Netflix needs better competition anyway. Blockbuster competes on price and that they give in-store rentals, but they don't compete on service.
A co-worker recently did a trial comparison of the two services. He found that Netflix sent, received, and processed faster. Also, he found the entire sign up process easier with Netflix (mostly due to an error Blockbuster's site experienced with his sign up, which could be a one time issue). Their website is better designed. Basically, they're just a better online service than Blockbuster has been.
Amazon has proven to be a good online service. My personal experience shows that there's rarely ever need to use anything but super-saver shipping because most things get to me just that quick. Their website works: I can find stuff, I can buy stuff.
If anyone can compete with Netflix it's them, hopefully this will either force Netflix to continue to improve or lower their prices. That means that I win. If nothing else, they probably won't raise prices or worsen service, so I at least won't lose.
You have a lot of good points. Thing is it doesn't mean that it changes the relevance of the results. Not to mention that it's probably going to do little more than add results to my search that returns 200,000 hits, not the one that only returned 30 with none relevant. Then again, it may mean that I find that 31st hit with the rare tidbit that I was looking for...
This just seems like the numbers game. The question is, who's listening?/.ers? Anyone else? This isn't like Intel with clock speeds, they're not trying to use this to convince the general public - yet. If they do, will people really see the benefit in the extra indexing?
Either way, I hope Google doesn't retaliate, unless it means more relevant results and less time browsing through junk. Personally, I'd rather they work on assuring fast and relevant results than bulking up on potentially useless data and playing the numbers game.
Unfortunately, I'm not quick enough to post something insightful, because you posted exactly what I would have.
In fact, I rarely remember using Yahoo! Search, almost everything good I've ever found on there has been by browsing the directory. Fortunately for Yahoo! they have a decent amount of other useful content.
Also penguins are monogamous (emperor penguins are monogamous at least for duration of one year) - which often is not the case with many humans nowadays - not that there is anything wrong with it... So that also anthropomorphosizes them even more.
This doesn't mention emperor penguins, so I really don't know about their monogamy, but penguins in general are not really more monogamous than we are. At least not according to Lloyd Spencer Davis:
Narration:
It turned out that under the enormous pressure of penguin parenting, many relationship were headed for breakdown.
There's the fishing to be done, the long climb to the nest, the careful scheduling of handing over chicks as each parent takes their turn at sea. Penguins won't tolerate a partner who can't pull their weight.
Lloyd Spencer Davis:
So they essentially change partners.
...
Lloyd Spencer Davis:
It gets worse yeah because we then started really watching. And what we found is every now and then, the female would go off and essentially have a quickie. We call it extra pair copulation.
Glad I'm not the only one that's reminded of that movie when I see stories about emerging tracking technologies and the changes in law to accomodate them.
The funny thing is that everything in that movie seemed so far-fetched. It was entertaining in that the future seemed so passive to it's oppression that the oppression was hardly offensive. Those who didn't approve were swept underground.
Then I look back on it today, with the strong "family values" movements, the various laws that erode our freedom of expression, and the technologies that are being developed, it seems scary. Scary in a way that such a laughable movie shouldn't be. Perhaps it points to how rediculous our current socio-political direction is. Perhaps it points to how rediculous my tinfoil hat looks.
He normally gains exposure by completely disagreeing with a community or movement. Then that movement goes out and blogs, posts/. articles, and is generally in a buzz about how dumb the guy is. Meanwhile, you know that he's getting more traffic than in his less controversial articles, you can tell that by the comment boards. You can assume that he's showing this to the editors who are showing it to the advertisers saying: "This guy knows how to get exposure."
It's kinda like the Howard Stern ad (I used to like KRock): The average Stern listener listens for one and a half hours a day. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Well, part of the point of Free Software is that anyone can use it for anything.
However, you're being rather short sighted here. Yes somewhere along the line content creators don't realize that they're doing harm by not allowing a legal and Free piece of software to play DVDs in Linux. However, they can't do that forever if our market keeps growing. Even if they release a closed source library with an API that we could use it'd be better than nothing, and it should eventually happen.
