And hell, NC-17 movies exist, as do R movies (which require a parent).
These ratings are part of a voluntary rating system, administered by the MPAA. There is no law that a minor cannot get into an R-rated movie by himself or herself. The reason that they can't get in/make a purchase is that suppliers voluntarily comply with the rating system. There is probably some pressure/incentive from the MPAA motivating them to do this, but it is not required by law, and there are some suppliers that do not enforce it.
So why do games not have similar levels of preventative measures?
They do. The ESRB administers a similar voluntary rating system. Not all suppliers adhere to it.
What about cigerettes and alcohol?
Cigarettes and alcohol are restricted by law because there is a demonstratable danger from consuming them. Some people would say that movies, games, or porn also have demonstratable danger, and they may be right to some extent. But cigarettes and alcohol are much more dangerous and it is much more demonstratable.
It seems that we keep on having specific rules/laws per each individual "substance", and many are inconsistent with each other in terms of necessity.
Preach on, brother! The drug laws are crazy like that.
Besides, none of the GTA games come close to the sex and violence of the bible.
Even now, lobbyists for groups of concerned parents are pressuring Congress to prohibit minors from buying Bibles and impose severe fines on retailers who sell Bibles rated NKJV or higher.
Buy another identical device from wherever he got it (Home Depot, whatever) and take your time breaking it carefully.
If you're going to buy another thing and break it, have a little more flair than that. Modify the device so that instead of an inaudible noise, it makes a high-pitched noise within the audible spectrum of a normal, middle-aged person. Then call the cops again. They'll hear it this time, and it will be annoying.
Actually, if the old geezer isn't too deaf, he'll be able to hear it too. He may go buy a new one. Then you can intercept him with the offending device in hand on his way home from wherever you get stuff like that. Be sure to have an appropriately attired officer of the law on hand, so you can show him or her the packaging where it says, "Guaranteed to annoy the hell out of those young punks that don't run away when you fire your shotgun into the air."
Are they even going to be able to enforce this? What about as people add new social sites, are libraries going to be required to know all of the things they should be censoring, or will someone give them a list?
There's no way the libraries will be able to keep track of all the new sites, the same way they couln't be expected to keep track of all the new porn sites. Censorware companies keep track of this kind of thing, and I'm guessing that the most common implementation of this bill would be to use censorware. Especially because the libraries that are e-rate compliant already have it so that they can block "harmful to minors" material.
Passing this bill would increase the demand for censorware, and the updates necessary to keep it current. I wonder who lobbied this proposal.
I agree that they could go in really any direction with this, including making a game that is not entirely an FPS. Quake and CS are, IMO, classic examples of what I would consider to be the two main families of pure FPSs. I can't think of any other kinds now, but I'm sure they're out there. (Maybe WW2 gets its own division?) Anyway, I get what you mean about the potential for this to be different. That said, if its solid and fun, I wouldn't decline to play the completed product just because it sticks to tradition.
Thanks for the Savage links. I think I played that before at some point, but that was a demo. I don't recall being that enthralled with it, but I didn't really understand it either. I'll have to see how it goes. No reason to pass up free games.
The project site is located at http://openfrag.org/, although I believe it is in the process of being slashdotted right now.
I wonder whether the first iteration of the game will be traditional or tactical? I assume that the designers want the engine to be good enough that it can be customized to do both. But what kind of game do they actually want to make? More like Quake or more like Counterstrike?
If all that you had to do to get around oppressive government censorship was learn a language that many people speak already, I don't think that this article would be such big news.
I don't like the way our US government is restricting my rights and invading my privacy... At least the people of China can move to the US to gain more freedom.
If they're gonna move to another country with a less invasive government anyway, then they might want to skip the US for the duration of the current administration. We're better than China, but, as you stated, we're not really doing that well. NSA phone tapping, banking surveillance, and saving the children, oh my!
On another, semi-related note, the Chinese, at least in practice, have almost no copyright restrictions put on them when in comes to music. Users of http://www.baidu.com/ (Chinese search engine) can just pull tunes off of Chinese websites. In this area, the average Chinese person excercises more freedom than citizens of other countries. I think copyright infringment is still illegal. It's just that nobody cares. So if you were Chinese and all you cared about was free music (some people I know), then it would be to your disadvantage to come to America. BTW, I haven't been able to successfully use Baidu because I can't read or type Chinese, so I'm not speaking from personal experience.
