After she left, she logged in with the still-unchanged root password and trashed our systems. And it turned out the last few "backups" she made were blank.
Damn, if only you had made security escort her out like a criminal without dignity....absolutely nothing would have been different! You had no idea she wasn't making backups, rent-a-cops wouldn't change that. You had no idea the other admins were incompetent, rent-a-cops wouldn't change that either.
She left you a mountain of evidence against her, effectively guaranteeing she'll never work again for reasons no one can guess and were completely unreasonable. That's not really a COMMON scenario we all must prepare for in policy and SOP.
This is similar to suggesting that we need a policy to strip-search people in public for fear they might be smuggling snukes up their snizz.
I don't even believe half the stories I hear. I've flown eight times this year for work, and other than it being slow, I've yet to see anyone even taken to the side
There's that security Boston is famous for...
I've flown fewer than eight times this year, and have been taken aside twice, and seen more than I can count given the extra search. I don't know if you're not paying attention, or just incredibly lucky, but the entire country isn't just making these stories up.
I don't get this "Waaaa gimme luxury attitude". More room means bigger,
Nice straw-man argument. They didn't say they wanted roomier flights, just a less miserable experience. If you believe the flights you've been on with United Airlines are worth what you paid, you're a masochist, and thus exempt from this discussion.
I don't get this "Waaaa the companies are always right attitude". What is wrong with a consumer demanding that the billions of dollars in SUBSIDY we gave them, before the massive layoffs, be used to improve the flying experience, as was the entire point? Why is it waaaa-ing to say that when you give someone >$1000, they should give you something of that value? Why does someone always get all snippy on Slashdot and treat those consumers like hippy parasites who asked for free golden handjobs?
As a Scotsman, I'm somewhat miffed that an Englishman is playing the role.
Eh, You People all look the same to us anyway. I mean, is he from the culture with the miserable food and the Guinness, the one with the miserable food and the Strongbow, or the one with the miserable food and the Otley O1, playing a guy from the one with food based on frat-hazing and dares, and Islay single malts?
Just be happy it wasn't a guy from the place with all the great barbecue sauce and skank Budweiser...
As as American, I admit our clothfunds are stupid and your polymercash is better, but a small flub in your post: Oz didn't have 'mercash for about 6 years after Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador.
Those original notes, incidentally, were printed by the U.S. Mint.
I'd prefer the semtex. At least it's a deterrent to theft -- unlike insurance, which gives you a, "who cares" attitude toward the whole situation. Frankly, rather than making robbery less costly to me, I'd rather make it less valuable to the mugger, by making laptop resale more difficult. That way, my head doesn't get accidentally blown off before I can file a claim.
This person brandished a firearm and robbed somebody. THEY THREATENED DEATH FOR PERSONAL GAIN WITH A GUN. I don't just want a new laptop. I don't just want my data. I want that violent, homicidal person to not be walking around with a gun anymore. This nonsense about "my Powerpoint presentations über alles!" just isn't valid logic, and ignores the fact they could've just shot you and taken it off your body.
And please, let's have a little perspective? You're a nobody. The odds that anyone cares enough to track your laptop with this thing (as opposed to all the other ways you can be tracked in your city) are far lower than the odds that someone cares enough to rob you, and doesn't care enough to risk you putting up a fight or picking them out of a lineup..
> I'd go as far as to say America doesn't have a culture. On the other hand, we're an economic powerhouse
Jazz, blues, R&B, Hip Hop, Hyphy, bluegrass, anti-folk, beat poetry and bebop, Broadway, Art Deco, Transcendentalism, Abstract Expressionism, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote...
Yeah. America is just totally soulless. Oh, also the "Soul" genre.
That sound you hear is the zombie Ella Fitzgerald, Lightnin Hopkins and Sondheim coming to feast on your brains. America has a pretty well defined "folk" apart from its major cities, which have their own, more cosmopolitan cultures -- all of which have a long history of expressing social values through highly experimental art and literature. A "culture" if you will.
Please don't think we began and ended with Britney Spears.
So, what is the problem with a blackboard? Be precise.
I can't say I have any problem with a blackboard, though the ability to export it to a file and email it to everyone would be nice. If this is a class that doesn't work off rote memorization, having the students copy five boards worth of information doesn't seem an efficient use of time. For history class, make them write it out themselves. For linear algebra problems, just let them have a copy of your process so they can check their work later.
Otherwise, I think your point is the most important: don't turn math class into a demo of your new gadgets.
