It's true. In the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the EU, and in most places all over the world, all vehicles are already required to be tagged. These tags work by a system were ambient radiation reflects off the tag, and then a sophisticated device decodes that information in order to determine vehicle identity.
They are called "Licence Plates". This is essentially what the RFID tags are. The only difference is that licence plates are visible from a much greater distance, and are tracked all over with cameras and police observation.
Now, I don't mean to say that we shouldn't fear the government tracking us. We should. People have every right to be worried and want to stop this. I oppose every effort by my government to try to tag or track anyone, including these RFID tags.
However, if you support the tagging and licencing of vehicles, and having information on these vehicles accessable from a centralized government database as already exists (and I assume that most of you do), then what is the problem with an RFID tag?
Most of the people upset about this extremly limited use of government surveilence support far more extreme forms of government surveilence and would be incredulous if anyone suggest we tried to get rid of them.
People will laugh, and no doubt be outraged if I suggest there is anything wrong with the government issuing licence plates, and tracking the vehicles of its citizens using a huge national database and network of information collecting. But suggest that the department of Homeland Securty do something much more limited, and only for non-citizens, and people are up in arms.
So, is the Slashdot crowd just gripped by sensationalist fear about new technology? Or is this some partisan political thing and people hate it just because they associate "Homeland Security" with "Republican" or "G.W. Bush"? Why does a crowd who will be outraged if someone suggests cars should not be licenced and tracked, or guns should be legal and not be licenced and tracked, will fly into a paranoid rage about something so small and inconsquential as this?
99% of the people here on Slashdot voted for a candidate who is pro-censorship abd anti-gaming. In the US, everyone is too cought up in the football-style rivalry between two almost identical political parties to actually vote against politicians who threaten to ban video games, or rap music, or any other thing enjoyed by a minority of the people.
Hillary Clinton has nothing to fear. She could propose that anyone who even thinks video games should be legal should be rounded up and shot without trial, and the Democrats will justify it as "Oh, I don't like it, but we must beat Bush, he is worse". And G. W. Bush could declare a "War on Filth" and bomb Rockstar Games headquarters, and Republicans will justify it with some equally convoluted theory.
You might bitch or moan about censorship and attacks on gaming now, but when it comes time to hit the voting booth, you will be tripping over yourself to vote for some rabidly pro-censorship politician.
There is nothing wrong with researching the effects of violent video games. It would probably make a great research project for a University to undertake. Or something that maybe a private organization would want to do.
But forcing me using the threat of violence to pay for the research project, especially when this "research" is going to be done by a politically appointed panel with a pro-censorship political agenda, and there is a serious problem.
Most of those countries are not the size of the U.S. Comparing Sweden with the U.S. is a false comparison. Comparing Florida with Sweden is a better example. Create a European National Education System, with a Europe Wide Teachers Union, with rules and regulations made for all of Europe (and I am sure the EU has something like this in mind eventually), and most undoubtably they will begin having the same problems that the United States has.
This is not a conspiracy theory. Go to a local enviornmental rally or protest. Ask the people for yourself. Go talk to the people at your local chapter of Greenpeace. Go search via google for environemntalist web forums.
Talk to the people, list to the rhetoric, read the forum posts, and the people are quite openly and honestly anti-capitalist. Most will readily admit, quite proudly, that enviornmentalism is part of their anti-capitalist worldview, and they feel the enviornmental movement is a useful tool in the fight against capitalism and globalization.
It is no more of a conspiracy theory to say that enviornmentalists are mostly anti-capitalist than to say Catholics are mostly anti-abortion or anti-homosexuality.
The question is, if the parents, the very flesh and blood of the child, who gave birth and raised the child, are unable to make the best decisions for the child, there is no way in hell that some government beurocrat is going to make the right choice for a child. Remember that in democracy, decisions are made on the lowest common denominator of the voting public. Those parents who you think are too stupid to make choices for their own children will be voting and making choices for everyones children. So if in a private system 60% of the people choose Pepsi McSchool of Jesus, in a public system 100% of the people get the Pepsi McSchool of Jesus.
Funding for public education has never been higher in the United States. G. W. Bush, the whipping boy of the left-wing, passed the largest expansion of government spending on education in history. The U.S. spends orders of magnitude more than China, and we spend more than nearly all the countries in the world. We are throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the problem.