Trouble is, they will light up urban areas with darkness between the cities.
That's could be where lighting up the dark fiber comes in. Google could connect all of the major metropolitan centers (Wi-Fi hotspot hives) to eachother in a continent-wide (probably just the U.S.) mesh of fiber. Like maybe they could put a whole crapload of fiber lines (I don't know how many it would actually take) going out from NY and connecting the cities like Philly, Atlantic City, Pittsburgh. You probably would not want a real mesh because of how much fiber it would take, but Google maybe could pull off an extended star topology.
The way it would work (in my wild conjecture) is this:
In large metropolitan Wi-Fi meshes, Google builds a series of Wi-Fi communication centers to hook up with the nearby foneros. These hubs are all connected to a main hub by fiber. This hub is connected by a ridiculous amount of fiber to the other main hubs in other cities, which are similarly connected to smaller Wi-Fi hubs throughout each city. Extended star. The main branches of the star(s) run through the less-densely-populated areas between cities. In these areas, there could be branches from the main branch every so often that would go to a Wi-Fi hub, which would connect to the foneros in the surrounding area.
You still wouldn't be able to get service if you were really out in the middle of nowhere, but if you were roughly in the path between two major Wi-Fi meshes, you'd be set.
Google could also plug the Wi-Fi hubs into the local infrastructure to supplant the non-foneros' ISPs' long range lines. You could use Google Screw-Your-ISP to route all of your long-range traffic to the local Google hub (read "command post"). GSYP would prompt you to become a fonero and extend Wi-Fi mesh/backbone. Assuming that they marketed successfully, they could usurp the function/business of the entrenched telecoms.
This is pretty theoretical, especially because I don't know just how much fiber you would need to accomplish it, but Google probably wants to do it.
That was what I would call an insightful post. I don't agree with all of it, but it touched on some new material. You could probably get some serious karma if you didn't post AC.
The thing about nerds changing was dead on. I think that digg is more appealing to the more modern (read "less nerdy") nerd. The headlines change very quickly, so you can keep refreshing and theoretically waste an entire day on digg. Also, the headlines, while of a somewhat technical bent, are primarily quickies about an imaginative prank or some guy doing something stupid and getting hurt. They are things where you click, watch for 20 seconds, and are rewarded. Most of the headlines on digg aren't really news so much as they are just something that some people haven't seen before. On Slashdot, most of the articles refer to actual events that happened in the recent past (news) and are relevant to the intended readership (for nerds). Also, most of the stuff that you find on digg, even if it is both news and for nerds, is something that, while interesting, is somewhat trivial. Slashdot, on the other hand, contains information that is (most of the time) significant in some way (stuff that matters). I see digg as being more related to something like CollegeHumor than Slashdot. Getting closer to the topic at hand (moderation system), I don't see many comments on digg that I really feel are worth my time to read. There's the occasional gem, but it is usually surrounded by things like "Wow this is awesome! Thank you!" or "Here's another site like the one in the article." When I visit digg, I almost never read the comments on a story. I just click the headline. On slashdot, the signal to noise ratio is high enough that I read the comments. Usually, some of the Slashdot comments contribute something important to my appreciation of the story. This has never happened on digg. In short, I go to digg to be entertained. I go to Slashdot to informed and enlightened.
I think you're right about there being no way to fix the moderation system. No matter how well you make the machine run, incompetent staff will break it. You're also correct about leaving the system the way it is being a good way to cater to the pseudo-nerd crowd. However, I definitely do not want Slashdot to succumb to the pressures of scruple-less capitalism. When the site is entirely populated by a new generation of mostly non-nerds, I still want to be able to come here and find "news for nerds. Stuff that matters." One other thing about moderation: I don't know if you were kidding, but selling mod points is the single worst thing that comes to mind to do to the moderation system. That would make it like a voluntary poll. Only those people who really care would respond. You'd have all of these people with extreme opinions dropping tons of dough and throwing mod points left and right to squelch those who disagree with them. People would start modding clans to press a certain issue, or some jerks would pool their money to gang up on one person and mod them down to -1 every time they posted. You could rape the account of anyone you didn't like that way.
