I think your last point is the crux of it. Assuming your average home user even has broadband available, there's a good chance its crap.
You're right. I'm thinking of my parents, who live in a rural area. Dialup is currently their only affordable option. Satellite and long range wireless are theoretically available, but too expensive. If they were to get a new computer that came with a web-based operating system, it would be unusable.
Political Bias = Republicrat and Demican parties, where 2/3 of the people can want something and one person can hold it up because they "want to save the planet", or "protect us against evildoers"!
Not sure what you're referring to here, but if 2/3 of Congress wants to pass a bill, they can do so. 2/3 is also the amount needed to override a presidential veto, so one person can't hold it up.
Yes, but the Department of Justice is not a branch of the government. It is a part of the executive branch. Your talk of justices indicates to me that you are thinking of the judicial branch, which, as I said, is not the same as the Department of Justice.
FYI, the Justice Department != the judicial branch. In fact, the Justice Department is and has been under a lot of scrutiny because of its political bias.
A year ago I was working on a PDA based Media PC controller. I could, from work, on my wifi-enabled PDA, pull up the week's line up for all of my local cable channels, set up reminders, flag shows for recording, change the media PC's channel, start up DVD's, change the volume, etc... on the media PC sitting in my living room.
For anyone who's interesting in doing this for themselves, check out MythTV. You can log into a web interface and see your lineup, schedule recordings, etc. There's also a web-based remote, so you can sit on the couch with your PDA and use it to change channels over Wifi.
Plus, if you're using it to record stuff from your cable connection, there's nothing illegal about it. At least, not yet.
And surely the public/investors in view of a lack of a full disclosure have the right to sack/not elect politicians/CEO's who will not disclose potentially pertinent information about their ability to work in their role.
Interesting. So do you suggest that everyone who runs for office really ought to be offering up their medical records for examination by voters?
is that my money is invested in apple, not the usa.
Regardless of whether that's true for you, there are many people who invest in the US government. Ever heard of Treasury bills and other government agencies that issue securities?
The reason this never gets debated is simple. It would blow apart the entire "sisterhood" myth of feminism. To admit that there are a number of women who use "girliness" as a cudgel to beat the tar out of intelligent women, while there are a number of men who actually want an intelligent, educated mate, would be to force them to admit that women, not "the patriarchy," are really what's keeping the culture stagnant.
First of all, the "sisterhood" thing was blown apart a long time ago. See WP's article on postcolonial feminism, for example.
Secondly, if some women use "girliness" against intelligent women, how much of that "girliness" is a result of a patriarchal society that tends to glorify large-breasted bimbos?
I don't know about canceling an entire class of patents, but single patents that were approved are often invalidated, so it's not as if it can't be done.
Indeed - you even have such highly protected rights like "free speech zones". Not to mention how you have the FCC decide what can and cannot be said on public airwaves. And of course the FCC is an elected commision, answerable to the voters as well as congress, right?
I agree, free speech zones are idiotic. However, the FCC does not decide what you can and can't say over the airwaves. You can say whatever the the hell you want into your cell phone, and you'll never receive a fine (actually this historically was not always the case with telephones). What the FCC has decided (ostensibly at the behest of the people) is that free speech does not extend to the point of being able to pump expletives into millions of homes, while using a public resource to do so.
As for insulting Ataturk? Have a look at the Dixie Chicks - sure, that wasn't government censorship, but you can't really have free speech when you have that many members of the public upset over someone making use of their free speech.
I don't think you understand what free speech (at least in the US) is. As others have replied to you, it doesn't mean that there's no reaction or consequences or outcry over what you say. It just means that you're not denied the right to say it by the government.
Finally, you do have to admit that the U.S. is a much friendlier place for Holocaust deniers. They'll still rightly be ridiculed as hateful, ignorant people, but they won't be thrown in jail.
No these are not issues of 'morality', they are the structures deemed to be necessary for the foundation of a stable society... They are not 'moral rights', they are strictures imposed upon members of a social organization for the benefit of those protected.