This is especially true as Linux becomes more of a powerhouse for multimedia creation. Content creators are often content consumers. I know a few musicians and they have, by far, the largest collections of music and movies, all legitimately obtained. The Quicktime format stays popular in part because of this, Hollywood knows that creators like to use Macs and DRMed WMV doesn't work on them.
The other side of this is that as tools for content creation become more powerful then the shift to making them more friendly can begin. As far as I can tell you wouldn't want to use Film Gimp to edit footage of your family reunion, unless you're quite familiar with the software. However, think a couple years down the line and someone might put the effort to making a branched product for the "pro-sumer", and then that could be further refined for Mom and Pop.
The last thing to consider is that this is a lot of free advertising for OSS. Sure they're using Linux to run commercial software, they probably have in-house stuff that doesn't get release, and they're supporting an industry that's as much against the Free movement as can be. Even with all of that they're doing something that we can all take advantage of: they're making tons of money off of doing that and they're not keeping that secret from the world. Next time some Windows zealot bashes FL/OSS software ask them if they enjoyed "Shrek", then ask them what platform they think most of the work for it was done on.
As an aside, I have to confess that I misread your original post. I thought you were complaining that they weren't contributing, not just that the industry has shut Linux out of the player market.
"Yeah, right - there are plenty of people who will tell you that Windows servers hose themselves on at least a weekly basis and have to be rebooted to unhose themselves"
It just depends on what you're doing with the machine and who's on it. On my work machine I install the tools I need to do my work and that's it. I disable ActiveX in IE, incase I need to use it. I use FireFox primarily. Otherwise, I'm careful what I install and I rarely touch the config. The uptime on that machine is currently at 2 months.
My home machine is a different matter. I have more programs, and another one seems to get added every couple of months. It crashes every now and then, and I shut it down at night so there's no uptime stats.
Windows servers, by comparison, are horrible. We have a monthly maintenance window for them, one Saturday we let the employees know they'll probably be going down. We (well, not I, I'm just a programmer) "preventatively" reboot them all. The Exchange server is a problem every single week. The DFS we have just barely works. The accounting server can't take Monday timesheet submittals.
It's easy to blame the admins, which I did for quite some time. Then I was involved in the migration from NT to 2k for the intranet server. I saw firsthand how things just don't work on base installs for no reason. The same thing happened when we attempted the move from 2k to 2k3.
The fact is that you can install Windows in a server role, get lucky that the setup goes well and everything works, and it's easy. If anything goes wrong, though, you actually have to know what you're doing to fix it. Most Windows administrators that I have come into contact with don't know what to do in such a situation. They'll troubleshoot for a while and if it doesn't resolve itself they reinstall. As a programmer I end up at their whim because any problem with the setup differs to the administrators.
The reliability has gotten much better since the days of NT and 95. To a person used to that the current situation seems to be greatly improved. Now you have to reboot workstations when you install things or have the occasional blue screen (or spyware) and servers are rebooting weekly, not daily or hourly.
To me it's not acceptable, because I have firsthand knowledge of high-load Linux and BSD servers with over a year of uptime. My home gateway/webserver/fileserver/etc had over 200 days of uptime until a recent power outage. My Linux workstation only needs a reboot when I update the kernel.
Vehicle Voltron (Voltron of the Near Universe)
Later episodes were based on the 1982 series Armored Fleet Dairugger XV ( XV - Kik Kantai Dairag XV), and changed the storyline considerably. In this iteration of Voltron, the Galaxy Alliance's home planets have been overcrowded, and a fleet of Explorers have been sent to look for new planets to colonise. Along the way, they attract the attention of the evil Drule, who proceed to interfere with the explorers and the colonists. Since the Voltron of Planet Arus was too far away to help the explorers, a new Voltron is constructed using three teams (Land, Sea and Air) composed of 5 vehicles each, to battle the Drule threat.