The trouble in the United States is that education is dominated by leviathan institutions like the Federal and State governments, teachers unions, contracters and suppliers. Those institutions consume most of the money that is supposed to go to "education". And the money that actually does make it to education goes to "educate" kids in politically correct propoganda, drug propoganda, religious propoganda, or whatever agenda a politically powerful group wants to push through the public schools.
The "enviornmentalists" who dsy they don't trust Bush with nuclear power are morons or lying. Bush already has nuclear weapons! He can order WWIII and the end of the world at any second.
The real reason "enviornmentalists" are opposed to nuclear power is because the people calling themselves "enviornmentalists" nowadays are really anti-capitalists, and they see enviornmental restrictions as a way of starving the free-market enconomy and imposing state central-planning under the guise of "enviornmental regulation".
Fixing it is an impossibility in most places, because the whole political machine of the Teachers Unions, the suppliers and contracters, etc. Once there is a system in place were people are making so much money from the failing system, only a person with more money will be able to change it... and that isn't an average parent.
Any sort of educational reform in the U.S. is politically impossible. Homeschooling and private is the only way we are going to get good education for kids in the immediate future.
Also, most "public" schools in the past were funded by local municipalities, or in some cases voluntary contributions from parents. The modern federal-education-leviathan is nothing like the "public" schooling before the 1960s (When the U.S. was #1 in education). When education was kept small and local, it was possible for people to have influence on it.
Yes, but why is the capital taking flight? The U.S. and Western countries have made their countries buisness hostile. China and India are becoming more free-market, and the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe are becoming more socialist and centraly planned. And now we are just crossing the threshold were China and such are becoming more free-market than we are.
It is in the long term interests of Capitalists to invest in more free and open societies. China is not there yet, but they are becoming more free while we become less free. China is a better investment.
Because that is not how taxes work! If they were going to spend the money on something you really wanted or needed, they wouldn't have to forcefully extract the money from you at gunpoint, now would they? You would give it voluntarily (like people are going to do for the Planetary Society and this project).
Libertarians are AGAINST the Patroit Act, were as liberals and the left wing attacked anyone who didn't vote for John Kerry, who SUPPORTED the Patroit act (and said it didn't go far enough).
Your post is an example of the hateful, intollerant, close-mind self-rightousness of the left that has alienated so many people. Anything that disagrees with the "One True Worldview and Philisophy" can be dismissed as right-wing. No need to make any kind on rational arguement, no need to refute points or try to win people over. Simply show disgust and disdain for anyone who disagrees with your narrow viewpoint.
This is why G. W. Bush was able to win the last election. The "if you don't agree with everything we say you are only worthy of our disgust" attitude alienates everyone but the "true-believers".
I am hardly "right-wing", and in fact consider myself a "classical liberal", who is pro-gay-marrage and sexual freedom, who is pro-choice (on abortion, but also on just about everything else anyone wants to do to their own body), who is against the war on drugs, against imperialism, against racism, and I want the strictest seperation between church and state. And I am certainly fair minded if you mean that I hate both the "left" and the "right" equally (which is a total false dichotomy... real political thought should not fall on a one-dimential spectrum). But to have me attack the right-wing on Slashdot would be pointless, because the politics on Slashdot clearly lean to the left.
You should have done a point-by-point rebuttal. I would have liked to hear someone on the left say something other than "you just don't understand, do you?". Perhaps it would have waken you up to see that the left has betrayed it's own liberal ideals, and has embrassed statism and totalitarianism. Look for any problem that might exist, and the lefist will give you a solution that involves massive government. Health care? Solution is to put health care under the control of the government. Polution? Massive regulation by the government. Education? A massive centralized government controlled education system. Violent Video Games? We need the government to regulate them. The ideaology of the left nowadays is simply the ideaology of the supreme infallible state.
The left have been creating a leviathan state that has control of almost every aspect of our lives, and want that state control over our lives to increase... and then they want to complain when G. W. Bush uses that state power to his own destructive ends. Power swings back an forth, and the Frankenstien state that you thought you could control is now out of your hands. Had you stuck to a TRUE liberal stance, supporting individual rights, supporting decentralized government, supporting checks and balances and limitations to government power, supporting strict adherence to our constitution, G. W. Bush would not have the tools to do what he is doing, period.
G. W. Bush or a bunch of right-wing wackos didn't turn America into a totalitarian state... that has been happening for 50 years, with the cheering support of the left.
It was the left who brought us the welfare state, which gave us a national ID system (they say Social Security numbers aren't part of a national ID system, but it IS a national ID in practice).
