themselves "enviornmentalists". As long as these people own the term "enviornmentalist", and the term "green" means "socialist", you are going to have many people who are otherwise concerned with conservation, reducing polution and waste, being opposed to the enviornmentalist movement.
Why do most history books focus on wars and generals and not on scientists or buisness leaders? Why do 90% of movies deal with danger or violence? Because destruction is sexy, baby!
Whenever given a choice, green power is sold out as fast as they can bring it to market. Where people have a choice in energy production (most of the time it is a government controlled monopoly), green power is always the most profitable form of energy production.
But what you are saying is not going to be popular. The idea that if given a choice, people will choose not to contribute to global warming or harm the enviornment, is the antithesis to the whole enviornmental movement. "Enviornmentalism" (I put it in quotes to seperate the social movement called "Enviornmentalism", from the real scientific study of the enviornment) is being taken over by former Marxists and former Socialists... Socialism (which should really be called State Capitalism) as an economic system has failed - It didn't eliminate poverty or social injustice, and where taken to the extreme (former Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Cuba) it CREATED extreme poverty and social injustice.
So, the people with an agenda of a centrally planned, totalitarian state-capitalist economy, need to find another reason to justify total government control. And that is "Global Warming". The arguement being that "we are all consuming more than the planet can handle", and by switching to an economy controlled by the government, the government can ration national resources and keep us all from "overconsuming". There is a different justification for the end, but the end are the same: Complete government control and regulation of every aspect of life.
And the sad thing is that central planning won't eliminate enviornmental problems either. The worst enviornmental disasters, the worst polution, the worst waste and destruction of the enviornment came from command economies, or from the parts of "free-market" economies that were controlled/highly-regulated by the government (energy production, defence industry, etc). The worst thing we can do to solve the problem of global warming is to put the same self-serving politicians and government beurocrats in charge who so spectacularly failed at eliminating poverty and "social injustice" in charge to solve enviornmental problems.
The first step to solving the global warming problem is to push the totalitarians out of the "enviornmental" movement. So long as the mainstream enviornmentalist movement is being used as a mouthpeice of totalitarianism, they are going to alienate those who are concerned about the enviornment, but are also concerned about civil liberties, the economy, political freedom, etc. Once the enviornmental movement realises that personal choice and freedom are the strongest tools that can be used to fight global warming, we will have the problem solved.
So they aren't males playing female characters, are they?
The real evil people are the shareholders? Um, sorry, shareholders are overwelming anti-censorship when given a choice. Censorship is bad for buisness.
The real problem is statist and collectivist ideologies that say it is OK to eliminate the rights of individuals for collective state-determined goals. We could destroy capitalism and line up all the shareholders against the wall, but that is not going to do anything to eliminate censorship.
Seriously, why is it that so many conservatives don't trust that stupid, evil, wasteful government to run a social program (just give me my taxes back!), but trust them completely and lovingly to tap your phone or imprison you without trial?
That is a straw man arguement. Conservatives are all for the stupid, evil, wasteful government to run social programs. G. W. Bush increased government social spending more than virtually all presidents. The only presidents that can compare to Bush on social spending are F.D.R. and L.B.J. (The welfare state and warfare state seem universally linked)... Bill Clinton was a hardcore fiscial conservative by Bush standards. Hell, Hugo Chavez is a fiscial conservative by Bush stadards.
Why are so many patriots so happy to violate the constitution? You can't burn a flag, but you can listen on my phone calls without due process? Why is everyone a constitutional scholar when it comes to guns or free speech, but starts whistling and looking uncomfortable when it's comes to due process?
Once again, a straw man arguement. Conservatives neither support free speech, nor oppose gun control. Conservatives are rabid for government censorship. Conservatives also supported every gun control measure, EVER. I mean, if every Republican universally stood against gun control, there would be no gun control, period. It is the rare exception to find the conservative who actually supports the second amendment for what it was intended (so that citizens could carry out an armed rebelion against the government if the government became too oppressive... NOT for "sports hunting" or "stopping prowlers").
I think you have made the mistake a lot of leftist make. They label anything that isn't part of their ideology as "Right Wing" or "Conservative". "Convervatives" and the American Right are simply right-wing totalitarians. The people who oppose censorship, gun control, the warfare state, etc., are libertarians. They often get called "right wing" by the left, but they also get called "Communists" or "left wing" by the right. But it is a completly and totally different political ideology than what you find on the right or left political spectrum.
It is all good and fine that you quote Ben Franklin like that. I agree with the statement. But do you really want liberty, or are you just another person who hates Bush who finds it convienient to talk about Liberty in this context?
A lot of the people outraged about the loss of "Essential Liberty" with the government wiretaps, would not be will to legalize drugs and prostitution, would not be willing to give up their support of gun control, would not be willing to give up the massive welfare state that requires you be "guilty" until you can prove to the IRS you are innocent. Heck, some of the loudest voices against Bush want the government to tax sugary foods to provide disincentives for overconsumption, want the government to set up sobriety check points, want the government to ban speech that women or minorities may find offensive, and want a government health care monopoly.
If you really are for Liberty, there are all sorts of unpopular policies that are implied. Most of the people who are all upset about some "lost liberty" couldn't possibly be more eager to give away Liberty on just about every other issue.