I looked into this a while back. It's hard to find reliable information on the car Voltron. The Lion Voltron is burned into many a mind, but the car Voltron is much forgotten. If you google for car voltron you'll get a lot of results that discredit it as second rate.
Anyway.. I would take the dates of the Japanese Anime's as the real deciding factor of which came first: 1981 for Lion Voltron; 1982 for Car Voltron.
I like Google maps interface, but I've tried using their directions a couple of times and I've been a big disappointed.
However, I actually prefer Expedia Maps directions to MapQuest. I always have. I don't like the interface as much, nor do I get the helpful icons by each turn, but the directions have normally been better. I've tested this both by taking both sets of directions with me and by checking them against my experiences driving places. Expedia might not be better, but it's definitely better for me. You can take away my anti-Microsoft card now, if you must.
Obviously the lions. The car Voltron never really caught on in the US, though I admit that I'm not sure it caught on elsewhere. I vaguely remember the cartoon with the cars. I vividly remember playing with the car Voltron toys, though.
The lion version was the original. It's what most people will remember. The biggest reason for this movie clearly is the nostalgia, which would be limited to a smaller audience by using the cars.
Dell had an interesting way to combat this on my P4 1.7GHz machine. They put a large heatsink on the processor and a shroud that covered the heatsink and funnelled the air towards the case fan on the back. The shroud had some vents near the fan so it would still move air from inside the case. Thus, I only had three fans, one for the power supply, one for the case, and one for the GPU. It ran pretty quiet. In fact, it became even quieter when I moved it to a server role and put in a GPU with no fan. The downside was that I'd almost definitely have to ditch that setup if I changed motherboards.
Maybe it was, as you suggest, the grammar and spelling that threw me off to begin with.
It was always my weakest subject, and reading my posts in this thread I've found numerous mistakes. My favorite was "enept", obviously I'm inept at spelling.
My entire problem with the campaign against the GTA series is with censorship. My original post was ill-elaborated to show this, but it was to say that people have wanted to censor this game out of existence for far longer than there was knowledge of this mini sex-game. This is just the latest attack on the game. As of the discovery of this unlockable content it was very predictable that those who were already against the game would vigorously renew thier fight. As soon as more mainstream media started paying attention it was very predictable that the game would be pulled from store shelves. My additional prediction is that a lawsuit against Rockstar is in their near future. They will do anything to stop this content from being produced. I would rather see the market decide.
Personally, I don't like the game. I certainly don't think that children should be playing it. I've hardly ever played it, though I know someone who has it and I've seen him play it. I don't think that they target children in the advertising of this, but I also don't think that they're as exclusive as they should be. Truthfully, I object to a game where the character can beat hookers and steal their money.
The thing is, I don't think that my opinion should be forced on others. I don't believe that because I'm offended by this game that others should be, nor should they be blocked from playing it. If I had children they wouldn't be permitted to play this game. I wouldn't expect to stop other people's children from playing it, unless it were in my home. I think they could've done better at showing the ads for this game only during the later evening. I don't think that the government should force them to do that, though.
This sort of censorship is, in my opinion, the worst kind. It's not a very clear and direct censorship. They aren't being told they can't produce a game, they're being told that no one should sell it. It is the old "If a tree falls in the forest..." scenerio. If their distribution channels are significantly severed then they can't get their content to the public as efficiently and they are to great extent censored simply by that action. This is worse than simply banning it from sale because the public doesn't realize this is happening.
You mentioned being unfamiliar with the AO rating. This rating is comparable to the X rating that the movie industry uses. It means that the game should be restricted from being viewed by any children. The M rating is comparable to R, it means that the game is not intended for those under 17. Perhaps the biggest difference in the ratings is that the movie industry is more active in ensuring that they're guidelines are followed. It's far more difficult for a minor to buy an R rated movie than an M rated game. This is something that should probably change. I really think that the M rating and "Strong Sexual Content" modifier should have been enough for this game, even with the hidden content.