It was the left who supported massive government spending that could only be sustained through a government agency that tracks ALL your financial transactions, can request an financial record from any instutution you do buisness with without a judges permission, and can assume you are guilty of a crime until you are proven innocent.
It was the left who demanded that citizens be disarmed in violation of their constitutional rights.
It was the left (Wilson and Roosevelt), that built up our military for foriegn adventures, and who rounded up certain ethnic groups into prison camps (Good ol' FDR rounded up about 20,000 japanese).
It was the left who cheered on the police blowing up children in Waco Texas, and who demanded a whole slew of government programs to monitor "terrorist groups" (see, back then they expected the terrorist groups would be right-wing like OK City bomber, so it was OK to have a police state to go after THOSE criminals).
It was the left who pioneered the concept of "judicial activism" (i.e. Judges "creativly interpreting" the law in order to bring about desired political ends that doesn't have the support of the public to pass into law), which is now being used to attack abortion, or squelch protest.
It was the left that called for draconian police powers to be used against protesters (remember when it used to be right-wing anti-abortion protesters outside clinics who needed to be stoped? What, you didn't think all those laws restricting protest would be used against you!?)
Sure, Bush is a right-wing crazy. But if you are on the left, you have only yourself to blame for the situation. G. W. Bush isn't smart enough or talented enough or popular enough to have brought about some sort of drastic change in American policy since 9/11/2001. Our path to Facism has been paved by the polices and laws of left-wing socialists who have systematicly been disassembling our constitution and our freedoms for years, thinking that they were going to somehow be the benevolent dictators of a new state-run scoialist utopia to America.
Well, suprise suprise, things didn't turn out as you planned it, and now you are running and screaming like this is not somehow your fault.
If people want to be taken seriously opposing Bush , the Patriot Act, etc., etc., then you are going to have to take responsibility for what has happened. The left need to realize, and apologize, for giving all the tools to facism to G. W. Bush. Once people on the left accept their responsibility in this, then we can move on to worry about G. W. Bush.
I am not a Bush fan by any means, but if you are going to say something like this (and people are going to mod it up), please, INCLUDE A REFERENCE. Everything Bush says in public is recorded. Give us a link or something.
Pity yourself. All video games in England need to go through the British Board of Film Censors, and some have already been banned (no video games have been banned in the United States, by the way). GTA:SA is ALREADY rated 18+ in England. British regulation is far more strict than in the United States.
The difference is that in the U.S. censorship is still controversial, where as in the U.K. is happens without anyone taking a notice.
It is not a coincidence at all. English speaking Canada was colonized by Scotsmen like Archibald MacDonald, and then there was years of very heavy immigration from Scotland. Canada is heavily influenced by Scot culture.
You are categorizing video games with heroin, tobacco, or assult weapons? Why did you stop there? Why not equate video games with Nazis? Or devil worshipers? Why not call video games "video-terrorism". What other sensationalistic hot-button phrases can we use to make sure no-one thinks rationally on the subject.
1. GTA:SA is already rated 17+, so no-one under seventeen can purchase it.
2. GTA:SA isn't being displayed in public, it is only being used at home in private.
3. GTA:SA doesn't even contain the stuff that people are screaming about... you can only view the content after you apply a third party modification.
4. The sex is so tame and non-offensive, with a fully clothed character, that any kind of outrage over it is pure insanity.
Now, if the government can get involved in a case, where a product sold only to adults can be MODIFIED to do something so completly non-offensive, then there is no speech that is safe from government intervention.
Don't decieve yourself. If you support Hillary Clinton and the other totalitarian politicians who are upset about this crap, you are against freedom of speech and expression. Period. End of story. Saying you are not is like saying "I am against War, but I support bombing country X". There is no way you can take the side against rockstar games and call yourself pro-free-expression. To deny you are pro-government-censorship is to say "war is peace", and "freedom is slavery".
Because the violence in GTA is not realistic graphic violence. It is tounge-in-cheek cartoon style violence. The violence in GTA is a parody of hollywood movie violence. (In the case of GTA: San Andreas, it is a parody of early 1990s "Gansta" entertainment).
And Americans are not all that uptight. Most Euro countries have laws much stricter than the U.S. regarding video game content. In the U.S., there are NO national laws regarding video game content, video game ratings come from a voluntary industry rating board. Compare this to Germany, France, Australia, etc., were video games are often outright banned to people of any age, or Canada were the last prime minister advocated banning all violent and sexual video games, for anyone of any age. And unlike the United States, there is rarely any protest or outrage over government censorship.