And still, fundamentally, it all comes back to a moral issue - the idea that life is worth protecting. Don't forget, what I quoted from the Declaration didn't say "we recognize a right to life and liberty because it is necessary to do so to maintain a social order." No, it declares those rights to be inherent and non-arbitrary. But maybe they were just being figurative when they wrote that bit, eh?
While it's philosophically attractive to think that throughout history governments were formed by social contract and that that is how they ought to function, reality is different. When consent of the governed finally became something that people thought about, people organized around principles of the moral rights of individuals.
Ideally, law is the basis for society - it is the lowest common denominator we can all agree on. Morality is subject to the community in question and is not suitable for law.
You want law to be some objective set of rules that functions irrespective of the community governed. That's not how they have been written, it's not how they're being written, and it's not how they will be written. It's a pipe dream. Read Montesquieu. Here, I'll start you off:
They [laws] should be adapted in such a manner to the people for whom they are framed that it should be great chance if those of one nation suit another... They should be in relation... to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs.
Secondly, one has to look at the effect it will have on the economy. Let's take the automobile example. Ford and GM have demonstrated, again and again, incompetence at anticipating consumer needs. In the free market, these companies would not have followed consumer demand for safer cars. Toyota and Honda have demonstrated again and again their ability to not only anticipate consumer needs but follow and exceed the requirements.
Now let's take the example of the drug industry, where there's no J.D. Power, and in spite of regulation, some companies have done their best to hide the reports of the ill effects of certain drugs. I do not want to imagine the chaos that would ensue if the FDA were disbanded and drug companies were left to themselves to conduct whatever clinical trials they thought were adequate. I guess after a while consumers might figure out that Eli Lilly kills fewer people than Pfizer, so maybe that's where they should place their brand loyalty, but that seems like an awfully high price to pay to implement this version of the free market.
That's why we call it a free market. If company A won't do it, company B will. If consumers wanted it, company B would sell more and company A would follow suit. It takes time and it's not always perfect. But it will happen.
Maybe, maybe not. As I mentioned before, even if it is rational and would result in long-term financial gains does not mean that it will be the choice of a company. The free market works on an assumption of complete, accurate information, and rational actors, neither of which are a reality.
All you've pointed out is that the government has again and again enacted mandates. It does not show that there was a need for them.
The fact that those technologies existed, were effective at preventing injury and death, and yet were not being installed shows enough need. Maybe, if left to themselves, companies would have all eventually decided to install them. Who knows how long that would have taken. In the meantime, the government has a responsibility to promote the general welfare of its citizens (and that's from the Constitution).
I will grant you that the basis of fundamental freedom and rights is, from a completely moral-relativist perspective, a result of moral customs of western civilization. I prefer, however, to think of it as a truth to be held self-evident.
Well, thanks. Property rights, rights to life, etc., all have their fundamental basis in morality. That's what I was getting at, and I said as much here.
Wow, that's a twisted view the founding fathers would shit over.
Oh really? Let's see:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. â" That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
So, governments are instituted in order to secure rights of life and liberty. Why? Not because those things are useful, but because we think they are inherent to humans. Yeah, that would be an issue of morality.
Government has no business in legislating morality. Government is supposed to be in the business of regulating & maintaining the social contract under which the people governed agree to live by. Morality has nothing to do with it.
* Society as a whole agrees that stealing deprives people who have an object of the use of that object. Theft is codified as bad -> illegal.
* Society as a whole agrees that killing someone is bad as it deprives someone of their life & society of their future contributions, but it may be necessary in some circumstances. Killing is codified as bad - with exceptions made for justifiable homicide & genuine accidents
You recognize a property right. That is a moral right. You recognize a right to life, of which one should not be unjustly deprived. That is also a moral right.