> WoWz! So why aren't we training horse-jockeys to be astronauts? into We are. They're called robots. Most of us agree the cost of sending full-grown humans and their life-support systems into space isn't generally worth it. We can't convince the bots to wear those little jockey uniforms, though, which is unfortunate.
> There isn't any reason why we can't make all our endeavors a little more > fun and inspiring, it's what humans are all about.
Sure, fun and inspiring...but why this? I don't like 'Wars or 'Trek, but at least a Star Trek collectible would be a relevant symbol of human endeavor into space, as opposed to mythology in far-far-away galaxies. And believing a movie prop is on a shuttle isn't "fun" for me. MAYBE if there were two, and they were going to act out the hand-chopping scene, I'd dig this. But as it stands, it'd be more fun if they faked the opening scene from Farscape and pretended they were getting shot through a wormhole, or vacuum'd a BeeGee in effigy.
Organized religion as we know it would probably crumble, how could you accept something that says the force that created the entire universe personally created us too, in his own image to boot, when there could be hundreds of civilizations out there more advanced in every way than us.
Organized religions also say they tell the entire history of creation, but somehow all of them leave out the lumbering, 40-ton, skyscraper-tall thunderlizards that dominated the planet for millions of years. Didn't they think it was relevant to the story?
God created Adam and Eve, and they spent all their time running from the Sleestacks? Shit, I'd mention it. And I'd be skeptical of anyone who didn't.
But, people still believe in The Good Book, no matter how much it omits or straight gets wrong.
"i'd be a money grubbing whore for wanting more then a cardboard box to live in, because thats what my parents lived in. thats your reasoning."
That wasn't anything like their reasoning. There's a rift a mile wide between "don't assume cable television, new cars, and climbing the property ladder are requirements in society" and "be homeless and beg for scraps."
This entire topic is, "how can I make the maximum amount of cash?" When someone is making a life-decision, such as choosing a career, and THAT'S the question they ask, they ARE a money-grubbing whore. And they're ok with that. Some people aren't. Some ask, "how can I get immortality through my work," or, "how can I have the most freedom in my job," or, "how can I do good in the world," and the obvious assumption is that they want to be paid well. This person doesn't care as much what they do, how they do it, or how it affects others -- they care more about the cash they'll receive for doing whatever it is.
If you're an Ayn Randian and think there's no more noble goal than making money, that's fine. But don't get pissy when someone calls you a money grubber.
If they question everything, then what they have isn't faith or religion. It's a reasoned, informed, personal decision.
Of course, the odds of coming to a reasoned, informed decision that perfectly coincides with a set of rules written thousands of years ago, meant to be applied by a vastly different group of people in an amazingly different world, are pretty slim. And if it doesn't heavily coincide with the original rules, they aren't sincerely Orthodox Jewish or sincerely Jesuit Catholics. They're just another one of us who thinks a lot of the moral lessons in The Book are valid and relevant, and others are insane and useless.
This is all assuming you didn't mean that they question things, but don't really accept the answer if it's inconvenient, which many religious folks do:
"Where do people come from?"
"Evolution."
"Bullshit!"
So, because Clinton got away with something criminal, to make it even, we need to let a Republican get away with something criminal (and also never speak of it?)
I'd hate to be one of Bush's bodyguards, personal assistants or a Penicillin factory right now.
When you start whining that politicians are being held accountable for their actions, you really need to take a step back and question whether you're getting sucked too far into this "my team is winning" partisan nonsense. Let's get as many as we can, as often as we can, since they've all gotten away with murder.
Have people been suggesting corn as a source for biofuels, and I'm not aware of it? I thought we had all pretty much agreed long ago that cornoil-based biodiesel is cute for demonstrations involving frenchfry buses and wowing people into supporting the cause, but any serious implementation would depend upon algae farms, or at least one of the more prolific oil producing plants (industrial hemp, for example.)
The power or Wiki is that anyone can edit, so anyone can fix the mistake.
More to the point, anyone can edit/revise/delete, and you're supposed to read the system with that in mind. Should we really be building public resources that are aiming at flawless, objective truth? Or should we be encouraging everyone to develop better bullshit detectors, read more skeptically and demand reasonable evidence?
I read plenty of Wikipedia articles that are just nonsense. Not that I can refute their claims, but I (or anyone with a semester of college composition under their belt) can tell a non-developed point, "facts" stated without reference or evidence, or opinion and speculation. An Encyclopedia doesn't replace a textbook, and it isn't meant to -- it's basically an essay about the subject.
