This completely ignores one fairly well established fact about businesses, and big businesses in particular--they are risk averse. No big company is going to make a habit out of rolling the dice on enormous legal fees, especially when the other side potentially has the stronger case.
Take the GED, then take one course from a local college.
Then when they ask for your education with the little checkboxes "GED, High School Diploma, Some College, Bacchelors etc." you just put "Some College."
If that doesn't work, I say lie. I'm all for honesty 99% of the time, but I find the system of prejudices created by our educational system to be inexcusable. If you need to lie to be treated fairly, you have a right to lie.
And it's not like most people bother to check. One potential employer might, but that doesn't mean the next guy will. Hell, you can probably lie about having a PhD if you just instruct the school not to release your records without your signature...then if they call, they get "Yes, he attended here, but we're not allowed to release his information."
One thing I will say, though, is if you're going to lie, make sure you actually have the skills and knowledge the employer expects. It's one thing to lie to get your fair shot; it's another to lie to get a shot you didn't deserve to begin with. That and you're going to be a lot better off in the job if you know what you're doing.
If you want to do it legit, some high schools will actually give you class credit for the GED and/or for college classes. (I did both.)
Lastly, the most useful credentials are often not college degrees, but trade certifications. If there's a public certification or licensing system for a profession, getting that certificate guarantees you will beat anyone else who doesn't have it. In some cases, an employer in a publicly regulated profession *can't* hire someone who doesn't have the certification. And that limited labor pool increases wages. You'll usually have to pay for training to get the certification, but it will be a LOT cheaper than college. (You're talking $250-$2000 as opposed to $20,000 - $100,000)
As in, using the power of democracy to force them to change. The powers that be in California were elected using the power of democracy. They are the ones who have set this in motion. (I don't know if the California Attorney General is elected, but he would be appointed by someone who was.)
This has nothing to do with what you said, but did I really write "hte?" My god. I am so dishonored.
Anyway. The disparity between people's perspective and the way the law actually works is the problem. The RIAA has been intentionally fogging the issue by saying one thing to counter some arguments and saying a contradictory thing to counter another argument.
My personal perspective is that the whole concept of intellectual property is bullshit, so it doesn't really reconcile period. So obviously the law is the more important part, and the law asks the question of what they're selling.
At least, to the extent that the law even matters. Obviously the law isn't all that people are making their decisions based on or this wouldn't be an issue to begin with...
This may be horribly presumptuous of me, what with being a honkey, but it seems like n**ga has just lost it's edge.
It's what me and my brothers call each other at home. Even though we're all blindingly white.
I think it's all in the intent. I'm guessing from the context that those who said it to you meant to offend, of course. But it actually illustrates something that the article misses; there's a benefit of not only crossing cultural, geographic and ethnic lines, but lines of age and maturity as well. While not all of the players who bandy the word fag around are 12 year olds, I'm guessing a good percentage of them are. And when this causes them to be shunned by the more mature players, they are that much more likely to learn that it's socially unacceptable. That doesn't mean they'll stop, but it's a lot different to be uncool among your peers (i.e. your own guild or whatnot) than among others.
When your peers are not douchebags, there is pressure to avoid being a douchebag yourself.
It might be handy to have a microbiologist on hand if mold gets out of control at the base or somesuch, and they'll need one for whatever experiments and such they'll be running. (I'm assuming they'll have biological experiments along for the ride...it seems like most space missions do.)
Psychologists are always a part of the mission team but are usually kept planetside. (i.e. they do their job from "Houston.")
I agree with most of what you said on an idealistic level--I agree that that's the way things should be. The problem is that things don't work that way in real life. Just because I believe something and exercise my ability to vote in order to change it won't mean anyone else will; most people shirk public duty unless they get paid (i.e. are politicians), and that means responsible citizens get shafted. And that's not something that responsible citizens can change. (We've tried.)
"We" (as in, civic-minded citizens of good faith) can't change the laws because we can't even get half the people to care, let alone agree, and in the United States system our options for controlling the law are not terribly good anyway. We have little direct authority over the laws--that power resides primarily in the legislatures. Those legislatures are populated by people we elect (usually), but our elections are, as you've no doubt heard, determined mostly by money and the political party of the candidate. Saying that we should change that doesn't help anything--the only ones who can change it are the ones who have those seats, and they don't need our votes to get there. People have been trying for decades now, and the reason they've failed is that most of the electorate chooses to remain ignorant.
I'm not saying following your personal notion of right and wrong over the law is good or bad--I'm saying it's what people do either way, and ultimately the law itself is an expression of someone's personal notion or a group's collective notions anyway.
In a perfect world, we would have laws that were enforced consistantly and that most everyone agreed on. In practice, people can't even agree on where to go for lunch, let alone whether life begins at conception, what constitutes an adequate balance of privacy and civil liberty versus local and national security, and what constitutes sound and equitable economic policy. People have vastly conflicting goals and beliefs, so the concept that laws can be universally just simply doesn't work--no matter what definition of justice you have, someone is going to disagree with you, and in a perfect world where everyone votes, he's going to vote against you. So you're left with a chaotic mishmash where either very few things are illegal or just about everything is illegal, depending on how many votes a law needs to pass.
It also doesn't really work to say that the law constitutes a sworn promise. In the case of my country, no one who is even alive today had the chance to accept the social contract it offers--it was forced upon us at birth. I happen to think it's still a decent one, but the fact is, I was never given a chance to agree or disagree to the system or it's tenets.
As such, when breaking our civic promise to uphold the law, we're breaking a promise we never made. It was made for us on our behalf by people who we never authorized to do so. And if voting for someone constitutes authorization, what do you say to those who voted against them, or who never got to vote on the issue in the first place? Considering they never agreed to be bound to the results of the vote (the system predated their birth) you still can't claim it's a matter of honor. That's not even considering the people who deliberately mislead voters in order to get elected (that's most of them). And who's going to write laws against that? The people who did it? Probably not.
As far as "implicit agreement," meaning the concept that by choosing to remain a member of a nation you also agree to it's laws, that's about one of the worst justifications. You can't choose not to be a member of a nation. If you come out of the womb saying "I decline to participate in the social contract of this nation" they'll still hold you to it's terms. You will be met with violence or incarceration if you continually break it. If you leave the land that nation has claimed, all it means is that you'll be forced into an unconsentual "agreement" with someone else. There is very little predetermined
Actually, there are cases where law enforcement does things like that. It's not usually that brazen, of course, but to my knowledge (which is limited to stories I have been told by police and other such indirect sources) "informal" means of justice are not uncommon.
For example, an officer who specialized in sex offences came to speak to a Human Sexuality class that I was attending. He said that they often have reams of evidence against offenders; chances are, if you've got a decent amount of kiddy porn, they know about it. However, most of it is either not solid enough to hold a conviction or is not bad enough for the office to act on it.
He flat out said that if all you do is collect pictures, the worst they'll usually do is send an officer to your house to say "We know what you're doing, you might want to re-think this before it gets out of hand." The reason is that they want to catch the actual rapists and producers, which takes time and focused effort; all that busting a pic collector does is soak up manpower and cut down on the number of leads they have.
It also seemed that most of their leads came from watching internet traffic and chatrooms, and most of the evidence against producers is hardcopy--videotapes and photos of the producer himself with the victim. That's what they state they're looking for when they get a warrant. The other way they catch them is with sting operations, posing as a 15 year old girl in a chatroom, waiting for a would-be rapist to offer to meet them somewhere for sex, then arresting them.
So decryption would, at best, provide additional evidence on top of one of these two; otherwise you wouldn't have much.