That is the business of government. What 2 - or 6 - consenting adults choose to do in their bedroom isn't. That's their business & their business alone. Even if society as a whole views it as immoral, it's not the government's job to restrict those actions as those actions don't affect society.
I'm not saying it is. Just because laws have a connection to morality does not mean that therefore all morality must be codified into law. Besides, we recognize other moral imperatives, too, like rights to privacy and to be free from unreasonable surveillance.
In a capitalist market, demand = financial incentive. If consumers aren't willing to pay for it, but just want it anyway, that is not demand.
Once again, you're conflating willingness to pay with financial incentive. Just because people are willing to pay for something (and so there exists demand in the economic sense) does not mean that manufacturers will magically provide it. There has to be a certain amount of demand, and the manufacturers have to believe there is enough financial reward involved. They also may have to choose long-term financial reward, with significant up-front costs, over short-term gains. This is why we often see companies that are unwilling to roll out new infrastructure, or upgrade existing infrastructure. This is why the government sometimes has to mandate or subsidize infrastructure extension to unserved areas. It is not because demand does not exist, it is because there is not enough financial incentive for a company to respond to the demand that does exist.
I don't agree with seat belt mandates either. And that is a perfect example. Automobile manufacturers have gone *way* beyond seat belts when it comes to safety of their vehicles. All of their own accord (heheh). This is because consumers *demand* safety with their money.
I don't think that's factually accurate. "On 11 July 1984, the U.S. government required cars being produced after 1 April 1989 to have driver's side airbags or automatic seat belts... In 1998 dual front airbags were mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and de-powered, or second-generation airbags were also mandated." (link). "NHTSA also licenses vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety-regulated vehicle parts, administers the VIN system, develops the anthropomorphic dummies used in safety testing, as well as the test protocols themselves, and provides vehicle insurance cost information." (link)
While some car manufacturers have gone above and beyond the regulatory requirements, or otherwise pride themselves on safety, the fact remains that safety measures had to be mandated to press manufacturers who did not perceive enough financial incentive in safety measures to implement them. You can bet that billions of dollars would not be pumped into crash-testing if such tests were not required. The same is true of the testing process for new drugs required by the FDA.
Criminal law is the right of the government to enforce its laws by removal of civil rights from a citizen.
Ah, but you neglect to mention where laws come from. And that would be the mores, customs, opinions, beliefs, and morals of the population which the laws serve. Laws are inherently linked to morality. A government, among other things, creates and enforces those laws. Therefore, the government is necessarily involved in legislating morality.
You may not believe that regulatory bodies like NHTSA and the FDA are necessary, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that companies will pony up the amount of information they're currently required to without those bodies, or that they would do as much safety testing of their own accord.
If there is demand, manufacturers will provide. That's the free market. If there's currently no financial incentive...
What you mean to say, and almost did say, is not if there's demand, but if there's financial incentive, which are not identical things. Then there's the fact that really good ideas (like the seat belt) don't always translate into financial incentive, and so have to be mandated.
Government has no business legislating what is moral.
Government is all about legislating what is moral. It's called criminal law. Also, arguments about legislating morality are pretty much irrelevant to this discussion, since we're simply talking about a labeling requirement and the inclusion of a feature that allows (and does not require) content discrimination. If anything, you should be all for the labeling requirement, since it provides more information to consumers, which helps the free market to function properly.
IANAL, but how does the law impose a requirement on all devices sold? It clearly states "EVERY NEW VIDEO GAME CONSOLE SOLD AT RETAIL IN THIS STATE SHALL INCLUDE A MECHANISM, DEVICE OR CONTROL SYSTEM...". Bill text is here.
Besides, aren't there lots of standards that vary from state to state on products that are sold nationally or internationally? California flammability standards come to mind...
You mean a mandated tool. As in, parents don't simply exercise good parenting and choose a console model with the ability to lock out games (or actually monitor their kids, but we don't talk about that now do we?).