Censorship has actually come a long way and it's won in some cases. Take a look at Larry Flint's legacy (not a great man [just a pornographer], not a great reasoning [pornography], but certainly a great cause [free speech]) to see where he won and lost. Each loss was a win for censorship. Not that I think everything Larry Flint fought for was right, but he did believe in freedom of expression. Every rating system that we have in place is a partial win for censorship. Ratings are good things, but only if they work. Part of them working is the enforcement of their recommendations at the cash register.
I'm not familiar with all of the grassroots organizations that were involved in helping to push this story into the mass-media and congressional eye. I do know that this s
You're ignoring that the ultimate goal of those who created the uproar over this newly discovered content. They're the same ones who have been calling for this game to pulled from shelves so that no one can buy it. They don't want this game to exist. This game getting an AO rating is a big win for them, it takes it off the shelves of all major retailers until they release another version where the content isn't there to be unlocked and modified. They've significantly changed the availability of this content for me (not that I ever had any desire to own this game) until the updated version is released.
There WAS sex and violence in media when you were a child, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Artists have been depicting sex and violence for thousands of years before you or I were here to argue it. This also isn't the first time when it's been suggested that no one should be allowed access to those works. Your parents could have shown you pornography. Playboy has been available at newstands for 40 years. You'd have to be quite old to have lived in an era that didn't have any movies that were considered overly violent at the time.
What's surprising is that parents are sitting at home saying "these products shouldn't be sold to anyone, what if my child got ahold of them." Well, keep your child away from them. Why do you have to prevent everyone from having them?
What's at stake is freedom of creativity. If they decide that pixellated clothed sex is pornography today (remember that the original content is clothed, you must apply a patch that changes the content for them to be undress), then tomorrow they might decide that it's too violent to be widely available, even when marked for 17 years or older. Where does it stop, though? Do we accept that Doom was somehow responsible for the Columbine shootings? Do we decide that Tomb Raider is lewd because it's violent, has a scantily clad heroine, and modders strive to undress her? Do we say that there's too much sexual content in The Sims 2?
What value do ratings have if parents ignore them, then tell the government that they have to put a stop to games that are already rated M?
At this point, you have done a very good job of insulting me, making assumptions about me, and attacked my opinions while adding very little argument as to why yours are right. Your argument is about as strong as any against this sort of content. It's offensive [to you and/or others] and thus it should be up to the industry, resellers, or government to limit it's distribution. I'm apparently immature, whiny, and just plain wrong for thinking that this entire sequence of events was relatively predictable and that parents should be responsible for keeping their children from content that offends them. I'm shocked you didn't slam my grammar and spelling, because you could have. I should've written you off as a troll after your first reply, so I will now.
Much the same way that IE 5.5 wasn't available in Win95 for no apparent reason. Seeing as Win98 was so similar and IE6 wasn't a huge change from IE5.5, I can't really see any other reason for that action.
Was meta-modding (it's still a funny post, btw) and I got this post. I had to reply.
I too was stuck on the Pirates of the Carribean ride once, but for 45 minutes. They didn't shut down the animatronics for 20 minutes, and they didn't shut down the music until 5 minutes before they evacuated us from the ride. It's an experience that's burned into my memory.
We were four boats behind the one that got stuck. It got stuck on the ramp at the very end of the ride. The whole time we could see the light of day ahead of us, but my wife didn't want to jump boats so we weren't going to get out.
After 45 minutes they brought a 6ft long board over and put it on the lip of the boat. We walked off into the scenery. We were then escorted through the scenery into the back room where the controls are. The back room looks almost like it's from an old power plant, there's huge grey boxes and tons of pipes and wires and big blinking red lights.
Later in the trip we tempted fate: we rode the Small World ride. We had to see if God had it out for us. We made it out okay, but I was ready to swim for it if we got stuck.
I have no problem helping her take care of her child when it doesn't hurt my right to have access to content that may be adult in nature.
What's the difference? Well, it's that parents used to actually parent. Now they just do everything that they can to shelter the world from things they don't want their child to have access to. Why are they so enept at protecting their children that something must either be non-offensive or it cannot exist?