It's easy enough. Before you start reading Wikipedia, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_S tyle
See any of the sins mentioned in there, in the article you're reading? Get a second opinion. It's the internet, there's no shortage of informal, shallow overviews out there.
I'm unsure of what credentials are required to get a.edu domain
I believe it's as simple as, "you must be a regionally accredited four-year university," where "regional accredition" comes from one of the organized bodies in the US for evaluating academic criteria and standards.
So, yes, the.edu solution is perfect. Stephen Hawking can't comment on Physics or Cosmology, because what does he know? He's British. Want Jean-Paul Sartre to rise from the dead and comment on existentialism (how's that for a mindfuck?) Sorry, he's not an American in the (flawless) American education system. Marx on Marxism? Engineers at Boeing (who's employer doesn't cooperate) on aeronautics and rocketry? Me on just about any subject, including Futurama quotes?
You missed his point, completely. According to the link you posted, the current malaria treatments are often regarded as a complete cure. There're also preventative drugs.
This is a case of fucking with an ecosystem to fix a "problem" where none exists. More specifically, this is treating a social/economic problem as an engineering one. You don't cure poverty by finding new, efficient ways to print paper money, and you don't cure a people's inaccess to treatment by making different treatments.
The research is really cool, I just hope this one stays on paper.
I think there is one fatal flaw in your logic. IT seems to suggest that if these influences were done away with, there'd be nothing to corrupt the youth into liking violence and finding it "cool."
No, it doesn't suggest anything like that first part, even a little. The rest of your post ignores the second part, which is the part that matters.
Saying that acts of violence have "always" existed is meaningless. Sex has always existed, and selling off 14 year old daughters was considered normal at one point -- does that mean selling children isn't an issue? Read Shakespeare, there was a teenager being sold off for wealth in Romeo and Juliet, so it must be a necessary, unavoidable part of human nature. Oh wait, what about the time in between then and now, in the modern world, when it wasn't epidemic..?
There's a wide, HUGE margin between, "Shakespeare, who wrote plays mocking Kings and armies, wrote some plays about war" and, "pop music, which has always been about fluff and love, is now about pistol whipping someone's teeth out of their face because they looked at you funny."
See the difference? It's context. I'm not the squooshy liberal who gets antsy when someone mentions violence. It's that it has become an integral part of things where it isn't relevant, that we need to examine.
And let's not forget.... WAR. That's certainly not new.
It's also not the point. Comparing armies battling over the wealth of nations to a carload of teenagers looking to fight for the sake of fighting, is missing the point so far that it's coming up behind you. Also, people are not "inherently violent," unless you don't know what the word, "violence" means. They might strike one another. They might battle over land and wealth. They might pull triggers. But none of that is inherently violent.
Getting off on it so much that you crave it outside of any context. That's violent. And that is new.
"But if politicians simply respected the audience's choices, stopped posturing against theoretical violence and fictional bad guys, they would have to focus on, say, the thornier problems of stopping actual bloodshed in the real world."
'nuff said
Unfortunately, it isn't enough said. You're leaving out the key point that what we see on TV everyday becomes real. All that fun Debord, Baudrillard stuff. That's ignoring the fact that the audience doesn't make choices. They do what the fuck they're told.
Watch a rap video, then watch the average teenager on the bus in your nearest large city. Notice any similarities...like, everything? Now watch the very realistic Ultraviolence (we're not talking Bugs Bunny or Three Stooges silliness, we're talking graphic, realistic and relevant) between courageous heroes and very sexy villains, and look at the average teenager in a few years..
Basically, the same thing they said about sex many decades ago. Only now, instead of kids rutting earlier and teenagers dressing sexier, kids'll be literally torturing the kid they just used to beat up earlier, and carrying weapons (because it does feel cool) more often.
You're thinking of it backwards. If you killed someone using poison, and the police find you've searched for "how to kill someone using poison," it can be submitted as evidence that you knew how to kill someone using poison, because the steps for killing someone using poison were outlined in your search results.
The searching doesn't get you caught. It's just that after you're caught the search makes it seem more likely you did it, because jury's don't like coincidence.
Slashdot Mirror
After she left, she logged in with the still-unchanged root password and trashed our systems. And it turned out the last few "backups" she made were blank.
Damn, if only you had made security escort her out like a criminal without dignity....absolutely nothing would have been different! You had no idea she wasn't making backups, rent-a-cops wouldn't change that. You had no idea the other admins were incompetent, rent-a-cops wouldn't change that either.