I agree that legislators ought to think long and hard before mandating something like the V-Chip, because you're right, the cost will be passed on to consumers. However, sometimes mandating the tool may be the only way to actually get manufacturers to provide it (think about the history of the seat belt).
Also, no matter how good of a parent you are, you can't monitor your children 24/7. Besides, I'd think most/.ers would remember outsmarting their folks - when I was in high school, unbeknownst to my parents, I ran phone wire into my room so that I could have my own unmonitored Internet connection. Technological tools can be quite useful as supplements to good parenting. I have an uncle who has programmed his router to shut off Internet access to his son's computer after a certain hour. Does the fact that he no longer has to visually monitor the computer make him a bad parent?
I never seem to have mod points when I see good comments.
How is this "censorship" or restriction of free speech any more than requiring food to have nutrition information labels? It's not as if the law prevents these games from being made or sold.
Hmm you must not know much about shooting. Ad Topperwein shot quite a few without missing.
Actually, I know quite a bit about shooting, having gone clay, trap, skeet, and pistol shooting many times. My point was that the average person on the sporting range (even the guys who go weekly or whatever) aren't going to be able to hit a clay with a rifle. Sure, there are master marksmen, but they are master marksmen for a reason - because it's impossible to do unless you are skilled far beyond any normal person.
Also, even if your article is accurate in every detail, it states that "The assistants tossing the targets were to stand between 25 and 30 feet in front of the shooter" and "The targets were to be thrown into the air at a height of 25 to 30 feet." Many clay courses have the targets flying much, much further than that.
I imagine it has more in common with not using normal bullets in skeet -- shotgun pellets don't carry as far.
Well, that, and the fact that unless you're on TV, it's impossible to hit a flying target with a single bullet. You need the multiple projectiles that a shotgun provides.
And the GP is right, a change in pellet velocity (in either direction) would totally change the sport. Too fast, and it becomes too easy - a good part of the skill is in knowing how much to lead a clay. Too slow, and you might not be able to lead enough.
Also, I once read somewhere that clay shooting might have evolved from an ancient game of trying to shoot a bird tied to the mast of a ship with a bow, but I have no idea if that's actually true.
Maybe all the other scientists just don't understand the 'problem'.. because you don't know how something works (even with full documentation) doesn't mean it is impossible..
You're quite right. I don't know the details of this specific case, but generally speaking, replication isn't as simple as it may seem. Even given full documentation and information, there is often an element of intangible know-how that goes along with an experiment - "tacit knowledge." I'd suggest reading the chapter on the TEA laser in H.M. Collin's Changing Order for anyone interested in learning about the difficulties involved in replication.
I once had an applicate who said "My life's goal is to be the laziest person on earth" in her myspace profile. We didn't hire her, things like that matter.
I once had an HR director who couldn't spell applicant. Things like that matter more than MySpace pages.
The scientific process is unbiased towards either gender.
Yes and no. The thing is, there's no objective "scientific process" out there. Science is what scientists, as people, do. And people in general can quite easily be biased, in any number of ways. The hypotheses which one formulates and chooses to test, the explanations one chooses to describe a certain behavior - those did not come out of an objective vacuum.
On the other hand, there's certainly a realm of things out there in the world that are just as amenable to women testing and experimenting with them as to men.
For a brief overview, see Wikipedia's section on the philosophy and sociology of science in the Scientific Method article.
The only way to achieve true equality between genders is to treat them the same.
I'm not so sure about that. Maybe if everyone had treated everyone else the same from day one, that would work. But so much water is already under the bridge. Could you say the same thing about race? Ideally, it would have been nice to simply go from segregation and Jim Crow laws to treating blacks and whites the same (assuming that were possible). But that ignores what had happened to blacks in the past - what kind of education did they receive in the 'separate but equal' schools? How well will they compete in social structures that only served whites for so long? I think those are all important things to consider, and that it's simplistic to simply say "start treating everyone the same."
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Just give it some time, the dollar will get there.