When I was young my parents simply didn't let me watch movies that were overtly violent or sexual. They didn't let me play Leisure Suit Larry. They were interested in what I did at school, at home, and at my friends' houses. They talked to my friends' parents. They did their best to keep me from bad influences, without suing anyone or going to the press about anything. They also both worked, and raised my brother under much the same circumstances.
Parents shouldn't have been so shocked that this sort of content was in a game labelled for people aged 17 years or older. Parents shouldn't buy that for their kids. It's clearly labelled. If another parent doesn't see things that way, then you should be talking to them and you should tell them that you don't want your child playing that. If they do then you shouldn't allow your child over there.
The only compelling argument that I see for something to be done by the gaming industry, resellers, or the government is that children shouldn't be allowed to buy these games without an adult present. This should be a standard, just as a child isn't admitted to see an R rated movie.
Perhaps you shouldn't assume so much about my childhood from a two paragraph post stating that this entire sequence of events is not surprising.
That statement was never about who got rid of it or who was responsible for the change of rating. Read it again:
I'm just waiting for the lawsuits. I'm sure that some offended conservative group is trying to find distress[sic] Moms who's little babies downloaded the patch to modify the game and were sullied. Poor little Johnny.
It's all about a speculated, non-existant lawsuit. I'm sure that readers of that post could easily walk away not blaming conservatives for what happened, and realizing that pure speculation about a lawsuit does not inflect guilt.
With that said, do you really think that groups like The Traditional Values Coalition haven't been raising cain about this? If anyone were to file a lawsuit, it'd be more likely to be groups like this than a NY senator.
Slashdot Mirror
A co-worker recently did a trial comparison of the two services. He found that Netflix sent, received, and processed faster. Also, he found the entire sign up process easier with Netflix (mostly due to an error Blockbuster's site experienced with his sign up, which could be a one time issue). Their website is better designed. Basically, they're just a better online service than Blockbuster has been.
Amazon has proven to be a good online service. My personal experience shows that there's rarely ever need to use anything but super-saver shipping because most things get to me just that quick. Their website works: I can find stuff, I can buy stuff.
If anyone can compete with Netflix it's them, hopefully this will either force Netflix to continue to improve or lower their prices. That means that I win. If nothing else, they probably won't raise prices or worsen service, so I at least won't lose.
This just seems like the numbers game. The question is, who's listening? /.ers? Anyone else? This isn't like Intel with clock speeds, they're not trying to use this to convince the general public - yet. If they do, will people really see the benefit in the extra indexing?
Either way, I hope Google doesn't retaliate, unless it means more relevant results and less time browsing through junk. Personally, I'd rather they work on assuring fast and relevant results than bulking up on potentially useless data and playing the numbers game.
In fact, I rarely remember using Yahoo! Search, almost everything good I've ever found on there has been by browsing the directory. Fortunately for Yahoo! they have a decent amount of other useful content.
had to do it, sorry..
This doesn't mention emperor penguins, so I really don't know about their monogamy, but penguins in general are not really more monogamous than we are. At least not according to Lloyd Spencer Davis:
...or how ridiculous my spelling is. bleh.
The funny thing is that everything in that movie seemed so far-fetched. It was entertaining in that the future seemed so passive to it's oppression that the oppression was hardly offensive. Those who didn't approve were swept underground.
Then I look back on it today, with the strong "family values" movements, the various laws that erode our freedom of expression, and the technologies that are being developed, it seems scary. Scary in a way that such a laughable movie shouldn't be. Perhaps it points to how rediculous our current socio-political direction is. Perhaps it points to how rediculous my tinfoil hat looks.
He normally gains exposure by completely disagreeing with a community or movement. Then that movement goes out and blogs, posts /. articles, and is generally in a buzz about how dumb the guy is. Meanwhile, you know that he's getting more traffic than in his less controversial articles, you can tell that by the comment boards. You can assume that he's showing this to the editors who are showing it to the advertisers saying: "This guy knows how to get exposure."