Ethanol fuel isn't just more expensive that oil, it requires more oil to produce than it produces Ethanol Fuel. Meaning Ethanol Fuel is a net energy loss.
Here is an example with numbers I made up, but it is just to illustrate the concept, refer to the article for the real numbers. Say it takes 1 gallon of gas to run the tracter to farm the crop. Then 1 gallon of gas to run the machine that mulches the crop. Then 1 gallon to heat it up and process it. And then after the whole thing, it produces 1 gallon of fuel. That is 3 gallons of fuel used to produce 1 gallon of fuel... essentially WASTING 2 gallons of fuel.
Come on man, these guys are a politically oriented action group. Most member of the group are non-scientists.
Look at the sensational fearmongering and hatemongering titles, like:
"Is our food safe to eat?" - This is an article about geneticly modified food. While Big Macs and Twinkies might not be safe because they are full of fat and sugar, there hasn't been a single documented case of anyone being harmed by eating GM food, ever. This kind of headline is pure un-scientific fearmongering. They could have headlined it "Genetically Modified Crops: What are the issues?". Or "Will GM crops disrupt the ecosystem". Instead they are using the "Frankenfood" hysteria to promote a view (that all GM crops are evil!), that clearly all scientists don't have a single point of view on.
"U.S. Sets Back Progress on Global Warming at G8 Summit" - Yeah, write an article with lots of inflammitory statements like "President Bush resembled an isolated soul", but don't mention anywhere in the article WHAT ACTUAL ACTIONS OR POLICY DECISIONS HE TOOK TO "SET BACK PROGRESS ON GLOBAL WARMING". There was not one mention of any G8 policy, plan, study, or anything else in the article. The entire article basicly says "Bush is a baddie". I am not a fan a Bush, but this is not the behavior of responsible scientists. This is the behavior of a left-wing political organization... which is fine, people have the right to express thier views, but don't pretend the organization is a non-political "Scientific" one.
I agree. However, I also think it is unfair that the TCP/IP protocal, which was developed on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, is being used royalty free by all you Brits. Therefore, I suggest that anyone using the TCP/IP protocol pay their 130UKP fee to the United States government.
But all joking aside, isn't the whole point of having the government provide a service like the BBC is that it is then given away freely to the public? It is a "public service", i.e. freely available to everyone as "culture". If the BBC is going to lock it's content away behind an iron curtain of DRM like some private company, and protect its IP like a private company, then why not just make the BBC a private company?
[quote]All this arguing about superior systems notwithstanding, at least kids are protected from parents that wrong, stupid or insane. Standardization protects kids, who otherwise won't have a voice in the above discussion until it is way too late.[/quote] But they are not protected from the government that is wrong, stupid, or insane, and the government is far more wrong, stupid, or insane than nearly all parents. If a parent is an idiot in a non-monopoly system, it harms their kid. If a parent is an idiot in a public system, everyone has to accomidate the idiot.
If a parent can't be trusted to do what is best with their own child, how can you trust the government? Talk about having the fox watch the henhouse.
[quote]As for privatization, there are plenty of failure examples: NAFTA, energy (Enron, California brownouts, etc) and healthcare (spiralling rates, diminishing coverage, worse care than other industrialized nations) are three train-wrecks that come to mind.[/quote] NAFTA is a government treaty, and energy production and healthcare are the most government controlled and subsidized industries in the U.S..
Enron made its fortune by doing things like purchasing energy production facilities that were unprofitable by government mandated price caps, stopping production of said energy, and selling off the government created pollution shares for a profit. Enron spent hundreds of millions bribing politicians to manipulate the market in it's interests with government regulation and subsidies. Enron was the very antithesis of anything free-market.
And U.S. healthcare isn't free-market. It is super-regulated on all levels of government, and over 50 percent of all health care costs are paid for by the U.S. government. And our care isn't by any stretch of the imagination worse than Canada, or England which are always given as examples of effective health care monopolies. (Living in the U.S., and living in Canada, and seeing both firsthand, I can tell you that healthcare in the U.S. is far better for low-income uninsured Americans than it is for Canadians). And U.S. health care was considered the best in the world and was essentially universally affordable back before medicare and medicaid came in, and the whole industry became controlled and regulated by the government.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true. In the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the EU, and in most places all over the world, all vehicles are already required to be tagged. These tags work by a system were ambient radiation reflects off the tag, and then a sophisticated device decodes that information in order to determine vehicle identity.