I think your last point is the crux of it. Assuming your average home user even has broadband available, there's a good chance its crap.
You're right. I'm thinking of my parents, who live in a rural area. Dialup is currently their only affordable option. Satellite and long range wireless are theoretically available, but too expensive. If they were to get a new computer that came with a web-based operating system, it would be unusable.
Political Bias = Republicrat and Demican parties, where 2/3 of the people can want something and one person can hold it up because they "want to save the planet", or "protect us against evildoers"!
Not sure what you're referring to here, but if 2/3 of Congress wants to pass a bill, they can do so. 2/3 is also the amount needed to override a presidential veto, so one person can't hold it up.
Yes, but the Department of Justice is not a branch of the government. It is a part of the executive branch. Your talk of justices indicates to me that you are thinking of the judicial branch, which, as I said, is not the same as the Department of Justice.
FYI, the Justice Department != the judicial branch. In fact, the Justice Department is and has been under a lot of scrutiny because of its political bias.
A year ago I was working on a PDA based Media PC controller. I could, from work, on my wifi-enabled PDA, pull up the week's line up for all of my local cable channels, set up reminders, flag shows for recording, change the media PC's channel, start up DVD's, change the volume, etc... on the media PC sitting in my living room.
For anyone who's interesting in doing this for themselves, check out MythTV. You can log into a web interface and see your lineup, schedule recordings, etc. There's also a web-based remote, so you can sit on the couch with your PDA and use it to change channels over Wifi.
Plus, if you're using it to record stuff from your cable connection, there's nothing illegal about it. At least, not yet.
And surely the public/investors in view of a lack of a full disclosure have the right to sack/not elect politicians/CEO's who will not disclose potentially pertinent information about their ability to work in their role.
Interesting. So do you suggest that everyone who runs for office really ought to be offering up their medical records for examination by voters?
is that my money is invested in apple, not the usa.
Regardless of whether that's true for you, there are many people who invest in the US government. Ever heard of Treasury bills and other government agencies that issue securities?
The reason this never gets debated is simple. It would blow apart the entire "sisterhood" myth of feminism. To admit that there are a number of women who use "girliness" as a cudgel to beat the tar out of intelligent women, while there are a number of men who actually want an intelligent, educated mate, would be to force them to admit that women, not "the patriarchy," are really what's keeping the culture stagnant.
First of all, the "sisterhood" thing was blown apart a long time ago. See WP's article on postcolonial feminism, for example.
Secondly, if some women use "girliness" against intelligent women, how much of that "girliness" is a result of a patriarchal society that tends to glorify large-breasted bimbos?
I don't know about canceling an entire class of patents, but single patents that were approved are often invalidated, so it's not as if it can't be done.
Indeed - you even have such highly protected rights like "free speech zones". Not to mention how you have the FCC decide what can and cannot be said on public airwaves. And of course the FCC is an elected commision, answerable to the voters as well as congress, right?
I agree, free speech zones are idiotic. However, the FCC does not decide what you can and can't say over the airwaves. You can say whatever the the hell you want into your cell phone, and you'll never receive a fine (actually this historically was not always the case with telephones). What the FCC has decided (ostensibly at the behest of the people) is that free speech does not extend to the point of being able to pump expletives into millions of homes, while using a public resource to do so.
As for insulting Ataturk? Have a look at the Dixie Chicks - sure, that wasn't government censorship, but you can't really have free speech when you have that many members of the public upset over someone making use of their free speech.
I don't think you understand what free speech (at least in the US) is. As others have replied to you, it doesn't mean that there's no reaction or consequences or outcry over what you say. It just means that you're not denied the right to say it by the government.
Finally, you do have to admit that the U.S. is a much friendlier place for Holocaust deniers. They'll still rightly be ridiculed as hateful, ignorant people, but they won't be thrown in jail.
Read Locke, Hobbes, & Voltaire.
I have.