It should be noted that I am saying this as a member of the new generation containing the psuedo-nerds to which you refer, and as somewhat of a newb, but I'm pretty sure that I would have had the motivation to set up my Internet connection back in the good ol' days, and I consider myself truly geeky. It's disappointing that so many of my compatriots are of a smaller caliber than I would prefer. A lot of the times I wish that I was born in '80 instead '90:( By the time I got on the Net, everybody was already doing it.
Haven't you ever heard of Guantanomo Bay?? The US is "detainig" hundreds of "suspected terrorist" without arresting a single one of them. Or is that "utter baloney" too?
Yes.
As we have seen on multiple previous occasions (NSA wiretapping, PATRIOT Act, etc.), what the government does, especially as you get higher up, is not always in accordance with the decidedly beefy federal laws, but instead bears a marked resemblance to the gross tube-meat to which you referred.
There should be an organization that collects AOL free hours CDs and sends them in crates back to AOL corporate headquarters. Made into humorous statues inside the boxes. With cancelation confirmation numbers written on them. Either that or you could make a giant satellite dish looking thing out of the CDs and reflect the sun into the huge windows of the CEO's corner office.
You're right about four minutes not being a big deal. Four minutes of canceling the account, that is. Even four minutes of trying to fix the perceived problem wouldn't have been unforgivable. But four minutes of being and jerk, interrupting Vincent when he was talking, and not even acknowledging Vincent's requests is totally unacceptable. Vincent was totally reasonable.
Hopefully, the RIAA can gradually lessen their presence in the Internet as the new DRM government becomes more self-sufficient. With any luck, the RIAA will be able to pull out by 2009, leaving a fully functional restricted-use state.
Would we run into this same problem if someone created a "violent" video game that was based on the bible? I mean there are parts of that book that are pretty grotesque.
What if someone made a game where you were Samson, and you harvested and sacrificed the foreskins of the Philistines?
I'm pretty sure that something similar to this would happen.
It's kind of like maintaining the technology has become the thing that they are legally reaqured to do, and giving you an education has become the privilege that they can take away, instead of the other way around.
The MPAA, in an attempt to fling mud about TorrentSpy as far as possible, could torrent the information that they took from TorrentSpy and distribute it along with their bogus movie torrents. The.torrent file could even end up on TorrentSpy. Then TorrentSpy could sue themselves for "facilitating thievery." Or they could become party to the MPAA's suit already in progress. I for one would find this side-splitting.
What would work better would be a system where your work becomes public domain after a certain amount of profit, which would be calculated individually based on the cost of creating the product. So if the limit was 120% gains, and you spent $1,000,000 to make your movie, album, whatever, your work would become public domain after you had gotten $2,200,000: 220% of your investment. This could be combined with some kind of fixed limit, and the work would be PD after it reached the percentage limit or the absolute limit, whichever came first. This would be added to the current system where copyright expires after a certain amount of time.
Disclaimer: I may have misused some financial terms.
Re:What are the entry requirements?
on
Hacker Boot Camp
·
· Score: 1
The course cannot be graduated without demonstating the ability to customize your boot sequence and user interface to the flashiest and slowest possible.
A passing grade requires that there be at least thirty seconds of 3D graphics culminating in a prolonged display of your 1337 name before the OS is in any way useable. Loud custom sound files are encouraged.
In addition, all participants will receive a complimentary pair of stylish sunglasses that can be used to view the mostly black CLI while in a pitch black room. These allow your resilient eyes eyes to take some of the strain off of your fragile coolness gland and serve to disguise your inevitbly pasty visage. You must never expose your sunglasses. You must wear them only while in a dark room by yourself.
sarcasticfrench wrote, "I think that the reason for the no bandwidth limit and the lack of other advanced features is that it is really meant for people who really know nothing about web design, so they don't make some of these possibly more confusing tools available."
You might be right about that, but remember, it's still in beta. They could still be working on some of the cooler features and not have it ready yet.