It's kinda like the Howard Stern ad (I used to like KRock): The average Stern listener listens for one and a half hours a day. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
However, you're being rather short sighted here. Yes somewhere along the line content creators don't realize that they're doing harm by not allowing a legal and Free piece of software to play DVDs in Linux. However, they can't do that forever if our market keeps growing. Even if they release a closed source library with an API that we could use it'd be better than nothing, and it should eventually happen.
This is especially true as Linux becomes more of a powerhouse for multimedia creation. Content creators are often content consumers. I know a few musicians and they have, by far, the largest collections of music and movies, all legitimately obtained. The Quicktime format stays popular in part because of this, Hollywood knows that creators like to use Macs and DRMed WMV doesn't work on them.
The other side of this is that as tools for content creation become more powerful then the shift to making them more friendly can begin. As far as I can tell you wouldn't want to use Film Gimp to edit footage of your family reunion, unless you're quite familiar with the software. However, think a couple years down the line and someone might put the effort to making a branched product for the "pro-sumer", and then that could be further refined for Mom and Pop.
The last thing to consider is that this is a lot of free advertising for OSS. Sure they're using Linux to run commercial software, they probably have in-house stuff that doesn't get release, and they're supporting an industry that's as much against the Free movement as can be. Even with all of that they're doing something that we can all take advantage of: they're making tons of money off of doing that and they're not keeping that secret from the world. Next time some Windows zealot bashes FL/OSS software ask them if they enjoyed "Shrek", then ask them what platform they think most of the work for it was done on.
As an aside, I have to confess that I misread your original post. I thought you were complaining that they weren't contributing, not just that the industry has shut Linux out of the player market.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasj eff169586.html
Do you really think that Film Gimp has no Hollywood contributors?
It just depends on what you're doing with the machine and who's on it. On my work machine I install the tools I need to do my work and that's it. I disable ActiveX in IE, incase I need to use it. I use FireFox primarily. Otherwise, I'm careful what I install and I rarely touch the config. The uptime on that machine is currently at 2 months.
My home machine is a different matter. I have more programs, and another one seems to get added every couple of months. It crashes every now and then, and I shut it down at night so there's no uptime stats.
Windows servers, by comparison, are horrible. We have a monthly maintenance window for them, one Saturday we let the employees know they'll probably be going down. We (well, not I, I'm just a programmer) "preventatively" reboot them all. The Exchange server is a problem every single week. The DFS we have just barely works. The accounting server can't take Monday timesheet submittals.
It's easy to blame the admins, which I did for quite some time. Then I was involved in the migration from NT to 2k for the intranet server. I saw firsthand how things just don't work on base installs for no reason. The same thing happened when we attempted the move from 2k to 2k3.
The fact is that you can install Windows in a server role, get lucky that the setup goes well and everything works, and it's easy. If anything goes wrong, though, you actually have to know what you're doing to fix it. Most Windows administrators that I have come into contact with don't know what to do in such a situation. They'll troubleshoot for a while and if it doesn't resolve itself they reinstall. As a programmer I end up at their whim because any problem with the setup differs to the administrators.
The reliability has gotten much better since the days of NT and 95. To a person used to that the current situation seems to be greatly improved. Now you have to reboot workstations when you install things or have the occasional blue screen (or spyware) and servers are rebooting weekly, not daily or hourly.
To me it's not acceptable, because I have firsthand knowledge of high-load Linux and BSD servers with over a year of uptime. My home gateway/webserver/fileserver/etc had over 200 days of uptime until a recent power outage. My Linux workstation only needs a reboot when I update the kernel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltron
Anyway.. I would take the dates of the Japanese Anime's as the real deciding factor of which came first: 1981 for Lion Voltron; 1982 for Car Voltron.
http://www.absoluteanime.com/voltron/
http://www.absoluteanime.com/voltron/index-v.htm
However, I actually prefer Expedia Maps directions to MapQuest. I always have. I don't like the interface as much, nor do I get the helpful icons by each turn, but the directions have normally been better. I've tested this both by taking both sets of directions with me and by checking them against my experiences driving places. Expedia might not be better, but it's definitely better for me. You can take away my anti-Microsoft card now, if you must.