No these are not issues of 'morality', they are the structures deemed to be necessary for the foundation of a stable society... They are not 'moral rights', they are strictures imposed upon members of a social organization for the benefit of those protected.
And still, fundamentally, it all comes back to a moral issue - the idea that life is worth protecting. Don't forget, what I quoted from the Declaration didn't say "we recognize a right to life and liberty because it is necessary to do so to maintain a social order." No, it declares those rights to be inherent and non-arbitrary. But maybe they were just being figurative when they wrote that bit, eh?
While it's philosophically attractive to think that throughout history governments were formed by social contract and that that is how they ought to function, reality is different. When consent of the governed finally became something that people thought about, people organized around principles of the moral rights of individuals.
Ideally, law is the basis for society - it is the lowest common denominator we can all agree on. Morality is subject to the community in question and is not suitable for law.
You want law to be some objective set of rules that functions irrespective of the community governed. That's not how they have been written, it's not how they're being written, and it's not how they will be written. It's a pipe dream. Read Montesquieu. Here, I'll start you off:
They [laws] should be adapted in such a manner to the people for whom they are framed that it should be great chance if those of one nation suit another... They should be in relation... to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs.
Secondly, one has to look at the effect it will have on the economy. Let's take the automobile example. Ford and GM have demonstrated, again and again, incompetence at anticipating consumer needs. In the free market, these companies would not have followed consumer demand for safer cars. Toyota and Honda have demonstrated again and again their ability to not only anticipate consumer needs but follow and exceed the requirements.
Now let's take the example of the drug industry, where there's no J.D. Power, and in spite of regulation, some companies have done their best to hide the reports of the ill effects of certain drugs. I do not want to imagine the chaos that would ensue if the FDA were disbanded and drug companies were left to themselves to conduct whatever clinical trials they thought were adequate. I guess after a while consumers might figure out that Eli Lilly kills fewer people than Pfizer, so maybe that's where they should place their brand loyalty, but that seems like an awfully high price to pay to implement this version of the free market.
That's why we call it a free market. If company A won't do it, company B will. If consumers wanted it, company B would sell more and company A would follow suit. It takes time and it's not always perfect. But it will happen.
Maybe, maybe not. As I mentioned before, even if it is rational and would result in long-term financial gains does not mean that it will be the choice of a company. The free market works on an assumption of complete, accurate information, and rational actors, neither of which are a reality.
All you've pointed out is that the government has again and again enacted mandates. It does not show that there was a need for them.
The fact that those technologies existed, were effective at preventing injury and death, and yet were not being installed shows enough need. Maybe, if left to themselves, companies would have all eventually decided to install them. Who knows how long that would have taken. In the meantime, the government has a responsibility to promote the general welfare of its citizens (and that's from the Constitution).
I will grant you that the basis of fundamental freedom and rights is, from a completely moral-relativist perspective, a result of moral customs of western civilization. I prefer, however, to think of it as a truth to be held self-evident.
Well, thanks. Property rights, rights to life, etc., all have their fundamental basis in morality. That's what I was getting at, and I said as much here.
Wow, that's a twisted view the founding fathers would shit over.
Oh really? Let's see:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. â" That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
So, governments are instituted in order to secure rights of life and liberty. Why? Not because those things are useful, but because we think they are inherent to humans. Yeah, that would be an issue of morality.
Government has no business in legislating morality. Government is supposed to be in the business of regulating & maintaining the social contract under which the people governed agree to live by. Morality has nothing to do with it.
* Society as a whole agrees that stealing deprives people who have an object of the use of that object. Theft is codified as bad -> illegal.
* Society as a whole agrees that killing someone is bad as it deprives someone of their life & society of their future contributions, but it may be necessary in some circumstances. Killing is codified as bad - with exceptions made for justifiable homicide & genuine accidents
You recognize a property right. That is a moral right. You recognize a right to life, of which one should not be unjustly deprived. That is also a moral right.