They are called "Licence Plates". This is essentially what the RFID tags are. The only difference is that licence plates are visible from a much greater distance, and are tracked all over with cameras and police observation.
Now, I don't mean to say that we shouldn't fear the government tracking us. We should. People have every right to be worried and want to stop this. I oppose every effort by my government to try to tag or track anyone, including these RFID tags.
However, if you support the tagging and licencing of vehicles, and having information on these vehicles accessable from a centralized government database as already exists (and I assume that most of you do), then what is the problem with an RFID tag?
Most of the people upset about this extremly limited use of government surveilence support far more extreme forms of government surveilence and would be incredulous if anyone suggest we tried to get rid of them.
People will laugh, and no doubt be outraged if I suggest there is anything wrong with the government issuing licence plates, and tracking the vehicles of its citizens using a huge national database and network of information collecting. But suggest that the department of Homeland Securty do something much more limited, and only for non-citizens, and people are up in arms.
So, is the Slashdot crowd just gripped by sensationalist fear about new technology? Or is this some partisan political thing and people hate it just because they associate "Homeland Security" with "Republican" or "G.W. Bush"? Why does a crowd who will be outraged if someone suggests cars should not be licenced and tracked, or guns should be legal and not be licenced and tracked, will fly into a paranoid rage about something so small and inconsquential as this?
99% of the people here on Slashdot voted for a candidate who is pro-censorship abd anti-gaming. In the US, everyone is too cought up in the football-style rivalry between two almost identical political parties to actually vote against politicians who threaten to ban video games, or rap music, or any other thing enjoyed by a minority of the people.
Hillary Clinton has nothing to fear. She could propose that anyone who even thinks video games should be legal should be rounded up and shot without trial, and the Democrats will justify it as "Oh, I don't like it, but we must beat Bush, he is worse". And G. W. Bush could declare a "War on Filth" and bomb Rockstar Games headquarters, and Republicans will justify it with some equally convoluted theory.
You might bitch or moan about censorship and attacks on gaming now, but when it comes time to hit the voting booth, you will be tripping over yourself to vote for some rabidly pro-censorship politician.
There is nothing wrong with researching the effects of violent video games. It would probably make a great research project for a University to undertake. Or something that maybe a private organization would want to do.
But forcing me using the threat of violence to pay for the research project, especially when this "research" is going to be done by a politically appointed panel with a pro-censorship political agenda, and there is a serious problem.
Most of those countries are not the size of the U.S. Comparing Sweden with the U.S. is a false comparison. Comparing Florida with Sweden is a better example. Create a European National Education System, with a Europe Wide Teachers Union, with rules and regulations made for all of Europe (and I am sure the EU has something like this in mind eventually), and most undoubtably they will begin having the same problems that the United States has.
This is not a conspiracy theory. Go to a local enviornmental rally or protest. Ask the people for yourself. Go talk to the people at your local chapter of Greenpeace. Go search via google for environemntalist web forums.
Talk to the people, list to the rhetoric, read the forum posts, and the people are quite openly and honestly anti-capitalist. Most will readily admit, quite proudly, that enviornmentalism is part of their anti-capitalist worldview, and they feel the enviornmental movement is a useful tool in the fight against capitalism and globalization.
It is no more of a conspiracy theory to say that enviornmentalists are mostly anti-capitalist than to say Catholics are mostly anti-abortion or anti-homosexuality.
The question is, if the parents, the very flesh and blood of the child, who gave birth and raised the child, are unable to make the best decisions for the child, there is no way in hell that some government beurocrat is going to make the right choice for a child. Remember that in democracy, decisions are made on the lowest common denominator of the voting public. Those parents who you think are too stupid to make choices for their own children will be voting and making choices for everyones children. So if in a private system 60% of the people choose Pepsi McSchool of Jesus, in a public system 100% of the people get the Pepsi McSchool of Jesus.
Funding for public education has never been higher in the United States. G. W. Bush, the whipping boy of the left-wing, passed the largest expansion of government spending on education in history. The U.S. spends orders of magnitude more than China, and we spend more than nearly all the countries in the world. We are throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the problem.
The trouble in the United States is that education is dominated by leviathan institutions like the Federal and State governments, teachers unions, contracters and suppliers. Those institutions consume most of the money that is supposed to go to "education". And the money that actually does make it to education goes to "educate" kids in politically correct propoganda, drug propoganda, religious propoganda, or whatever agenda a politically powerful group wants to push through the public schools.