(What scared me, though, was that apparently this officer and about a dozen other officers worked exclusively on internet-related sex offenses that took place within a single county--apparently there are just that many of them.)
You do only follow the laws that you like. I guarantee you you have broken at least one law of your home city/state/province/whatever this week. Probably dozens. Many cities that have ordinances about how to keep your lawn trimmed. I'd be willing to guess there's at least one county in the United States in which masturbation is illegal, or letting the faucet run to let it get cold, or driving home after a 14-hour shift at work.
You're making the laws out to be something they're not. They're not the same for everybody. The second you set foot in a different city you're under a slightly different set of laws. Go into another country and you could be under a vastly different set of laws.
Have you ever--at any point in your entire life--changed lanes in your car without signalling for a full three seconds before you began to move into the other lane?
Well then, you've broken the law and are a criminal according to your own logic.
And I sure don't see you giving your daily prayers to Mecca. That's the law too, you know.
The point is that just because something is written in law doesn't make it right, just, or even functional. In fact, the sin you accuse the poster of--placing the rules he likes above the rest--is exactly what the writers of the law do. The only difference is that in a democracy or republic, a group of people make up the laws instead of a single person doing it. They still make them up however they like, according to their own personal preferences, beliefs, and agendas. *coughSTEMCELLRESEARCHcough*
And while you can live without lying, cheating, or stealing, there's laws against a hell of a lot more than that. In fact, you can lie, cheat, and steal without ever breaking the law, if you do it right.
I applaud your ethics, but I think you deserve credit for them, not the law. You obey the law because you think it's the right thing to do.
Other people do the same thing--they follow their own internal moral compass. Sometimes this leads them into conflict with the law. You can't make it a policy to ignore your own judgement on right and wrong for the sake of the law, or your country, or anything else--if you do, you end up with fascist regimes and genocides.
The fact that everyone places their own morality in competition with that of the law is the only reason the law works. To address the example you give of someone deciding they can break your kneecaps: Any police officer is likely to consider this to be immoral. This means their conscience and the law are in agreement and they will arrest the person. On the other hand, if that same police officer sees you making a lane change after having only signalled for two seconds instead of three, he's likely to think that bringing you down for failure to abide by traffic laws would do more harm than good, so his conscience overrides the letter of the law. Were it not for things like that, everyone in the country would be in prison, including that officer (I'm sure he put depleted batteries in with his normal dumpster trash at some point in his life).
The law is not perfect and neither are the people who write it. But the biggest incorrect assumption you make is that there is an absolutism about any of it. The fact that someone is willing to break one law does not mean they are willing to break all the others, or even any of the others. Likewise, the fact that some laws go unenforced does not mean that others will.
And if you really think the rules are the same for everybody, try being an Arab at an airport.
There's no link to the actual wording of the law, and that makes it difficult to really judge it's validity. However, if it does indeed make it a crime simply to refuse to decrypt your files, that's very bad (and would probably never fly in the US--breaks at least two amendments). It makes anyone with encrypted computer files a potential target of police harassment.
If it only applies in cases of probable cause (or reasonable suspicion, as the brits say) of terrorism or child pornography, then it's sort of neutral. It might be abused to some extent, but so long as there is a legal need for some demonstration of cause or suspicion of terrorism/kiddie porn before they can order a decryption, I wouldn't see it as a huge deal. If you've been intercepting packets of naked 8-year-olds going to and from a person's computer for the last 3 months, requiring him to decrypt it as part of a prosecution may well be reasonable (again, in the UK. In the US we have rules against making people incriminate themselves...it has largely to do with the "Hit someone hard enough and they'll confess to whatever you want" concept.)
In any court, British or American, your legal counsel would be responsible for arguing that whatever the cops found shouldn't warrant punishment. If only one file was found, it could be argued that it was a fluke--you clicked on a link, suddenly saw a naked kid, and hit the back button in disgust. Likewise, any number of images could be argued against if a computer virus was found on the computer and testimony could be brought that suggests that virus would download illegal images. Likewise, any sort of auto-downloader could be blamed (such as those that download files off of newsgroups). They could also point to other people accessing their computer, or someone planting the images intentionally (this would be an effective defense if any tips were involved to the law enforcement--you could argue that the tip came from someone who wanted to defame you or send you to prison).
These things are sometimes written into the law, sometimes not, but it's generally why most laws have the phrase "with intent to." It gives the defense broad latitude that should cover most mitigating circumstances.
It's just as well if you have nothing more to say (And I don't mean that to be insulting--we're both just restating things or contradicting one another at this point).
I did research Columbine--back when it happened, and within the following year. It is completely possible that my information is outdated. Thus it is possible that everything I've stated is now considered to be horseshit. But it's unfair to assume I did no research at all.
The only up-to-date source I can access right at this moment, Wikipedia, doesn't really address the issue of how they were treated except that they were subject to homophobic remarks (which says to me that no one really knew how they were being treated--but I have yet to see a school that calls people fags, yet does nothing else to antagonize them). The FBI's inquiry does take your position that Harris was simply a psychopath--however, anyone who's read the DSM-IV knows that psychological criteria are often broad enough that you can diagnose just about anyone with anything you want, psychosis included. A retroactive diagnosis of psychosis just seems like a political "feelgood."
And my idealism is in the way I think the world should be, not the way it is. The way I think things should be is a far cry from the way I think things are. I am not "justifying" what they did. I'm saying why it happened. You say yourself that nothing justifies taking life, but it happened anyway. I happen to think a lot of unjustified things happen. Chances are, a lot of unjustified things happened to those two boys. Does that justify what they did in retaliation? Well, I happen to agree with you, such a thing is unthinkable--though when I use the word, I mean it literally. There is no measure by which to "justify" such things outside of our emotions. We may never know the price you can place on a human life. As such, I would not try to claim their actions were justified based on anything other than an emotional rationale.
In so far as my emotional feelings on the subject are concerned, I agree that the damage done to the families was by far the greater harm on a local level. But my nature is to think on a larger scale. Because of my own school memories, I can't help but feel that if it did prompt a greater awareness of genuine problems at schools, then the tragedy could have benefits. Trying to evaluate those benefits against the death of 13 people is beyond what I am willing to do, but that does not mean they don't exist. (But as you said, it doesn't mean they do, either...)
The reason I point out my own experiences and how they may color my perceptions is partially out of respect to you. While you're clearly very emotionally invested, you don't seem stupid. So I'm just attempting to point out that I'm emotionally invested as well--just on the other side. With that out of the way we could hopefully avoid a shouting match. (I'm not sure if we did, but still...)
and might I remind you that there are many who are a damn site worse off than they ever were. Who have been through far more, who have been bullied and beaten and insulted to a whole different level. Place them on a peddlestool. Not these psychos, and yes they are psychos they gave away there right to sympathy and understanding the moment they put someone to death.
How does the fact that some people have gone through even worse change anything? And if they are psychos, it is because of the way they were treated.
I dont agree that anyone should kill for there own cause. Any war should be faught with the aim of mutually benefitting both sides. The terror attacks on 9/11, the bombs from the IRA, ETA, the shootings at Columbine. These were selfish murderous acts with no justification. Not one of them were thinking about the other side and that is an important distinction. Its the difference between liberator and conqueror. Or in this case heroes and lunatics.
I can't think of any war that has ever been fought for the benefit of both sides. At best, there have been wars that benefitted more people than they harmed. And if that's the criteria, then you can justify Columbine if it reduced bullying enough...(I'm not saying whether it did or not. It's been a long time since I've been in middle school.)