That is the business of government. What 2 - or 6 - consenting adults choose to do in their bedroom isn't. That's their business & their business alone. Even if society as a whole views it as immoral, it's not the government's job to restrict those actions as those actions don't affect society.
I'm not saying it is. Just because laws have a connection to morality does not mean that therefore all morality must be codified into law. Besides, we recognize other moral imperatives, too, like rights to privacy and to be free from unreasonable surveillance.
In a capitalist market, demand = financial incentive. If consumers aren't willing to pay for it, but just want it anyway, that is not demand.
Once again, you're conflating willingness to pay with financial incentive. Just because people are willing to pay for something (and so there exists demand in the economic sense) does not mean that manufacturers will magically provide it. There has to be a certain amount of demand, and the manufacturers have to believe there is enough financial reward involved. They also may have to choose long-term financial reward, with significant up-front costs, over short-term gains. This is why we often see companies that are unwilling to roll out new infrastructure, or upgrade existing infrastructure. This is why the government sometimes has to mandate or subsidize infrastructure extension to unserved areas. It is not because demand does not exist, it is because there is not enough financial incentive for a company to respond to the demand that does exist.
I don't agree with seat belt mandates either. And that is a perfect example. Automobile manufacturers have gone *way* beyond seat belts when it comes to safety of their vehicles. All of their own accord (heheh). This is because consumers *demand* safety with their money.
I don't think that's factually accurate. "On 11 July 1984, the U.S. government required cars being produced after 1 April 1989 to have driver's side airbags or automatic seat belts... In 1998 dual front airbags were mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and de-powered, or second-generation airbags were also mandated." (link). "NHTSA also licenses vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety-regulated vehicle parts, administers the VIN system, develops the anthropomorphic dummies used in safety testing, as well as the test protocols themselves, and provides vehicle insurance cost information." (link)
While some car manufacturers have gone above and beyond the regulatory requirements, or otherwise pride themselves on safety, the fact remains that safety measures had to be mandated to press manufacturers who did not perceive enough financial incentive in safety measures to implement them. You can bet that billions of dollars would not be pumped into crash-testing if such tests were not required. The same is true of the testing process for new drugs required by the FDA.
Criminal law is the right of the government to enforce its laws by removal of civil rights from a citizen.
Ah, but you neglect to mention where laws come from. And that would be the mores, customs, opinions, beliefs, and morals of the population which the laws serve. Laws are inherently linked to morality. A government, among other things, creates and enforces those laws. Therefore, the government is necessarily involved in legislating morality.
You may not believe that regulatory bodies like NHTSA and the FDA are necessary, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that companies will pony up the amount of information they're currently required to without those bodies, or that they would do as much safety testing of their own accord.
If there is demand, manufacturers will provide. That's the free market. If there's currently no financial incentive...
What you mean to say, and almost did say, is not if there's demand, but if there's financial incentive, which are not identical things. Then there's the fact that really good ideas (like the seat belt) don't always translate into financial incentive, and so have to be mandated.
Government has no business legislating what is moral.
Government is all about legislating what is moral. It's called criminal law. Also, arguments about legislating morality are pretty much irrelevant to this discussion, since we're simply talking about a labeling requirement and the inclusion of a feature that allows (and does not require) content discrimination. If anything, you should be all for the labeling requirement, since it provides more information to consumers, which helps the free market to function properly.
IANAL, but how does the law impose a requirement on all devices sold? It clearly states "EVERY NEW VIDEO GAME CONSOLE SOLD AT RETAIL IN THIS STATE SHALL INCLUDE A MECHANISM, DEVICE OR CONTROL SYSTEM...". Bill text is here.
Besides, aren't there lots of standards that vary from state to state on products that are sold nationally or internationally? California flammability standards come to mind...
You mean a mandated tool. As in, parents don't simply exercise good parenting and choose a console model with the ability to lock out games (or actually monitor their kids, but we don't talk about that now do we?).