The "enviornmentalists" who dsy they don't trust Bush with nuclear power are morons or lying. Bush already has nuclear weapons! He can order WWIII and the end of the world at any second.
The real reason "enviornmentalists" are opposed to nuclear power is because the people calling themselves "enviornmentalists" nowadays are really anti-capitalists, and they see enviornmental restrictions as a way of starving the free-market enconomy and imposing state central-planning under the guise of "enviornmental regulation".
Fixing it is an impossibility in most places, because the whole political machine of the Teachers Unions, the suppliers and contracters, etc. Once there is a system in place were people are making so much money from the failing system, only a person with more money will be able to change it... and that isn't an average parent.
Any sort of educational reform in the U.S. is politically impossible. Homeschooling and private is the only way we are going to get good education for kids in the immediate future.
Also, most "public" schools in the past were funded by local municipalities, or in some cases voluntary contributions from parents. The modern federal-education-leviathan is nothing like the "public" schooling before the 1960s (When the U.S. was #1 in education). When education was kept small and local, it was possible for people to have influence on it.
Yes, but why is the capital taking flight? The U.S. and Western countries have made their countries buisness hostile. China and India are becoming more free-market, and the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe are becoming more socialist and centraly planned. And now we are just crossing the threshold were China and such are becoming more free-market than we are.
It is in the long term interests of Capitalists to invest in more free and open societies. China is not there yet, but they are becoming more free while we become less free. China is a better investment.
Because that is not how taxes work! If they were going to spend the money on something you really wanted or needed, they wouldn't have to forcefully extract the money from you at gunpoint, now would they? You would give it voluntarily (like people are going to do for the Planetary Society and this project).
Exuse me?
Libertarians are AGAINST the Patroit Act, were as liberals and the left wing attacked anyone who didn't vote for John Kerry, who SUPPORTED the Patroit act (and said it didn't go far enough).
Your post is an example of the hateful, intollerant, close-mind self-rightousness of the left that has alienated so many people. Anything that disagrees with the "One True Worldview and Philisophy" can be dismissed as right-wing. No need to make any kind on rational arguement, no need to refute points or try to win people over. Simply show disgust and disdain for anyone who disagrees with your narrow viewpoint.
This is why G. W. Bush was able to win the last election. The "if you don't agree with everything we say you are only worthy of our disgust" attitude alienates everyone but the "true-believers".
I am hardly "right-wing", and in fact consider myself a "classical liberal", who is pro-gay-marrage and sexual freedom, who is pro-choice (on abortion, but also on just about everything else anyone wants to do to their own body), who is against the war on drugs, against imperialism, against racism, and I want the strictest seperation between church and state. And I am certainly fair minded if you mean that I hate both the "left" and the "right" equally (which is a total false dichotomy... real political thought should not fall on a one-dimential spectrum). But to have me attack the right-wing on Slashdot would be pointless, because the politics on Slashdot clearly lean to the left.
You should have done a point-by-point rebuttal. I would have liked to hear someone on the left say something other than "you just don't understand, do you?". Perhaps it would have waken you up to see that the left has betrayed it's own liberal ideals, and has embrassed statism and totalitarianism. Look for any problem that might exist, and the lefist will give you a solution that involves massive government. Health care? Solution is to put health care under the control of the government. Polution? Massive regulation by the government. Education? A massive centralized government controlled education system. Violent Video Games? We need the government to regulate them. The ideaology of the left nowadays is simply the ideaology of the supreme infallible state.
The left have been creating a leviathan state that has control of almost every aspect of our lives, and want that state control over our lives to increase... and then they want to complain when G. W. Bush uses that state power to his own destructive ends. Power swings back an forth, and the Frankenstien state that you thought you could control is now out of your hands. Had you stuck to a TRUE liberal stance, supporting individual rights, supporting decentralized government, supporting checks and balances and limitations to government power, supporting strict adherence to our constitution, G. W. Bush would not have the tools to do what he is doing, period.
G. W. Bush or a bunch of right-wing wackos didn't turn America into a totalitarian state... that has been happening for 50 years, with the cheering support of the left.
It was the left who brought us the welfare state, which gave us a national ID system (they say Social Security numbers aren't part of a national ID system, but it IS a national ID in practice).