She left you a mountain of evidence against her, effectively guaranteeing she'll never work again for reasons no one can guess and were completely unreasonable. That's not really a COMMON scenario we all must prepare for in policy and SOP.
This is similar to suggesting that we need a policy to strip-search people in public for fear they might be smuggling snukes up their snizz.
But apparently the "sense of humor" was invented sometime in the early 90's..
I don't even believe half the stories I hear. I've flown eight times this year for work, and other than it being slow, I've yet to see anyone even taken to the side
There's that security Boston is famous for...
I've flown fewer than eight times this year, and have been taken aside twice, and seen more than I can count given the extra search. I don't know if you're not paying attention, or just incredibly lucky, but the entire country isn't just making these stories up.
I don't get this "Waaaa gimme luxury attitude". More room means bigger,
Nice straw-man argument. They didn't say they wanted roomier flights, just a less miserable experience. If you believe the flights you've been on with United Airlines are worth what you paid, you're a masochist, and thus exempt from this discussion.
I don't get this "Waaaa the companies are always right attitude". What is wrong with a consumer demanding that the billions of dollars in SUBSIDY we gave them, before the massive layoffs, be used to improve the flying experience, as was the entire point? Why is it waaaa-ing to say that when you give someone >$1000, they should give you something of that value? Why does someone always get all snippy on Slashdot and treat those consumers like hippy parasites who asked for free golden handjobs?
As a Scotsman, I'm somewhat miffed that an Englishman is playing the role.
Eh, You People all look the same to us anyway. I mean, is he from the culture with the miserable food and the Guinness, the one with the miserable food and the Strongbow, or the one with the miserable food and the Otley O1, playing a guy from the one with food based on frat-hazing and dares, and Islay single malts?
Just be happy it wasn't a guy from the place with all the great barbecue sauce and skank Budweiser...
--
It's a joke, laugh.
As as American, I admit our clothfunds are stupid and your polymercash is better, but a small flub in your post: Oz didn't have 'mercash for about 6 years after Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador.
Those original notes, incidentally, were printed by the U.S. Mint.
And having this online provides an excellent communication medium.
And limited to middle-class folks with computers and Internet connections..
I'm sure NZ's Maori population is offering a collective sound that translates roughly to, "whoop-dee-fucking-doo."
Welcome to 17 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
I'd prefer the semtex. At least it's a deterrent to theft -- unlike insurance, which gives you a, "who cares" attitude toward the whole situation. Frankly, rather than making robbery less costly to me, I'd rather make it less valuable to the mugger, by making laptop resale more difficult. That way, my head doesn't get accidentally blown off before I can file a claim.
This person brandished a firearm and robbed somebody. THEY THREATENED DEATH FOR PERSONAL GAIN WITH A GUN. I don't just want a new laptop. I don't just want my data. I want that violent, homicidal person to not be walking around with a gun anymore. This nonsense about "my Powerpoint presentations über alles!" just isn't valid logic, and ignores the fact they could've just shot you and taken it off your body.
And please, let's have a little perspective? You're a nobody. The odds that anyone cares enough to track your laptop with this thing (as opposed to all the other ways you can be tracked in your city) are far lower than the odds that someone cares enough to rob you, and doesn't care enough to risk you putting up a fight or picking them out of a lineup..
> I'd go as far as to say America doesn't have a culture. On the other hand, we're an economic powerhouse
Jazz, blues, R&B, Hip Hop, Hyphy, bluegrass, anti-folk, beat poetry and bebop, Broadway, Art Deco, Transcendentalism, Abstract Expressionism, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote...
Yeah. America is just totally soulless. Oh, also the "Soul" genre.
That sound you hear is the zombie Ella Fitzgerald, Lightnin Hopkins and Sondheim coming to feast on your brains. America has a pretty well defined "folk" apart from its major cities, which have their own, more cosmopolitan cultures -- all of which have a long history of expressing social values through highly experimental art and literature. A "culture" if you will.
Please don't think we began and ended with Britney Spears.
If 90% of people used a particular open-source program, I'd dare to call that program a winner.
What do they win?
More to the point, do they take the $0's they've made and reinvest it into R&D and more developers?
So, what is the problem with a blackboard? Be precise.
I can't say I have any problem with a blackboard, though the ability to export it to a file and email it to everyone would be nice. If this is a class that doesn't work off rote memorization, having the students copy five boards worth of information doesn't seem an efficient use of time. For history class, make them write it out themselves. For linear algebra problems, just let them have a copy of your process so they can check their work later.