Its not in Columbine at all. They were a couple of kids who got picked on. They werent homeless, starving, physically destroyed. They werent traumatised by the deaths of people they new and loved. They didnt watch there homes get destroyed, etc, etc.
So? There are plenty of ways to break a person emotionally. Homeless people don't get spat on or kicked nearly as often as they did.
Then perhaps you should be thinking about how to change that. You know instead of executing innocent people to try get your point across...
I don't recall ever having executed anyone. I do, however, recall trying to change the situation in numerous ways.
One of those ways is with simple dialogue, such as this one. I point out to people just how fucked up the lives of many students are, and how dangerous it can be to turn a blind eye when someone says they're having problems with their fellow students, their teachers, or whatever else.
I am actually an idealist at heart. I'm just an idealist who lives in a world that has some very ugly tendencies.
A vast chunk, probably the majority have been through so much worse than the bullying they were subjected too. People in the schools ive been in, people ive talked to, have been subjected to worse bullying. Non of them have put there school mates to death for it. I dont believe any of them ever would. These werent kids pushed too hard by a harsh world they were whining morons with no concept of whats important no perspective on the world, nor decent idea of right and wrong. Itd be pitiable and deserving of some serious help only they crossed a line that millions of others, despite going through far more, would never cross. Now they deserve nothing but disdain.
Then perhaps that's the real problem. So many of us went through things that were even worse, yet did nothing, allowing it to continue to our successors. Even if K&H didn't suffer as badly as some others (I'm guessing at least some people had it worse) that doesn't make what they went through okay. In fact, it makes it even more important that they brought the issue to the nation's attention.
Dont presume to tell me what I have or havent been through.
I didn't. I said that all three of us were different in order to specifically recognize that I don't know what you've been through, and that my knowledge of K&H's experiences were limited.
Especially when you dont appear to have done the slightest research in to just how bad things were for those you support. (Which incidentally wasnt remotely as bad as the situations you bring up.) You sit there throwing out a lot of spiel about how awfully hard it
Insightful??? Karma be damned (and in a thread where one of the most insightful posts so far has been marked as a troll, it most certainly will be.) this is horrifying! Your glamorizing psychopaths! Treating them like they are some kind of veterans of a war in schools.
Both of us are well aware there is no glamor involved in something like this. What I am treating them like is human beings. Might I remind you that these kids took their own lives at the conclusion of their rampage? There was something so deeply wrong with these kids' lives that they were willing to murder dozens of people AND themselves over it, and you would simply wave that away with the word "psychopath."
I dont give a damn what happened to them. _They crossed the line._ Its the same line terrorists and murderers cross. Seriously, you think you can justify there rampage because it helped you out? Well I guess you can justify 9/11 for helping out the terrorist movements. I guess you can justify the multiple bombs set off by the IRA for furthering there cause. What about ETA as well. All justifiable, after all they were mudering to further their causes. You think thats an extreme or cliched thing to say? Please do explain how this differs from them?
I assume that means you are against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 then, even though all those killings may have helped out the American cause. Likewise with state-sanctioned executions and perhaps even self-defense.
Perhaps you are against those things, I don't know. What I know is that there was a line crossed, and it happened long before Columbine.
All things reach a point of saturation at which they change forms. Steal a dollar and nobody cares. Steal a million dollars and you're in deep shit. Heat a drop of water in your hand by a degree and you won't care. Heat it by a million degrees...you get the idea.
There are places where the saturation of day to day indignities, oppression and cruelty cross the line from simple bullying; where the forces in people's lives go from unpleasant to torturous.
Place yourself in their shoes for a moment. Just how badly would you have to be mistreated before you'd do what they did? My guess is you figure you never would. Now suppose that's true. Now imagine you're thrust into a world that's so bad that you end up doing it *anyway.*
That world is real, and it's not just in Columbine.
It takes a lot to get someone to that point. A LOT. I've known people who were crazy or impulsive or rash. It takes more than any of those things to do what K and H did.
And then all you're saying is that the Columbine folks should have shot more faculty and fewer students.' Or that the schools should become more aware of what is happening with there pupils... If you can only see an improvement in schools coming from the execution of its staff you're more twisted than I had originally thought.
Schools becoming aware of what was happening with their pupils would have prevented the problem, had they acted on it.
The problem is they didn't. Either they didn't know, or they knew and did nothing. From my experience, I'm guessing denial had something to do with it as well.
At my school, the denial and apathy by the faculty was so powerful that many of us really did think it would take a shooting to get some of them to act--and even then, we figured all they'd really do is install metal detectors while doing nothing to solve the real problems at the school.
(Isn't it funny that so many schools did just that?)
(Answer: Not really. It makes me a little nauseus, actually.)
'I'd love to be shot to death if it means that other students won't have to go through what I went through.' Good for you. That doesnt change the fact there are 13 dead who didnt want to be the moronic martyr you seem to want to be.
You do realize the irony of taking the moral high ground while simultaneously calling someone moronic for b
It's been my experience that while parents (usually) protect children, institutions of adults don't. So maybe if they play this game they'll get it.
My first reaction was "Huh, I expected it sooner."
on
Bully Trailer Hits the Web
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Amen, brother. I too was among the favored "victims" of my school. Hell, Columbine may have happened in 1991 if my parents had owned any serious firearms. The way students treated each other went beyond uncivilized and into the realm of barbarism. In fact, part of the reason things were so bad was that the stories the students told were so horrific that the faculty decided they had to be ficticious. It took a few dozen people being shot to death to make the world realize that maybe it was real after all.
I knew that if any other schools in the nation were anything like mine, it was only a matter of time before somebody cracked and blew someone else's brains out. I also predicted, rather cynically (this was back in 1990-92, remember) that the media would place the blame squarely on other parts of the media, rather than on the students' brutality or the wholesale negligence of their caretakers.
If you're going to claim--as some others in this thread do--that the fault doesn't lie with the "innocent children" who were raising their fists (and sometimes worse) against their peers, then you've got to accept that the blame lies with the schools who had taken up the duty of protecting them from each other. And then all you're saying is that the Columbine folks should have shot more faculty and fewer students.
I'm a nonviolent person. I'm all for "Never start a fight, but always finish it." But having gone through what I did, I greeted the news of Columbine with gratitude and relief. I knew the massacre was so impossible to ignore that maybe--just MAYBE--it would get the schools' attention and they'd start listening when a fat kid in black clothes says he's sick of having people hit him in the back of the head every day. Most of you don't understand just how much of a difference the lives of those who died at Columbine might make in the lives of those who come after them. I'd love to be shot to death if it means that other students won't have to go through what I went through.
Klebold and Harris didn't start the fight, but--we can hope--they finished it.
And if that sounds insensitive, well, let's just say I had some really good teachers.
It's really not fair to condemn the game simply because it comes from a franchise. While normally the fact that it's a franchise game would suggest the gameplay will be ass, Blizzard tends to place decent standards on it's licensees as far as quality. The WoW boardgame, while a bit too clunky for my taste (way too many components to keep track of) was nonetheless about as good as you could get with that genre while keeping true to the experience. (The only better game I've played is Talisman, and that's only because Talisman is pared down enough to be playable in an hour or three)
I see the game as being for people who like the game and the world and everything but just can't take the grind of playing 30 hours a week, or for people who just want a decent CCG that isn't Magic: The Gathering. This is assuming it turns out to be decent. If it doesn't, the franchise probably won't save it. The rules look like they have some potential; if the cards are written well the game might be fun. (Though the quests look mighty lame, what with spending resources being the primary way of accomplishing them...better to just give players the option of spending resources to draw cards if that's what they're for. Then again, I've only ever seen one really good quest mechanic, and it was for a game that was never published...)