It was the left who supported massive government spending that could only be sustained through a government agency that tracks ALL your financial transactions, can request an financial record from any instutution you do buisness with without a judges permission, and can assume you are guilty of a crime until you are proven innocent.
It was the left who demanded that citizens be disarmed in violation of their constitutional rights.
It was the left (Wilson and Roosevelt), that built up our military for foriegn adventures, and who rounded up certain ethnic groups into prison camps (Good ol' FDR rounded up about 20,000 japanese).
It was the left who cheered on the police blowing up children in Waco Texas, and who demanded a whole slew of government programs to monitor "terrorist groups" (see, back then they expected the terrorist groups would be right-wing like OK City bomber, so it was OK to have a police state to go after THOSE criminals).
It was the left who pioneered the concept of "judicial activism" (i.e. Judges "creativly interpreting" the law in order to bring about desired political ends that doesn't have the support of the public to pass into law), which is now being used to attack abortion, or squelch protest.
It was the left that called for draconian police powers to be used against protesters (remember when it used to be right-wing anti-abortion protesters outside clinics who needed to be stoped? What, you didn't think all those laws restricting protest would be used against you!?)
Sure, Bush is a right-wing crazy. But if you are on the left, you have only yourself to blame for the situation. G. W. Bush isn't smart enough or talented enough or popular enough to have brought about some sort of drastic change in American policy since 9/11/2001. Our path to Facism has been paved by the polices and laws of left-wing socialists who have systematicly been disassembling our constitution and our freedoms for years, thinking that they were going to somehow be the benevolent dictators of a new state-run scoialist utopia to America.
Well, suprise suprise, things didn't turn out as you planned it, and now you are running and screaming like this is not somehow your fault.
If people want to be taken seriously opposing Bush , the Patriot Act, etc., etc., then you are going to have to take responsibility for what has happened. The left need to realize, and apologize, for giving all the tools to facism to G. W. Bush. Once people on the left accept their responsibility in this, then we can move on to worry about G. W. Bush.
I am not a Bush fan by any means, but if you are going to say something like this (and people are going to mod it up), please, INCLUDE A REFERENCE. Everything Bush says in public is recorded. Give us a link or something.
If so, it could give the the people using this weapon a nasty suprise.
Pity yourself. All video games in England need to go through the British Board of Film Censors, and some have already been banned (no video games have been banned in the United States, by the way). GTA:SA is ALREADY rated 18+ in England. British regulation is far more strict than in the United States.
The difference is that in the U.S. censorship is still controversial, where as in the U.K. is happens without anyone taking a notice.
It is not a coincidence at all. English speaking Canada was colonized by Scotsmen like Archibald MacDonald, and then there was years of very heavy immigration from Scotland. Canada is heavily influenced by Scot culture.
How does this stupidity get modded Insightful?
You are categorizing video games with heroin, tobacco, or assult weapons? Why did you stop there? Why not equate video games with Nazis? Or devil worshipers? Why not call video games "video-terrorism". What other sensationalistic hot-button phrases can we use to make sure no-one thinks rationally on the subject.
OK, let me put it this way.
1. GTA:SA is already rated 17+, so no-one under seventeen can purchase it.
2. GTA:SA isn't being displayed in public, it is only being used at home in private.
3. GTA:SA doesn't even contain the stuff that people are screaming about... you can only view the content after you apply a third party modification.
4. The sex is so tame and non-offensive, with a fully clothed character, that any kind of outrage over it is pure insanity.
Now, if the government can get involved in a case, where a product sold only to adults can be MODIFIED to do something so completly non-offensive, then there is no speech that is safe from government intervention.
Don't decieve yourself. If you support Hillary Clinton and the other totalitarian politicians who are upset about this crap, you are against freedom of speech and expression. Period. End of story. Saying you are not is like saying "I am against War, but I support bombing country X". There is no way you can take the side against rockstar games and call yourself pro-free-expression. To deny you are pro-government-censorship is to say "war is peace", and "freedom is slavery".
Because the violence in GTA is not realistic graphic violence. It is tounge-in-cheek cartoon style violence. The violence in GTA is a parody of hollywood movie violence. (In the case of GTA: San Andreas, it is a parody of early 1990s "Gansta" entertainment).
And Americans are not all that uptight. Most Euro countries have laws much stricter than the U.S. regarding video game content. In the U.S., there are NO national laws regarding video game content, video game ratings come from a voluntary industry rating board. Compare this to Germany, France, Australia, etc., were video games are often outright banned to people of any age, or Canada were the last prime minister advocated banning all violent and sexual video games, for anyone of any age. And unlike the United States, there is rarely any protest or outrage over government censorship.