Otherwise, I think your point is the most important: don't turn math class into a demo of your new gadgets.
> WoWz! So why aren't we training horse-jockeys to be astronauts?
into
We are. They're called robots. Most of us agree the cost of sending full-grown humans and their life-support systems into space isn't generally worth it. We can't convince the bots to wear those little jockey uniforms, though, which is unfortunate.
> There isn't any reason why we can't make all our endeavors a little more
> fun and inspiring, it's what humans are all about.
Sure, fun and inspiring...but why this? I don't like 'Wars or 'Trek, but at least a Star Trek collectible would be a relevant symbol of human endeavor into space, as opposed to mythology in far-far-away galaxies. And believing a movie prop is on a shuttle isn't "fun" for me. MAYBE if there were two, and they were going to act out the hand-chopping scene, I'd dig this. But as it stands, it'd be more fun if they faked the opening scene from Farscape and pretended they were getting shot through a wormhole, or vacuum'd a BeeGee in effigy.
Organized religion as we know it would probably crumble, how could you accept something that says the force that created the entire universe personally created us too, in his own image to boot, when there could be hundreds of civilizations out there more advanced in every way than us.
Organized religions also say they tell the entire history of creation, but somehow all of them leave out the lumbering, 40-ton, skyscraper-tall thunderlizards that dominated the planet for millions of years. Didn't they think it was relevant to the story?
God created Adam and Eve, and they spent all their time running from the Sleestacks? Shit, I'd mention it. And I'd be skeptical of anyone who didn't.
But, people still believe in The Good Book, no matter how much it omits or straight gets wrong.
"i'd be a money grubbing whore for wanting more then a cardboard box to live in, because thats what my parents lived in. thats your reasoning."
That wasn't anything like their reasoning. There's a rift a mile wide between "don't assume cable television, new cars, and climbing the property ladder are requirements in society" and "be homeless and beg for scraps."
This entire topic is, "how can I make the maximum amount of cash?" When someone is making a life-decision, such as choosing a career, and THAT'S the question they ask, they ARE a money-grubbing whore. And they're ok with that. Some people aren't. Some ask, "how can I get immortality through my work," or, "how can I have the most freedom in my job," or, "how can I do good in the world," and the obvious assumption is that they want to be paid well. This person doesn't care as much what they do, how they do it, or how it affects others -- they care more about the cash they'll receive for doing whatever it is.
If you're an Ayn Randian and think there's no more noble goal than making money, that's fine. But don't get pissy when someone calls you a money grubber.
If they question everything, then what they have isn't faith or religion. It's a reasoned, informed, personal decision.
Of course, the odds of coming to a reasoned, informed decision that perfectly coincides with a set of rules written thousands of years ago, meant to be applied by a vastly different group of people in an amazingly different world, are pretty slim. And if it doesn't heavily coincide with the original rules, they aren't sincerely Orthodox Jewish or sincerely Jesuit Catholics. They're just another one of us who thinks a lot of the moral lessons in The Book are valid and relevant, and others are insane and useless.
This is all assuming you didn't mean that they question things, but don't really accept the answer if it's inconvenient, which many religious folks do:
"Where do people come from?"
"Evolution."
"Bullshit!"
So, because Clinton got away with something criminal, to make it even, we need to let a Republican get away with something criminal (and also never speak of it?)
I'd hate to be one of Bush's bodyguards, personal assistants or a Penicillin factory right now.
When you start whining that politicians are being held accountable for their actions, you really need to take a step back and question whether you're getting sucked too far into this "my team is winning" partisan nonsense. Let's get as many as we can, as often as we can, since they've all gotten away with murder.
Have people been suggesting corn as a source for biofuels, and I'm not aware of it? I thought we had all pretty much agreed long ago that cornoil-based biodiesel is cute for demonstrations involving frenchfry buses and wowing people into supporting the cause, but any serious implementation would depend upon algae farms, or at least one of the more prolific oil producing plants (industrial hemp, for example.)
Maybe I'm out of the loop.
The power or Wiki is that anyone can edit, so anyone can fix the mistake.
S tyle
See any of the sins mentioned in there, in the article you're reading? Get a second opinion. It's the internet, there's no shortage of informal, shallow overviews out there.
More to the point, anyone can edit/revise/delete, and you're supposed to read the system with that in mind. Should we really be building public resources that are aiming at flawless, objective truth? Or should we be encouraging everyone to develop better bullshit detectors, read more skeptically and demand reasonable evidence?