The problem is that people aren't desperate. They can still afford the relatively high current oil prices. They aren't smart enough to anticipate running out of oil. Because of this, there won't be any backing for any government-funded alternative fuel source until we're actually circling the drain with regards to oil (at which point people will blame the government for not thinking of any alternative). So, while I'm not supporting the actions of the Bush administration in going over there, he won't be able to do anything else (besides get oil from other countries) until the general public does not believe that "that desert place is full of oil."
Slashdot Mirror
These ratings are part of a voluntary rating system, administered by the MPAA. There is no law that a minor cannot get into an R-rated movie by himself or herself. The reason that they can't get in/make a purchase is that suppliers voluntarily comply with the rating system. There is probably some pressure/incentive from the MPAA motivating them to do this, but it is not required by law, and there are some suppliers that do not enforce it.
They do. The ESRB administers a similar voluntary rating system. Not all suppliers adhere to it.
Cigarettes and alcohol are restricted by law because there is a demonstratable danger from consuming them. Some people would say that movies, games, or porn also have demonstratable danger, and they may be right to some extent. But cigarettes and alcohol are much more dangerous and it is much more demonstratable.
Preach on, brother! The drug laws are crazy like that.
Even now, lobbyists for groups of concerned parents are pressuring Congress to prohibit minors from buying Bibles and impose severe fines on retailers who sell Bibles rated NKJV or higher.
I'll bet the higher-level employees at Google use this to practice for project It's Not A Game (working title).
If you're going to buy another thing and break it, have a little more flair than that. Modify the device so that instead of an inaudible noise, it makes a high-pitched noise within the audible spectrum of a normal, middle-aged person. Then call the cops again. They'll hear it this time, and it will be annoying.
Actually, if the old geezer isn't too deaf, he'll be able to hear it too. He may go buy a new one. Then you can intercept him with the offending device in hand on his way home from wherever you get stuff like that. Be sure to have an appropriately attired officer of the law on hand, so you can show him or her the packaging where it says, "Guaranteed to annoy the hell out of those young punks that don't run away when you fire your shotgun into the air."
There's no way the libraries will be able to keep track of all the new sites, the same way they couln't be expected to keep track of all the new porn sites. Censorware companies keep track of this kind of thing, and I'm guessing that the most common implementation of this bill would be to use censorware. Especially because the libraries that are e-rate compliant already have it so that they can block "harmful to minors" material.
Passing this bill would increase the demand for censorware, and the updates necessary to keep it current. I wonder who lobbied this proposal.
In order to effectively study PacMan, the researchers played it so much that 64% of the time they were killing ghosts.
I agree that they could go in really any direction with this, including making a game that is not entirely an FPS. Quake and CS are, IMO, classic examples of what I would consider to be the two main families of pure FPSs. I can't think of any other kinds now, but I'm sure they're out there. (Maybe WW2 gets its own division?) Anyway, I get what you mean about the potential for this to be different. That said, if its solid and fun, I wouldn't decline to play the completed product just because it sticks to tradition.
Thanks for the Savage links. I think I played that before at some point, but that was a demo. I don't recall being that enthralled with it, but I didn't really understand it either. I'll have to see how it goes. No reason to pass up free games.
The project site is located at http://openfrag.org/, although I believe it is in the process of being slashdotted right now.
I wonder whether the first iteration of the game will be traditional or tactical? I assume that the designers want the engine to be good enough that it can be customized to do both. But what kind of game do they actually want to make? More like Quake or more like Counterstrike?
If all that you had to do to get around oppressive government censorship was learn a language that many people speak already, I don't think that this article would be such big news.
If they're gonna move to another country with a less invasive government anyway, then they might want to skip the US for the duration of the current administration. We're better than China, but, as you stated, we're not really doing that well. NSA phone tapping, banking surveillance, and saving the children, oh my!
On another, semi-related note, the Chinese, at least in practice, have almost no copyright restrictions put on them when in comes to music. Users of http://www.baidu.com/ (Chinese search engine) can just pull tunes off of Chinese websites. In this area, the average Chinese person excercises more freedom than citizens of other countries. I think copyright infringment is still illegal. It's just that nobody cares. So if you were Chinese and all you cared about was free music (some people I know), then it would be to your disadvantage to come to America. BTW, I haven't been able to successfully use Baidu because I can't read or type Chinese, so I'm not speaking from personal experience.