I agree that legislators ought to think long and hard before mandating something like the V-Chip, because you're right, the cost will be passed on to consumers. However, sometimes mandating the tool may be the only way to actually get manufacturers to provide it (think about the history of the seat belt).
Also, no matter how good of a parent you are, you can't monitor your children 24/7. Besides, I'd think most /.ers would remember outsmarting their folks - when I was in high school, unbeknownst to my parents, I ran phone wire into my room so that I could have my own unmonitored Internet connection. Technological tools can be quite useful as supplements to good parenting. I have an uncle who has programmed his router to shut off Internet access to his son's computer after a certain hour. Does the fact that he no longer has to visually monitor the computer make him a bad parent?
I never seem to have mod points when I see good comments.
How is this "censorship" or restriction of free speech any more than requiring food to have nutrition information labels? It's not as if the law prevents these games from being made or sold.
Hmm you must not know much about shooting. Ad Topperwein shot quite a few without missing.
Actually, I know quite a bit about shooting, having gone clay, trap, skeet, and pistol shooting many times. My point was that the average person on the sporting range (even the guys who go weekly or whatever) aren't going to be able to hit a clay with a rifle. Sure, there are master marksmen, but they are master marksmen for a reason - because it's impossible to do unless you are skilled far beyond any normal person.
Also, even if your article is accurate in every detail, it states that "The assistants tossing the targets were to stand between 25 and 30 feet in front of the shooter" and "The targets were to be thrown into the air at a height of 25 to 30 feet." Many clay courses have the targets flying much, much further than that.
I imagine it has more in common with not using normal bullets in skeet -- shotgun pellets don't carry as far.
Well, that, and the fact that unless you're on TV, it's impossible to hit a flying target with a single bullet. You need the multiple projectiles that a shotgun provides.
And the GP is right, a change in pellet velocity (in either direction) would totally change the sport. Too fast, and it becomes too easy - a good part of the skill is in knowing how much to lead a clay. Too slow, and you might not be able to lead enough.
Also, I once read somewhere that clay shooting might have evolved from an ancient game of trying to shoot a bird tied to the mast of a ship with a bow, but I have no idea if that's actually true.
Maybe all the other scientists just don't understand the 'problem'.. because you don't know how something works (even with full documentation) doesn't mean it is impossible..
You're quite right. I don't know the details of this specific case, but generally speaking, replication isn't as simple as it may seem. Even given full documentation and information, there is often an element of intangible know-how that goes along with an experiment - "tacit knowledge." I'd suggest reading the chapter on the TEA laser in H.M. Collin's Changing Order for anyone interested in learning about the difficulties involved in replication.
I once had an applicate who said "My life's goal is to be the laziest person on earth" in her myspace profile. We didn't hire her, things like that matter.
I once had an HR director who couldn't spell applicant. Things like that matter more than MySpace pages.
The scientific process is unbiased towards either gender.
Yes and no. The thing is, there's no objective "scientific process" out there. Science is what scientists, as people, do. And people in general can quite easily be biased, in any number of ways. The hypotheses which one formulates and chooses to test, the explanations one chooses to describe a certain behavior - those did not come out of an objective vacuum.
On the other hand, there's certainly a realm of things out there in the world that are just as amenable to women testing and experimenting with them as to men.
For a brief overview, see Wikipedia's section on the philosophy and sociology of science in the Scientific Method article.
The only way to achieve true equality between genders is to treat them the same.
I'm not so sure about that. Maybe if everyone had treated everyone else the same from day one, that would work. But so much water is already under the bridge. Could you say the same thing about race? Ideally, it would have been nice to simply go from segregation and Jim Crow laws to treating blacks and whites the same (assuming that were possible). But that ignores what had happened to blacks in the past - what kind of education did they receive in the 'separate but equal' schools? How well will they compete in social structures that only served whites for so long? I think those are all important things to consider, and that it's simplistic to simply say "start treating everyone the same."