I read plenty of Wikipedia articles that are just nonsense. Not that I can refute their claims, but I (or anyone with a semester of college composition under their belt) can tell a non-developed point, "facts" stated without reference or evidence, or opinion and speculation. An Encyclopedia doesn't replace a textbook, and it isn't meant to -- it's basically an essay about the subject.
It's easy enough. Before you start reading Wikipedia, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_
I'm unsure of what credentials are required to get a .edu domain
.edu solution is perfect. Stephen Hawking can't comment on Physics or Cosmology, because what does he know? He's British. Want Jean-Paul Sartre to rise from the dead and comment on existentialism (how's that for a mindfuck?) Sorry, he's not an American in the (flawless) American education system. Marx on Marxism? Engineers at Boeing (who's employer doesn't cooperate) on aeronautics and rocketry? Me on just about any subject, including Futurama quotes?
I believe it's as simple as, "you must be a regionally accredited four-year university," where "regional accredition" comes from one of the organized bodies in the US for evaluating academic criteria and standards.
So, yes, the
Sorry. We're boned.
It's called PKI. Every "identity" on the internet is "virtual."
w ith+gpg
http://www.google.com/search?q=signing+a+message+
You missed his point, completely. According to the link you posted, the current malaria treatments are often regarded as a complete cure. There're also preventative drugs.
This is a case of fucking with an ecosystem to fix a "problem" where none exists. More specifically, this is treating a social/economic problem as an engineering one. You don't cure poverty by finding new, efficient ways to print paper money, and you don't cure a people's inaccess to treatment by making different treatments.
The research is really cool, I just hope this one stays on paper.
I think there is one fatal flaw in your logic. IT seems to suggest that if these influences were done away with, there'd be nothing to corrupt the youth into liking violence and finding it "cool."
No, it doesn't suggest anything like that first part, even a little. The rest of your post ignores the second part, which is the part that matters.
Saying that acts of violence have "always" existed is meaningless. Sex has always existed, and selling off 14 year old daughters was considered normal at one point -- does that mean selling children isn't an issue? Read Shakespeare, there was a teenager being sold off for wealth in Romeo and Juliet, so it must be a necessary, unavoidable part of human nature. Oh wait, what about the time in between then and now, in the modern world, when it wasn't epidemic..?
There's a wide, HUGE margin between, "Shakespeare, who wrote plays mocking Kings and armies, wrote some plays about war" and, "pop music, which has always been about fluff and love, is now about pistol whipping someone's teeth out of their face because they looked at you funny."
See the difference? It's context. I'm not the squooshy liberal who gets antsy when someone mentions violence. It's that it has become an integral part of things where it isn't relevant, that we need to examine.
And let's not forget.... WAR. That's certainly not new.
It's also not the point. Comparing armies battling over the wealth of nations to a carload of teenagers looking to fight for the sake of fighting, is missing the point so far that it's coming up behind you. Also, people are not "inherently violent," unless you don't know what the word, "violence" means. They might strike one another. They might battle over land and wealth. They might pull triggers. But none of that is inherently violent.
Getting off on it so much that you crave it outside of any context. That's violent. And that is new.
I think it's a great idea. Mozilla would make a great OS.
All is needs now is a decent web browser. *ducks*
"But if politicians simply respected the audience's choices, stopped posturing against theoretical violence and fictional bad guys, they would have to focus on, say, the thornier problems of stopping actual bloodshed in the real world."
'nuff said
Unfortunately, it isn't enough said. You're leaving out the key point that what we see on TV everyday becomes real. All that fun Debord, Baudrillard stuff. That's ignoring the fact that the audience doesn't make choices. They do what the fuck they're told.
Watch a rap video, then watch the average teenager on the bus in your nearest large city. Notice any similarities...like, everything? Now watch the very realistic Ultraviolence (we're not talking Bugs Bunny or Three Stooges silliness, we're talking graphic, realistic and relevant) between courageous heroes and very sexy villains, and look at the average teenager in a few years..
Basically, the same thing they said about sex many decades ago. Only now, instead of kids rutting earlier and teenagers dressing sexier, kids'll be literally torturing the kid they just used to beat up earlier, and carrying weapons (because it does feel cool) more often.
You're thinking of it backwards. If you killed someone using poison, and the police find you've searched for "how to kill someone using poison," it can be submitted as evidence that you knew how to kill someone using poison, because the steps for killing someone using poison were outlined in your search results.
The searching doesn't get you caught. It's just that after you're caught the search makes it seem more likely you did it, because jury's don't like coincidence.