The lion version was the original. It's what most people will remember. The biggest reason for this movie clearly is the nostalgia, which would be limited to a smaller audience by using the cars.
Dell had an interesting way to combat this on my P4 1.7GHz machine. They put a large heatsink on the processor and a shroud that covered the heatsink and funnelled the air towards the case fan on the back. The shroud had some vents near the fan so it would still move air from inside the case. Thus, I only had three fans, one for the power supply, one for the case, and one for the GPU. It ran pretty quiet. In fact, it became even quieter when I moved it to a server role and put in a GPU with no fan. The downside was that I'd almost definitely have to ditch that setup if I changed motherboards.
It was always my weakest subject, and reading my posts in this thread I've found numerous mistakes. My favorite was "enept", obviously I'm inept at spelling.
My entire problem with the campaign against the GTA series is with censorship. My original post was ill-elaborated to show this, but it was to say that people have wanted to censor this game out of existence for far longer than there was knowledge of this mini sex-game. This is just the latest attack on the game. As of the discovery of this unlockable content it was very predictable that those who were already against the game would vigorously renew thier fight. As soon as more mainstream media started paying attention it was very predictable that the game would be pulled from store shelves. My additional prediction is that a lawsuit against Rockstar is in their near future. They will do anything to stop this content from being produced. I would rather see the market decide.
Personally, I don't like the game. I certainly don't think that children should be playing it. I've hardly ever played it, though I know someone who has it and I've seen him play it. I don't think that they target children in the advertising of this, but I also don't think that they're as exclusive as they should be. Truthfully, I object to a game where the character can beat hookers and steal their money.
The thing is, I don't think that my opinion should be forced on others. I don't believe that because I'm offended by this game that others should be, nor should they be blocked from playing it. If I had children they wouldn't be permitted to play this game. I wouldn't expect to stop other people's children from playing it, unless it were in my home. I think they could've done better at showing the ads for this game only during the later evening. I don't think that the government should force them to do that, though.
This sort of censorship is, in my opinion, the worst kind. It's not a very clear and direct censorship. They aren't being told they can't produce a game, they're being told that no one should sell it. It is the old "If a tree falls in the forest..." scenerio. If their distribution channels are significantly severed then they can't get their content to the public as efficiently and they are to great extent censored simply by that action. This is worse than simply banning it from sale because the public doesn't realize this is happening.
You mentioned being unfamiliar with the AO rating. This rating is comparable to the X rating that the movie industry uses. It means that the game should be restricted from being viewed by any children. The M rating is comparable to R, it means that the game is not intended for those under 17. Perhaps the biggest difference in the ratings is that the movie industry is more active in ensuring that they're guidelines are followed. It's far more difficult for a minor to buy an R rated movie than an M rated game. This is something that should probably change. I really think that the M rating and "Strong Sexual Content" modifier should have been enough for this game, even with the hidden content.
Censorship has actually come a long way and it's won in some cases. Take a look at Larry Flint's legacy (not a great man [just a pornographer], not a great reasoning [pornography], but certainly a great cause [free speech]) to see where he won and lost. Each loss was a win for censorship. Not that I think everything Larry Flint fought for was right, but he did believe in freedom of expression. Every rating system that we have in place is a partial win for censorship. Ratings are good things, but only if they work. Part of them working is the enforcement of their recommendations at the cash register.
I'm not familiar with all of the grassroots organizations that were involved in helping to push this story into the mass-media and congressional eye. I do know that this s
Much the same way that IE6 wasn't available in Win95 for no apparent reason.
There WAS sex and violence in media when you were a child, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Artists have been depicting sex and violence for thousands of years before you or I were here to argue it. This also isn't the first time when it's been suggested that no one should be allowed access to those works. Your parents could have shown you pornography. Playboy has been available at newstands for 40 years. You'd have to be quite old to have lived in an era that didn't have any movies that were considered overly violent at the time.