I'll probably buy it just to give it a shot, since I've been looking for a new CCG to play ever since I lost interest in L5R.
(The hard part will be getting my friends into it while still convincing them to keep it casual...none of us can afford to become "competetive" players in a CCG again...)
The gist is, in Star Thugs, most person-to-person combat is on a starship, which is very cramped quarters and full of equipment that, like most things, doesn't respond well to being shot at. Since people generally board to capture a ship and the defenders typically own the ship, both have a vested interest in not blowing away everything down to the hull plating.
(There's also richochet dangers from projectiles, concentrated explosions and heat blasts from energy weapons, and so forth)
So starship crews use melee weapons.
They also carry projectile weapons, since they're not always interested in taking the ship intact, and they're not always on a ship.
That's an interesting point, and one I haven't heard. And it's an example of why these issues are never as simple or easy to solve as they seem. The problem is, we can't have parental responsibility if the government takes the role of parent, yet if we give power to the parents, many will choose to use it improperly or neglect it.
The halfway point, giving the government control over what kids can't do (as opposed to teaching them what they should do) doesn't really help. Removing a "violent" influence from a child's life doesn't create a positive role model for them. It doesn't teach them how to be good people or how to recognize destructive influences in their lives. All it does is piss them off, which--if they're bullies--means you're making the problem worse for all the other kids.
Personally, I plan to teach my kids how to judge things carefully, how to be open minded and make sure they get their facts straight, how to see through illusions and deception and so forth--and I also plan to teach them how to fight. I plan to teach them when they need to throw the first punch and how to make that punch count. Because I'm not going to be there when my kid needs help, and neither will any other teachers or protectors. (Bullies pick the times when the cat's not around.) So all I can do to protect my kids is make sure they can protect themselves. All I can do to protect other kids is to teach mine not to attack without just cause.
A lot of kids are savages, and I don't think changing violent media is going to change that, so I am burdened with teaching my child that if someone knocks your books onto the floor from behind you twice or tries to grab you once, you need to turn around and punch him in the face as hard as you can--not just for yourself, but for everyone else in that school. (And if he's a lot bigger than you, you punch him in the throat instead.)
Because nothing will teach a kid the difference between real violence and fake violence faster than that.
A lot of bullies don't even realize they're hurting people--or, perhaps it would be better to say they don't understand the hurt they've inflicted, because they've never been in that victimized position. And if they have, it will help them just as much, because they will learn that, as a victim, you can stand up and fight. I've seen bullies who were abused children inspired to change by something as simple as a victim who proudly went down fighting. (It was often their victim.)
Taking away video games won't teach them this. Taking away violent movies won't teach them this. A lack of violence doesn't teach anything, and real life violence has a way of cropping up on it's own. To reduce real violence you need to build up things that work against it--things like respect, compassion and--hard as it can be to accept to us idealists--the ability and willingness to ruthlessly defend onesself and one's peers if it comes down to that.
And we can't really expect the government to do that for us. Hell, it's hard for us to do ourselves, even when it means something personal to us--can we really expect someone who's punching the clock to take the reflective time necessary to properly impart the delicate balance of wisdom, respect, diplomacy, and punching someone out when they're being a dick? Can just anyone with tenure as an elementary school teacher understand the complex and difficult task of teaching an otherwise timid child not only how to prevail in a real-world fight against one of their own, but how to have the courage to start it? Or how to teach an otherwise aggressive child the critical importance of respect and compassion? Just saying "You need to respect other people more!" is just about the worst way possible, yet it's the first thing most people do.
We can hope that someday we'll be wise enough that we can teach these things as a culture, through teachers or whatnot, but for right now, the best we can do is teach our own kids and our immediate peers as best we can, and hope that it rubs off enough on others that we make it through the next century or two without killing each other.
Agreed. We all know that content is not intrinsically fun; it derives it's fun from the fact that you don't get to have it until you've collected all 10,000 Retardicoins hidden in the game.
This is especially true in competetive games. I don't enjoy playing head to head unless my character required 200 hours of otherwise ill-concieved single-player gameplay before I could even select him.
And we all know that World of Warcraft is not inherently fun in any way. Fighting monsters is only fun because it costs us so much time. If they assumed they could get away with the intrinsic fun, they'd go out of business in half a heartbeat.
I wouldn't even have bought Soul Calibur 3 if I hadn't known that 70% of the characters were going to be unavailable, waiting for me to schlock through hour after hour of monotonous grinding against the computer opponents before I could even play the game as it was intended.
I'll step up and defend child porn. I'll say it straight out: I'd rather my dad rape me than the Bush administration get it's way. Because either way, the problem isn't rape--the problem is that one person has power over another that they're abusing. The difference is, when you turn 18 you can get away from your dad, or your creepy uncle, or whatever. What's more, if you're assertive you can fix things before that.
But there's no crisis hotline for an abusive dictator. When he hurts you, degrades you, steals away your life and virtue for your pleasure, there's no getting away from it. And anyone who thinks this doesn't happen needs to learn to read.
Having suffered plenty of myriad abuses as a child, I can say that adults do not protect children from intentional abuse as a rule. Sometimes the abuse comes from adults, sometimes by other children, but knew people who's parents beat them and such. The one thing we had in common was that adults would not help us. They would take away our comic books or our rock music or our television priviledges as part of the latest "Protect the Children" campaign, and when you told them you had been attacked by another child with a pocket knife, they would push for more rules on on scissor safety.
Anyone who claims protecting the children as a reason to make a law is a liar. Laws cannot, do not, and will not protect children. The thing that protects children is stopping the person who's hurting them. How does impounding Google's search results stop a penis from penetrating a crying girl? Perhaps more pointedly, how does it stop a mob of twelve other boys at the bus stop from throwing rocks at the fat kid until he's bleeding? And how am I supposed to trust that they'll use the information wisely when they ignore the fat kid take no action when he says "X, Y, and Z throw rocks at me every day, please help me?"
Imprisoning some 28-year-old virgin who's swapping kiddie porn pictures in his basement isn't going to fix anything. Turning the internet into a police state will reduce information dissemination among pedophiles. That's all. It will also enact far more grievous costs on everyone else, and children will still be raped by their uncles nearly as much as they are now.
I don't buy this "If we can save even one child" mentality. Child abuse is a real problem. Internet jackbooting is an imaginary solution, and it sickens me that they're wasting so much effort on it while real children are ignored because their problems aren't the sensitive issue of the week.
So I say screw everybody who's against child porn. They're not about solving problems or preventing harm. They're about stepping up in the brave crusade against the shadows while they turn a blind eye to the very real monsters that cast them.
I love the tendency people have of making a decision over which they have complete control, then blaming it unequivocally on someone else who had no influence over the decision aside from the fact that they dared to live in a way that was not in line with your wishes.
Like blaming the witch for "forcing you" to burn her alive.
After all, those Chinese kids at Tiananmen had it coming. It was their fault for mouthing off to the government. It's not like the tank drivers had any control over the literal physical movements of the tanks that ended up physically crushing people or anything.
It's not like a record label has any influence over it's own profit expectations. It's not like reducing expenses has ever worked for an industry that wasn't making as much money as it wanted. It's not like they can choose not to pay their top artists half a million for a single show. They don't decide how much they pay the people in their direct employ. Apparently the internet alone determines whether their hand makes the physical motions that create particular numbers on a check.
Hmm. Maybe some antipsychotic medications would be in order.
Slashdot Mirror
This completely ignores one fairly well established fact about businesses, and big businesses in particular--they are risk averse. No big company is going to make a habit out of rolling the dice on enormous legal fees, especially when the other side potentially has the stronger case.