That's could be where lighting up the dark fiber comes in. Google could connect all of the major metropolitan centers (Wi-Fi hotspot hives) to eachother in a continent-wide (probably just the U.S.) mesh of fiber. Like maybe they could put a whole crapload of fiber lines (I don't know how many it would actually take) going out from NY and connecting the cities like Philly, Atlantic City, Pittsburgh. You probably would not want a real mesh because of how much fiber it would take, but Google maybe could pull off an extended star topology.
The way it would work (in my wild conjecture) is this:
In large metropolitan Wi-Fi meshes, Google builds a series of Wi-Fi communication centers to hook up with the nearby foneros. These hubs are all connected to a main hub by fiber. This hub is connected by a ridiculous amount of fiber to the other main hubs in other cities, which are similarly connected to smaller Wi-Fi hubs throughout each city. Extended star. The main branches of the star(s) run through the less-densely-populated areas between cities. In these areas, there could be branches from the main branch every so often that would go to a Wi-Fi hub, which would connect to the foneros in the surrounding area.
You still wouldn't be able to get service if you were really out in the middle of nowhere, but if you were roughly in the path between two major Wi-Fi meshes, you'd be set.
Google could also plug the Wi-Fi hubs into the local infrastructure to supplant the non-foneros' ISPs' long range lines. You could use Google Screw-Your-ISP to route all of your long-range traffic to the local Google hub (read "command post"). GSYP would prompt you to become a fonero and extend Wi-Fi mesh/backbone. Assuming that they marketed successfully, they could usurp the function/business of the entrenched telecoms.
This is pretty theoretical, especially because I don't know just how much fiber you would need to accomplish it, but Google probably wants to do it.
That was what I would call an insightful post. I don't agree with all of it, but it touched on some new material. You could probably get some serious karma if you didn't post AC.
The thing about nerds changing was dead on. I think that digg is more appealing to the more modern (read "less nerdy") nerd. The headlines change very quickly, so you can keep refreshing and theoretically waste an entire day on digg. Also, the headlines, while of a somewhat technical bent, are primarily quickies about an imaginative prank or some guy doing something stupid and getting hurt. They are things where you click, watch for 20 seconds, and are rewarded. Most of the headlines on digg aren't really news so much as they are just something that some people haven't seen before. On Slashdot, most of the articles refer to actual events that happened in the recent past (news) and are relevant to the intended readership (for nerds). Also, most of the stuff that you find on digg, even if it is both news and for nerds, is something that, while interesting, is somewhat trivial. Slashdot, on the other hand, contains information that is (most of the time) significant in some way (stuff that matters). I see digg as being more related to something like CollegeHumor than Slashdot. Getting closer to the topic at hand (moderation system), I don't see many comments on digg that I really feel are worth my time to read. There's the occasional gem, but it is usually surrounded by things like "Wow this is awesome! Thank you!" or "Here's another site like the one in the article." When I visit digg, I almost never read the comments on a story. I just click the headline. On slashdot, the signal to noise ratio is high enough that I read the comments. Usually, some of the Slashdot comments contribute something important to my appreciation of the story. This has never happened on digg. In short, I go to digg to be entertained. I go to Slashdot to informed and enlightened.
I think you're right about there being no way to fix the moderation system. No matter how well you make the machine run, incompetent staff will break it. You're also correct about leaving the system the way it is being a good way to cater to the pseudo-nerd crowd. However, I definitely do not want Slashdot to succumb to the pressures of scruple-less capitalism. When the site is entirely populated by a new generation of mostly non-nerds, I still want to be able to come here and find "news for nerds. Stuff that matters." One other thing about moderation: I don't know if you were kidding, but selling mod points is the single worst thing that comes to mind to do to the moderation system. That would make it like a voluntary poll. Only those people who really care would respond. You'd have all of these people with extreme opinions dropping tons of dough and throwing mod points left and right to squelch those who disagree with them. People would start modding clans to press a certain issue, or some jerks would pool their money to gang up on one person and mod them down to -1 every time they posted. You could rape the account of anyone you didn't like that way.