What's surprising is that parents are sitting at home saying "these products shouldn't be sold to anyone, what if my child got ahold of them." Well, keep your child away from them. Why do you have to prevent everyone from having them?
What's at stake is freedom of creativity. If they decide that pixellated clothed sex is pornography today (remember that the original content is clothed, you must apply a patch that changes the content for them to be undress), then tomorrow they might decide that it's too violent to be widely available, even when marked for 17 years or older. Where does it stop, though? Do we accept that Doom was somehow responsible for the Columbine shootings? Do we decide that Tomb Raider is lewd because it's violent, has a scantily clad heroine, and modders strive to undress her? Do we say that there's too much sexual content in The Sims 2?
What value do ratings have if parents ignore them, then tell the government that they have to put a stop to games that are already rated M?
At this point, you have done a very good job of insulting me, making assumptions about me, and attacked my opinions while adding very little argument as to why yours are right. Your argument is about as strong as any against this sort of content. It's offensive [to you and/or others] and thus it should be up to the industry, resellers, or government to limit it's distribution. I'm apparently immature, whiny, and just plain wrong for thinking that this entire sequence of events was relatively predictable and that parents should be responsible for keeping their children from content that offends them. I'm shocked you didn't slam my grammar and spelling, because you could have. I should've written you off as a troll after your first reply, so I will now.
Much the same way that IE 5.5 wasn't available in Win95 for no apparent reason. Seeing as Win98 was so similar and IE6 wasn't a huge change from IE5.5, I can't really see any other reason for that action.
I too was stuck on the Pirates of the Carribean ride once, but for 45 minutes. They didn't shut down the animatronics for 20 minutes, and they didn't shut down the music until 5 minutes before they evacuated us from the ride. It's an experience that's burned into my memory.
We were four boats behind the one that got stuck. It got stuck on the ramp at the very end of the ride. The whole time we could see the light of day ahead of us, but my wife didn't want to jump boats so we weren't going to get out.
After 45 minutes they brought a 6ft long board over and put it on the lip of the boat. We walked off into the scenery. We were then escorted through the scenery into the back room where the controls are. The back room looks almost like it's from an old power plant, there's huge grey boxes and tons of pipes and wires and big blinking red lights.
Later in the trip we tempted fate: we rode the Small World ride. We had to see if God had it out for us. We made it out okay, but I was ready to swim for it if we got stuck.
What's the difference? Well, it's that parents used to actually parent. Now they just do everything that they can to shelter the world from things they don't want their child to have access to. Why are they so enept at protecting their children that something must either be non-offensive or it cannot exist?
When I was young my parents simply didn't let me watch movies that were overtly violent or sexual. They didn't let me play Leisure Suit Larry. They were interested in what I did at school, at home, and at my friends' houses. They talked to my friends' parents. They did their best to keep me from bad influences, without suing anyone or going to the press about anything. They also both worked, and raised my brother under much the same circumstances.
Parents shouldn't have been so shocked that this sort of content was in a game labelled for people aged 17 years or older. Parents shouldn't buy that for their kids. It's clearly labelled. If another parent doesn't see things that way, then you should be talking to them and you should tell them that you don't want your child playing that. If they do then you shouldn't allow your child over there.
The only compelling argument that I see for something to be done by the gaming industry, resellers, or the government is that children shouldn't be allowed to buy these games without an adult present. This should be a standard, just as a child isn't admitted to see an R rated movie.
Perhaps you shouldn't assume so much about my childhood from a two paragraph post stating that this entire sequence of events is not surprising.
Whoops! I am wrong.
It's all about a speculated, non-existant lawsuit. I'm sure that readers of that post could easily walk away not blaming conservatives for what happened, and realizing that pure speculation about a lawsuit does not inflect guilt.
With that said, do you really think that groups like The Traditional Values Coalition haven't been raising cain about this? If anyone were to file a lawsuit, it'd be more likely to be groups like this than a NY senator.