Take the GED, then take one course from a local college.
Then when they ask for your education with the little checkboxes "GED, High School Diploma, Some College, Bacchelors etc." you just put "Some College."
If that doesn't work, I say lie. I'm all for honesty 99% of the time, but I find the system of prejudices created by our educational system to be inexcusable. If you need to lie to be treated fairly, you have a right to lie.
And it's not like most people bother to check. One potential employer might, but that doesn't mean the next guy will. Hell, you can probably lie about having a PhD if you just instruct the school not to release your records without your signature...then if they call, they get "Yes, he attended here, but we're not allowed to release his information."
One thing I will say, though, is if you're going to lie, make sure you actually have the skills and knowledge the employer expects. It's one thing to lie to get your fair shot; it's another to lie to get a shot you didn't deserve to begin with. That and you're going to be a lot better off in the job if you know what you're doing.
If you want to do it legit, some high schools will actually give you class credit for the GED and/or for college classes. (I did both.)
Lastly, the most useful credentials are often not college degrees, but trade certifications. If there's a public certification or licensing system for a profession, getting that certificate guarantees you will beat anyone else who doesn't have it. In some cases, an employer in a publicly regulated profession *can't* hire someone who doesn't have the certification. And that limited labor pool increases wages. You'll usually have to pay for training to get the certification, but it will be a LOT cheaper than college. (You're talking $250-$2000 as opposed to $20,000 - $100,000)
As in, using the power of democracy to force them to change. The powers that be in California were elected using the power of democracy. They are the ones who have set this in motion. (I don't know if the California Attorney General is elected, but he would be appointed by someone who was.)
This has nothing to do with what you said, but did I really write "hte?" My god. I am so dishonored.
Anyway. The disparity between people's perspective and the way the law actually works is the problem. The RIAA has been intentionally fogging the issue by saying one thing to counter some arguments and saying a contradictory thing to counter another argument.
My personal perspective is that the whole concept of intellectual property is bullshit, so it doesn't really reconcile period. So obviously the law is the more important part, and the law asks the question of what they're selling.
At least, to the extent that the law even matters. Obviously the law isn't all that people are making their decisions based on or this wouldn't be an issue to begin with...
If all you're buying is the media and no rights come with it, what are they claiming is being stolen via download?
Didn't this argument come up before and they specifically claimed "You're not buying the media, you're buying a license to hte music?"
This may be horribly presumptuous of me, what with being a honkey, but it seems like n**ga has just lost it's edge.
It's what me and my brothers call each other at home. Even though we're all blindingly white.
I think it's all in the intent. I'm guessing from the context that those who said it to you meant to offend, of course. But it actually illustrates something that the article misses; there's a benefit of not only crossing cultural, geographic and ethnic lines, but lines of age and maturity as well. While not all of the players who bandy the word fag around are 12 year olds, I'm guessing a good percentage of them are. And when this causes them to be shunned by the more mature players, they are that much more likely to learn that it's socially unacceptable. That doesn't mean they'll stop, but it's a lot different to be uncool among your peers (i.e. your own guild or whatnot) than among others.
When your peers are not douchebags, there is pressure to avoid being a douchebag yourself.
It might be handy to have a microbiologist on hand if mold gets out of control at the base or somesuch, and they'll need one for whatever experiments and such they'll be running. (I'm assuming they'll have biological experiments along for the ride...it seems like most space missions do.)
Psychologists are always a part of the mission team but are usually kept planetside. (i.e. they do their job from "Houston.")
I agree with most of what you said on an idealistic level--I agree that that's the way things should be. The problem is that things don't work that way in real life. Just because I believe something and exercise my ability to vote in order to change it won't mean anyone else will; most people shirk public duty unless they get paid (i.e. are politicians), and that means responsible citizens get shafted. And that's not something that responsible citizens can change. (We've tried.)
"We" (as in, civic-minded citizens of good faith) can't change the laws because we can't even get half the people to care, let alone agree, and in the United States system our options for controlling the law are not terribly good anyway. We have little direct authority over the laws--that power resides primarily in the legislatures. Those legislatures are populated by people we elect (usually), but our elections are, as you've no doubt heard, determined mostly by money and the political party of the candidate. Saying that we should change that doesn't help anything--the only ones who can change it are the ones who have those seats, and they don't need our votes to get there. People have been trying for decades now, and the reason they've failed is that most of the electorate chooses to remain ignorant.
I'm not saying following your personal notion of right and wrong over the law is good or bad--I'm saying it's what people do either way, and ultimately the law itself is an expression of someone's personal notion or a group's collective notions anyway.
In a perfect world, we would have laws that were enforced consistantly and that most everyone agreed on. In practice, people can't even agree on where to go for lunch, let alone whether life begins at conception, what constitutes an adequate balance of privacy and civil liberty versus local and national security, and what constitutes sound and equitable economic policy. People have vastly conflicting goals and beliefs, so the concept that laws can be universally just simply doesn't work--no matter what definition of justice you have, someone is going to disagree with you, and in a perfect world where everyone votes, he's going to vote against you. So you're left with a chaotic mishmash where either very few things are illegal or just about everything is illegal, depending on how many votes a law needs to pass.
It also doesn't really work to say that the law constitutes a sworn promise. In the case of my country, no one who is even alive today had the chance to accept the social contract it offers--it was forced upon us at birth. I happen to think it's still a decent one, but the fact is, I was never given a chance to agree or disagree to the system or it's tenets.
As such, when breaking our civic promise to uphold the law, we're breaking a promise we never made. It was made for us on our behalf by people who we never authorized to do so. And if voting for someone constitutes authorization, what do you say to those who voted against them, or who never got to vote on the issue in the first place? Considering they never agreed to be bound to the results of the vote (the system predated their birth) you still can't claim it's a matter of honor. That's not even considering the people who deliberately mislead voters in order to get elected (that's most of them). And who's going to write laws against that? The people who did it? Probably not.
As far as "implicit agreement," meaning the concept that by choosing to remain a member of a nation you also agree to it's laws, that's about one of the worst justifications. You can't choose not to be a member of a nation. If you come out of the womb saying "I decline to participate in the social contract of this nation" they'll still hold you to it's terms. You will be met with violence or incarceration if you continually break it. If you leave the land that nation has claimed, all it means is that you'll be forced into an unconsentual "agreement" with someone else. There is very little predetermined
Actually, there are cases where law enforcement does things like that. It's not usually that brazen, of course, but to my knowledge (which is limited to stories I have been told by police and other such indirect sources) "informal" means of justice are not uncommon.
For example, an officer who specialized in sex offences came to speak to a Human Sexuality class that I was attending. He said that they often have reams of evidence against offenders; chances are, if you've got a decent amount of kiddy porn, they know about it. However, most of it is either not solid enough to hold a conviction or is not bad enough for the office to act on it.
He flat out said that if all you do is collect pictures, the worst they'll usually do is send an officer to your house to say "We know what you're doing, you might want to re-think this before it gets out of hand." The reason is that they want to catch the actual rapists and producers, which takes time and focused effort; all that busting a pic collector does is soak up manpower and cut down on the number of leads they have.
It also seemed that most of their leads came from watching internet traffic and chatrooms, and most of the evidence against producers is hardcopy--videotapes and photos of the producer himself with the victim. That's what they state they're looking for when they get a warrant. The other way they catch them is with sting operations, posing as a 15 year old girl in a chatroom, waiting for a would-be rapist to offer to meet them somewhere for sex, then arresting them.
So decryption would, at best, provide additional evidence on top of one of these two; otherwise you wouldn't have much.