It should be noted that I am saying this as a member of the new generation containing the psuedo-nerds to which you refer, and as somewhat of a newb, but I'm pretty sure that I would have had the motivation to set up my Internet connection back in the good ol' days, and I consider myself truly geeky. It's disappointing that so many of my compatriots are of a smaller caliber than I would prefer. A lot of the times I wish that I was born in '80 instead '90 :( By the time I got on the Net, everybody was already doing it.
Yes.
As we have seen on multiple previous occasions (NSA wiretapping, PATRIOT Act, etc.), what the government does, especially as you get higher up, is not always in accordance with the decidedly beefy federal laws, but instead bears a marked resemblance to the gross tube-meat to which you referred.
There should be an organization that collects AOL free hours CDs and sends them in crates back to AOL corporate headquarters. Made into humorous statues inside the boxes. With cancelation confirmation numbers written on them. Either that or you could make a giant satellite dish looking thing out of the CDs and reflect the sun into the huge windows of the CEO's corner office.
You're right about four minutes not being a big deal. Four minutes of canceling the account, that is. Even four minutes of trying to fix the perceived problem wouldn't have been unforgivable. But four minutes of being and jerk, interrupting Vincent when he was talking, and not even acknowledging Vincent's requests is totally unacceptable. Vincent was totally reasonable.
Hopefully, the RIAA can gradually lessen their presence in the Internet as the new DRM government becomes more self-sufficient. With any luck, the RIAA will be able to pull out by 2009, leaving a fully functional restricted-use state.
Snooping cellphone: $75
Copper mesh: $10
Soldering iron: $35
A stylish cellphone carrying case that keeps you literally under the radar: priceless.
Would we run into this same problem if someone created a "violent" video game that was based on the bible? I mean there are parts of that book that are pretty grotesque.
What if someone made a game where you were Samson, and you harvested and sacrificed the foreskins of the Philistines? I'm pretty sure that something similar to this would happen.It's kind of like maintaining the technology has become the thing that they are legally reaqured to do, and giving you an education has become the privilege that they can take away, instead of the other way around.
In Soviet Russia, they're all discouraged because America is being so much more creepy than they are.
The MPAA, in an attempt to fling mud about TorrentSpy as far as possible, could torrent the information that they took from TorrentSpy and distribute it along with their bogus movie torrents. The .torrent file could even end up on TorrentSpy. Then TorrentSpy could sue themselves for "facilitating thievery." Or they could become party to the MPAA's suit already in progress. I for one would find this side-splitting.
What would work better would be a system where your work becomes public domain after a certain amount of profit, which would be calculated individually based on the cost of creating the product. So if the limit was 120% gains, and you spent $1,000,000 to make your movie, album, whatever, your work would become public domain after you had gotten $2,200,000: 220% of your investment. This could be combined with some kind of fixed limit, and the work would be PD after it reached the percentage limit or the absolute limit, whichever came first. This would be added to the current system where copyright expires after a certain amount of time.
Disclaimer: I may have misused some financial terms.The course cannot be graduated without demonstating the ability to customize your boot sequence and user interface to the flashiest and slowest possible.
A passing grade requires that there be at least thirty seconds of 3D graphics culminating in a prolonged display of your 1337 name before the OS is in any way useable. Loud custom sound files are encouraged.
In addition, all participants will receive a complimentary pair of stylish sunglasses that can be used to view the mostly black CLI while in a pitch black room. These allow your resilient eyes eyes to take some of the strain off of your fragile coolness gland and serve to disguise your inevitbly pasty visage. You must never expose your sunglasses. You must wear them only while in a dark room by yourself.
sarcasticfrench wrote, "I think that the reason for the no bandwidth limit and the lack of other advanced features is that it is really meant for people who really know nothing about web design, so they don't make some of these possibly more confusing tools available."
You might be right about that, but remember, it's still in beta. They could still be working on some of the cooler features and not have it ready yet.
The problem is that people aren't desperate. They can still afford the relatively high current oil prices. They aren't smart enough to anticipate running out of oil.
Because of this, there won't be any backing for any government-funded alternative fuel source until we're actually circling the drain with regards to oil (at which point people will blame the government for not thinking of any alternative). So, while I'm not supporting the actions of the Bush administration in going over there, he won't be able to do anything else (besides get oil from other countries) until the general public does not believe that "that desert place is full of oil."