I think you missed the point:
Ethanol fuel isn't just more expensive that oil, it requires more oil to produce than it produces Ethanol Fuel. Meaning Ethanol Fuel is a net energy loss.
Here is an example with numbers I made up, but it is just to illustrate the concept, refer to the article for the real numbers. Say it takes 1 gallon of gas to run the tracter to farm the crop. Then 1 gallon of gas to run the machine that mulches the crop. Then 1 gallon to heat it up and process it. And then after the whole thing, it produces 1 gallon of fuel. That is 3 gallons of fuel used to produce 1 gallon of fuel... essentially WASTING 2 gallons of fuel.
Come on man, these guys are a politically oriented action group. Most member of the group are non-scientists.
Look at the sensational fearmongering and hatemongering titles, like:
"Is our food safe to eat?"
- This is an article about geneticly modified food. While Big Macs and Twinkies might not be safe because they are full of fat and sugar, there hasn't been a single documented case of anyone being harmed by eating GM food, ever. This kind of headline is pure un-scientific fearmongering. They could have headlined it "Genetically Modified Crops: What are the issues?". Or "Will GM crops disrupt the ecosystem". Instead they are using the "Frankenfood" hysteria to promote a view (that all GM crops are evil!), that clearly all scientists don't have a single point of view on.
"U.S. Sets Back Progress on Global Warming at G8 Summit"
- Yeah, write an article with lots of inflammitory statements like "President Bush resembled an isolated soul", but don't mention anywhere in the article WHAT ACTUAL ACTIONS OR POLICY DECISIONS HE TOOK TO "SET BACK PROGRESS ON GLOBAL WARMING". There was not one mention of any G8 policy, plan, study, or anything else in the article. The entire article basicly says "Bush is a baddie". I am not a fan a Bush, but this is not the behavior of responsible scientists. This is the behavior of a left-wing political organization... which is fine, people have the right to express thier views, but don't pretend the organization is a non-political "Scientific" one.
I agree. However, I also think it is unfair that the TCP/IP protocal, which was developed on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, is being used royalty free by all you Brits. Therefore, I suggest that anyone using the TCP/IP protocol pay their 130UKP fee to the United States government.
But all joking aside, isn't the whole point of having the government provide a service like the BBC is that it is then given away freely to the public? It is a "public service", i.e. freely available to everyone as "culture". If the BBC is going to lock it's content away behind an iron curtain of DRM like some private company, and protect its IP like a private company, then why not just make the BBC a private company?
[quote]All this arguing about superior systems notwithstanding, at least kids are protected from parents that wrong, stupid or insane. Standardization protects kids, who otherwise won't have a voice in the above discussion until it is way too late.[/quote]
But they are not protected from the government that is wrong, stupid, or insane, and the government is far more wrong, stupid, or insane than nearly all parents. If a parent is an idiot in a non-monopoly system, it harms their kid. If a parent is an idiot in a public system, everyone has to accomidate the idiot.
If a parent can't be trusted to do what is best with their own child, how can you trust the government? Talk about having the fox watch the henhouse.
[quote]As for privatization, there are plenty of failure examples: NAFTA, energy (Enron, California brownouts, etc) and healthcare (spiralling rates, diminishing coverage, worse care than other industrialized nations) are three train-wrecks that come to mind.[/quote]
NAFTA is a government treaty, and energy production and healthcare are the most government controlled and subsidized industries in the U.S..
Enron made its fortune by doing things like purchasing energy production facilities that were unprofitable by government mandated price caps, stopping production of said energy, and selling off the government created pollution shares for a profit. Enron spent hundreds of millions bribing politicians to manipulate the market in it's interests with government regulation and subsidies. Enron was the very antithesis of anything free-market.
And U.S. healthcare isn't free-market. It is super-regulated on all levels of government, and over 50 percent of all health care costs are paid for by the U.S. government. And our care isn't by any stretch of the imagination worse than Canada, or England which are always given as examples of effective health care monopolies. (Living in the U.S., and living in Canada, and seeing both firsthand, I can tell you that healthcare in the U.S. is far better for low-income uninsured Americans than it is for Canadians). And U.S. health care was considered the best in the world and was essentially universally affordable back before medicare and medicaid came in, and the whole industry became controlled and regulated by the government.