(What scared me, though, was that apparently this officer and about a dozen other officers worked exclusively on internet-related sex offenses that took place within a single county--apparently there are just that many of them.)
You do only follow the laws that you like. I guarantee you you have broken at least one law of your home city/state/province/whatever this week. Probably dozens. Many cities that have ordinances about how to keep your lawn trimmed. I'd be willing to guess there's at least one county in the United States in which masturbation is illegal, or letting the faucet run to let it get cold, or driving home after a 14-hour shift at work.
You're making the laws out to be something they're not. They're not the same for everybody. The second you set foot in a different city you're under a slightly different set of laws. Go into another country and you could be under a vastly different set of laws.
Have you ever--at any point in your entire life--changed lanes in your car without signalling for a full three seconds before you began to move into the other lane?
Well then, you've broken the law and are a criminal according to your own logic.
And I sure don't see you giving your daily prayers to Mecca. That's the law too, you know.
The point is that just because something is written in law doesn't make it right, just, or even functional. In fact, the sin you accuse the poster of--placing the rules he likes above the rest--is exactly what the writers of the law do. The only difference is that in a democracy or republic, a group of people make up the laws instead of a single person doing it. They still make them up however they like, according to their own personal preferences, beliefs, and agendas. *coughSTEMCELLRESEARCHcough*
And while you can live without lying, cheating, or stealing, there's laws against a hell of a lot more than that. In fact, you can lie, cheat, and steal without ever breaking the law, if you do it right.
I applaud your ethics, but I think you deserve credit for them, not the law. You obey the law because you think it's the right thing to do.
Other people do the same thing--they follow their own internal moral compass. Sometimes this leads them into conflict with the law. You can't make it a policy to ignore your own judgement on right and wrong for the sake of the law, or your country, or anything else--if you do, you end up with fascist regimes and genocides.
The fact that everyone places their own morality in competition with that of the law is the only reason the law works. To address the example you give of someone deciding they can break your kneecaps: Any police officer is likely to consider this to be immoral. This means their conscience and the law are in agreement and they will arrest the person. On the other hand, if that same police officer sees you making a lane change after having only signalled for two seconds instead of three, he's likely to think that bringing you down for failure to abide by traffic laws would do more harm than good, so his conscience overrides the letter of the law. Were it not for things like that, everyone in the country would be in prison, including that officer (I'm sure he put depleted batteries in with his normal dumpster trash at some point in his life).
The law is not perfect and neither are the people who write it. But the biggest incorrect assumption you make is that there is an absolutism about any of it. The fact that someone is willing to break one law does not mean they are willing to break all the others, or even any of the others. Likewise, the fact that some laws go unenforced does not mean that others will.
And if you really think the rules are the same for everybody, try being an Arab at an airport.
There's no link to the actual wording of the law, and that makes it difficult to really judge it's validity. However, if it does indeed make it a crime simply to refuse to decrypt your files, that's very bad (and would probably never fly in the US--breaks at least two amendments). It makes anyone with encrypted computer files a potential target of police harassment.
If it only applies in cases of probable cause (or reasonable suspicion, as the brits say) of terrorism or child pornography, then it's sort of neutral. It might be abused to some extent, but so long as there is a legal need for some demonstration of cause or suspicion of terrorism/kiddie porn before they can order a decryption, I wouldn't see it as a huge deal. If you've been intercepting packets of naked 8-year-olds going to and from a person's computer for the last 3 months, requiring him to decrypt it as part of a prosecution may well be reasonable (again, in the UK. In the US we have rules against making people incriminate themselves...it has largely to do with the "Hit someone hard enough and they'll confess to whatever you want" concept.)
Disclaimer, IANAL
In any court, British or American, your legal counsel would be responsible for arguing that whatever the cops found shouldn't warrant punishment. If only one file was found, it could be argued that it was a fluke--you clicked on a link, suddenly saw a naked kid, and hit the back button in disgust. Likewise, any number of images could be argued against if a computer virus was found on the computer and testimony could be brought that suggests that virus would download illegal images. Likewise, any sort of auto-downloader could be blamed (such as those that download files off of newsgroups). They could also point to other people accessing their computer, or someone planting the images intentionally (this would be an effective defense if any tips were involved to the law enforcement--you could argue that the tip came from someone who wanted to defame you or send you to prison).
These things are sometimes written into the law, sometimes not, but it's generally why most laws have the phrase "with intent to." It gives the defense broad latitude that should cover most mitigating circumstances.
It's just as well if you have nothing more to say (And I don't mean that to be insulting--we're both just restating things or contradicting one another at this point).
I did research Columbine--back when it happened, and within the following year. It is completely possible that my information is outdated. Thus it is possible that everything I've stated is now considered to be horseshit. But it's unfair to assume I did no research at all.
The only up-to-date source I can access right at this moment, Wikipedia, doesn't really address the issue of how they were treated except that they were subject to homophobic remarks (which says to me that no one really knew how they were being treated--but I have yet to see a school that calls people fags, yet does nothing else to antagonize them). The FBI's inquiry does take your position that Harris was simply a psychopath--however, anyone who's read the DSM-IV knows that psychological criteria are often broad enough that you can diagnose just about anyone with anything you want, psychosis included. A retroactive diagnosis of psychosis just seems like a political "feelgood."
And my idealism is in the way I think the world should be, not the way it is. The way I think things should be is a far cry from the way I think things are. I am not "justifying" what they did. I'm saying why it happened. You say yourself that nothing justifies taking life, but it happened anyway. I happen to think a lot of unjustified things happen. Chances are, a lot of unjustified things happened to those two boys. Does that justify what they did in retaliation? Well, I happen to agree with you, such a thing is unthinkable--though when I use the word, I mean it literally. There is no measure by which to "justify" such things outside of our emotions. We may never know the price you can place on a human life. As such, I would not try to claim their actions were justified based on anything other than an emotional rationale.
In so far as my emotional feelings on the subject are concerned, I agree that the damage done to the families was by far the greater harm on a local level. But my nature is to think on a larger scale. Because of my own school memories, I can't help but feel that if it did prompt a greater awareness of genuine problems at schools, then the tragedy could have benefits. Trying to evaluate those benefits against the death of 13 people is beyond what I am willing to do, but that does not mean they don't exist. (But as you said, it doesn't mean they do, either...)
The reason I point out my own experiences and how they may color my perceptions is partially out of respect to you. While you're clearly very emotionally invested, you don't seem stupid. So I'm just attempting to point out that I'm emotionally invested as well--just on the other side. With that out of the way we could hopefully avoid a shouting match. (I'm not sure if we did, but still...)
and might I remind you that there are many who are a damn site worse off than they ever were. Who have been through far more, who have been bullied and beaten and insulted to a whole different level. Place them on a peddlestool. Not these psychos, and yes they are psychos they gave away there right to sympathy and understanding the moment they put someone to death.
How does the fact that some people have gone through even worse change anything? And if they are psychos, it is because of the way they were treated.
I dont agree that anyone should kill for there own cause. Any war should be faught with the aim of mutually benefitting both sides. The terror attacks on 9/11, the bombs from the IRA, ETA, the shootings at Columbine. These were selfish murderous acts with no justification. Not one of them were thinking about the other side and that is an important distinction. Its the difference between liberator and conqueror. Or in this case heroes and lunatics.
I can't think of any war that has ever been fought for the benefit of both sides. At best, there have been wars that benefitted more people than they harmed. And if that's the criteria, then you can justify Columbine if it reduced bullying enough...(I'm not saying whether it did or not. It's been a long time since I've been in middle school.)
Its not in Columbine at all. They were a couple of kids who got picked on. They werent homeless, starving, physically destroyed. They werent traumatised by the deaths of people they new and loved. They didnt watch there homes get destroyed, etc, etc.
So? There are plenty of ways to break a person emotionally. Homeless people don't get spat on or kicked nearly as often as they did.
Then perhaps you should be thinking about how to change that. You know instead of executing innocent people to try get your point across...
I don't recall ever having executed anyone. I do, however, recall trying to change the situation in numerous ways.
One of those ways is with simple dialogue, such as this one. I point out to people just how fucked up the lives of many students are, and how dangerous it can be to turn a blind eye when someone says they're having problems with their fellow students, their teachers, or whatever else.
I am actually an idealist at heart. I'm just an idealist who lives in a world that has some very ugly tendencies.
A vast chunk, probably the majority have been through so much worse than the bullying they were subjected too. People in the schools ive been in, people ive talked to, have been subjected to worse bullying. Non of them have put there school mates to death for it. I dont believe any of them ever would. These werent kids pushed too hard by a harsh world they were whining morons with no concept of whats important no perspective on the world, nor decent idea of right and wrong. Itd be pitiable and deserving of some serious help only they crossed a line that millions of others, despite going through far more, would never cross. Now they deserve nothing but disdain.
Then perhaps that's the real problem. So many of us went through things that were even worse, yet did nothing, allowing it to continue to our successors. Even if K&H didn't suffer as badly as some others (I'm guessing at least some people had it worse) that doesn't make what they went through okay. In fact, it makes it even more important that they brought the issue to the nation's attention.
Dont presume to tell me what I have or havent been through.
I didn't. I said that all three of us were different in order to specifically recognize that I don't know what you've been through, and that my knowledge of K&H's experiences were limited.
Especially when you dont appear to have done the slightest research in to just how bad things were for those you support. (Which incidentally wasnt remotely as bad as the situations you bring up.) You sit there throwing out a lot of spiel about how awfully hard it
Insightful??? Karma be damned (and in a thread where one of the most insightful posts so far has been marked as a troll, it most certainly will be.) this is horrifying! Your glamorizing psychopaths! Treating them like they are some kind of veterans of a war in schools.
Both of us are well aware there is no glamor involved in something like this. What I am treating them like is human beings. Might I remind you that these kids took their own lives at the conclusion of their rampage? There was something so deeply wrong with these kids' lives that they were willing to murder dozens of people AND themselves over it, and you would simply wave that away with the word "psychopath."
I dont give a damn what happened to them. _They crossed the line._ Its the same line terrorists and murderers cross. Seriously, you think you can justify there rampage because it helped you out? Well I guess you can justify 9/11 for helping out the terrorist movements. I guess you can justify the multiple bombs set off by the IRA for furthering there cause. What about ETA as well. All justifiable, after all they were mudering to further their causes. You think thats an extreme or cliched thing to say? Please do explain how this differs from them?
I assume that means you are against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 then, even though all those killings may have helped out the American cause. Likewise with state-sanctioned executions and perhaps even self-defense.
Perhaps you are against those things, I don't know. What I know is that there was a line crossed, and it happened long before Columbine.
All things reach a point of saturation at which they change forms. Steal a dollar and nobody cares. Steal a million dollars and you're in deep shit. Heat a drop of water in your hand by a degree and you won't care. Heat it by a million degrees...you get the idea.
There are places where the saturation of day to day indignities, oppression and cruelty cross the line from simple bullying; where the forces in people's lives go from unpleasant to torturous.
Place yourself in their shoes for a moment. Just how badly would you have to be mistreated before you'd do what they did? My guess is you figure you never would. Now suppose that's true. Now imagine you're thrust into a world that's so bad that you end up doing it *anyway.*
That world is real, and it's not just in Columbine.
It takes a lot to get someone to that point. A LOT. I've known people who were crazy or impulsive or rash. It takes more than any of those things to do what K and H did.
And then all you're saying is that the Columbine folks should have shot more faculty and fewer students.'
Or that the schools should become more aware of what is happening with there pupils... If you can only see an improvement in schools coming from the execution of its staff you're more twisted than I had originally thought.
Schools becoming aware of what was happening with their pupils would have prevented the problem, had they acted on it.
The problem is they didn't. Either they didn't know, or they knew and did nothing. From my experience, I'm guessing denial had something to do with it as well.
At my school, the denial and apathy by the faculty was so powerful that many of us really did think it would take a shooting to get some of them to act--and even then, we figured all they'd really do is install metal detectors while doing nothing to solve the real problems at the school.
(Isn't it funny that so many schools did just that?)
(Answer: Not really. It makes me a little nauseus, actually.)
'I'd love to be shot to death if it means that other students won't have to go through what I went through.'
Good for you. That doesnt change the fact there are 13 dead who didnt want to be the moronic martyr you seem to want to be.
You do realize the irony of taking the moral high ground while simultaneously calling someone moronic for b
No, seriously. We should make them play this.
It's been my experience that while parents (usually) protect children, institutions of adults don't. So maybe if they play this game they'll get it.
Amen, brother. I too was among the favored "victims" of my school. Hell, Columbine may have happened in 1991 if my parents had owned any serious firearms. The way students treated each other went beyond uncivilized and into the realm of barbarism. In fact, part of the reason things were so bad was that the stories the students told were so horrific that the faculty decided they had to be ficticious. It took a few dozen people being shot to death to make the world realize that maybe it was real after all.
I knew that if any other schools in the nation were anything like mine, it was only a matter of time before somebody cracked and blew someone else's brains out. I also predicted, rather cynically (this was back in 1990-92, remember) that the media would place the blame squarely on other parts of the media, rather than on the students' brutality or the wholesale negligence of their caretakers.
If you're going to claim--as some others in this thread do--that the fault doesn't lie with the "innocent children" who were raising their fists (and sometimes worse) against their peers, then you've got to accept that the blame lies with the schools who had taken up the duty of protecting them from each other. And then all you're saying is that the Columbine folks should have shot more faculty and fewer students.
I'm a nonviolent person. I'm all for "Never start a fight, but always finish it." But having gone through what I did, I greeted the news of Columbine with gratitude and relief. I knew the massacre was so impossible to ignore that maybe--just MAYBE--it would get the schools' attention and they'd start listening when a fat kid in black clothes says he's sick of having people hit him in the back of the head every day. Most of you don't understand just how much of a difference the lives of those who died at Columbine might make in the lives of those who come after them. I'd love to be shot to death if it means that other students won't have to go through what I went through.
Klebold and Harris didn't start the fight, but--we can hope--they finished it.
And if that sounds insensitive, well, let's just say I had some really good teachers.
It's really not fair to condemn the game simply because it comes from a franchise. While normally the fact that it's a franchise game would suggest the gameplay will be ass, Blizzard tends to place decent standards on it's licensees as far as quality. The WoW boardgame, while a bit too clunky for my taste (way too many components to keep track of) was nonetheless about as good as you could get with that genre while keeping true to the experience. (The only better game I've played is Talisman, and that's only because Talisman is pared down enough to be playable in an hour or three)
I see the game as being for people who like the game and the world and everything but just can't take the grind of playing 30 hours a week, or for people who just want a decent CCG that isn't Magic: The Gathering. This is assuming it turns out to be decent. If it doesn't, the franchise probably won't save it. The rules look like they have some potential; if the cards are written well the game might be fun. (Though the quests look mighty lame, what with spending resources being the primary way of accomplishing them...better to just give players the option of spending resources to draw cards if that's what they're for. Then again, I've only ever seen one really good quest mechanic, and it was for a game that was never published...)
I'll probably buy it just to give it a shot, since I've been looking for a new CCG to play ever since I lost interest in L5R.
(The hard part will be getting my friends into it while still convincing them to keep it casual...none of us can afford to become "competetive" players in a CCG again...)
Just like mommy and daddy.
"Melee weapons don't punch through the wall and fuck up your bathroom."
http://www.starthugs.com/
The gist is, in Star Thugs, most person-to-person combat is on a starship, which is very cramped quarters and full of equipment that, like most things, doesn't respond well to being shot at. Since people generally board to capture a ship and the defenders typically own the ship, both have a vested interest in not blowing away everything down to the hull plating.
(There's also richochet dangers from projectiles, concentrated explosions and heat blasts from energy weapons, and so forth)
So starship crews use melee weapons.
They also carry projectile weapons, since they're not always interested in taking the ship intact, and they're not always on a ship.
That's an interesting point, and one I haven't heard. And it's an example of why these issues are never as simple or easy to solve as they seem. The problem is, we can't have parental responsibility if the government takes the role of parent, yet if we give power to the parents, many will choose to use it improperly or neglect it.
The halfway point, giving the government control over what kids can't do (as opposed to teaching them what they should do) doesn't really help. Removing a "violent" influence from a child's life doesn't create a positive role model for them. It doesn't teach them how to be good people or how to recognize destructive influences in their lives. All it does is piss them off, which--if they're bullies--means you're making the problem worse for all the other kids.
Personally, I plan to teach my kids how to judge things carefully, how to be open minded and make sure they get their facts straight, how to see through illusions and deception and so forth--and I also plan to teach them how to fight. I plan to teach them when they need to throw the first punch and how to make that punch count. Because I'm not going to be there when my kid needs help, and neither will any other teachers or protectors. (Bullies pick the times when the cat's not around.) So all I can do to protect my kids is make sure they can protect themselves. All I can do to protect other kids is to teach mine not to attack without just cause.
A lot of kids are savages, and I don't think changing violent media is going to change that, so I am burdened with teaching my child that if someone knocks your books onto the floor from behind you twice or tries to grab you once, you need to turn around and punch him in the face as hard as you can--not just for yourself, but for everyone else in that school. (And if he's a lot bigger than you, you punch him in the throat instead.)
Because nothing will teach a kid the difference between real violence and fake violence faster than that.
A lot of bullies don't even realize they're hurting people--or, perhaps it would be better to say they don't understand the hurt they've inflicted, because they've never been in that victimized position. And if they have, it will help them just as much, because they will learn that, as a victim, you can stand up and fight. I've seen bullies who were abused children inspired to change by something as simple as a victim who proudly went down fighting. (It was often their victim.)
Taking away video games won't teach them this. Taking away violent movies won't teach them this. A lack of violence doesn't teach anything, and real life violence has a way of cropping up on it's own. To reduce real violence you need to build up things that work against it--things like respect, compassion and--hard as it can be to accept to us idealists--the ability and willingness to ruthlessly defend onesself and one's peers if it comes down to that.
And we can't really expect the government to do that for us. Hell, it's hard for us to do ourselves, even when it means something personal to us--can we really expect someone who's punching the clock to take the reflective time necessary to properly impart the delicate balance of wisdom, respect, diplomacy, and punching someone out when they're being a dick? Can just anyone with tenure as an elementary school teacher understand the complex and difficult task of teaching an otherwise timid child not only how to prevail in a real-world fight against one of their own, but how to have the courage to start it? Or how to teach an otherwise aggressive child the critical importance of respect and compassion? Just saying "You need to respect other people more!" is just about the worst way possible, yet it's the first thing most people do.
We can hope that someday we'll be wise enough that we can teach these things as a culture, through teachers or whatnot, but for right now, the best we can do is teach our own kids and our immediate peers as best we can, and hope that it rubs off enough on others that we make it through the next century or two without killing each other.
Agreed. We all know that content is not intrinsically fun; it derives it's fun from the fact that you don't get to have it until you've collected all 10,000 Retardicoins hidden in the game.
This is especially true in competetive games. I don't enjoy playing head to head unless my character required 200 hours of otherwise ill-concieved single-player gameplay before I could even select him.
And we all know that World of Warcraft is not inherently fun in any way. Fighting monsters is only fun because it costs us so much time. If they assumed they could get away with the intrinsic fun, they'd go out of business in half a heartbeat.
I wouldn't even have bought Soul Calibur 3 if I hadn't known that 70% of the characters were going to be unavailable, waiting for me to schlock through hour after hour of monotonous grinding against the computer opponents before I could even play the game as it was intended.
Thank God for you, sir.
I'll step up and defend child porn. I'll say it straight out: I'd rather my dad rape me than the Bush administration get it's way. Because either way, the problem isn't rape--the problem is that one person has power over another that they're abusing. The difference is, when you turn 18 you can get away from your dad, or your creepy uncle, or whatever. What's more, if you're assertive you can fix things before that.
But there's no crisis hotline for an abusive dictator. When he hurts you, degrades you, steals away your life and virtue for your pleasure, there's no getting away from it. And anyone who thinks this doesn't happen needs to learn to read.
Having suffered plenty of myriad abuses as a child, I can say that adults do not protect children from intentional abuse as a rule. Sometimes the abuse comes from adults, sometimes by other children, but knew people who's parents beat them and such. The one thing we had in common was that adults would not help us. They would take away our comic books or our rock music or our television priviledges as part of the latest "Protect the Children" campaign, and when you told them you had been attacked by another child with a pocket knife, they would push for more rules on on scissor safety.
Anyone who claims protecting the children as a reason to make a law is a liar. Laws cannot, do not, and will not protect children. The thing that protects children is stopping the person who's hurting them. How does impounding Google's search results stop a penis from penetrating a crying girl? Perhaps more pointedly, how does it stop a mob of twelve other boys at the bus stop from throwing rocks at the fat kid until he's bleeding? And how am I supposed to trust that they'll use the information wisely when they ignore the fat kid take no action when he says "X, Y, and Z throw rocks at me every day, please help me?"
Imprisoning some 28-year-old virgin who's swapping kiddie porn pictures in his basement isn't going to fix anything. Turning the internet into a police state will reduce information dissemination among pedophiles. That's all. It will also enact far more grievous costs on everyone else, and children will still be raped by their uncles nearly as much as they are now.
I don't buy this "If we can save even one child" mentality. Child abuse is a real problem. Internet jackbooting is an imaginary solution, and it sickens me that they're wasting so much effort on it while real children are ignored because their problems aren't the sensitive issue of the week.
So I say screw everybody who's against child porn. They're not about solving problems or preventing harm. They're about stepping up in the brave crusade against the shadows while they turn a blind eye to the very real monsters that cast them.
I love the tendency people have of making a decision over which they have complete control, then blaming it unequivocally on someone else who had no influence over the decision aside from the fact that they dared to live in a way that was not in line with your wishes.
Like blaming the witch for "forcing you" to burn her alive.
After all, those Chinese kids at Tiananmen had it coming. It was their fault for mouthing off to the government. It's not like the tank drivers had any control over the literal physical movements of the tanks that ended up physically crushing people or anything.
It's not like a record label has any influence over it's own profit expectations. It's not like reducing expenses has ever worked for an industry that wasn't making as much money as it wanted. It's not like they can choose not to pay their top artists half a million for a single show. They don't decide how much they pay the people in their direct employ. Apparently the internet alone determines whether their hand makes the physical motions that create particular numbers on a check.
Hmm. Maybe some antipsychotic medications would be in order.
Requiring age notices on adult websites kept minors away from pornography in the past, after all.