Not meaning to be pedantic, but I don't think the Bible was "supposed" to be anything. It's a collection of discrete documents with a variety of authors, spread out over a fairly large swath of history. As far as Christianity goes, there weren't even any attempts to put them all in one volume until some four hundred years after the man named Jesus died. Even today, there's only limited consensus as to which documents are part of the Christian canon, and various books have been added or subtracted by various councils, synods, conventions, etc. at various points in time.
I think we can all agree that the charges in this case would never even have been considered if this had been a garden variety case of teens using false user IDs to say nasty things to each other on MySpace. That said, I think criminal case against Drew is a proxy for two separate matters of public concern, both of which I find to be pretty disturbing.
First, this case is really about some sort of public retribution against Drew for her actions. The victim's family want closure, and the public wants blood. Given the conduct involved, this is understandable. However, a lot of the comments to date suggest (or outright assert) that Drew somehow "caused" this suicide through her acts. I question that conclusion as a matter of moral principle, and I flatly disagree with it as a matter of legal principle (as did the federal prosecutors--hence the lack of a homicide charge). Tenuous charges of illegal access and "conspiracy" (conspiracy to do what, exactly?) are a stand-in for the homicide charges that a lot of people seem to want, but which could never stick, and that's a good thing. Drew's actions were repulsive, and probably indicate that she had some mental problems of her own, but they weren't criminal. The point of the criminal law is not to prevent people from being miserable bastards to each other--it's there to ensure the bare minimum of conduct for a functional society.
Second, a lot of people seem to want some sort of criminal punishment to be imposed for "cyberbullying." (I'm not even sure what that word means. Not to be indelicate, but I regularly receive e-mails from drug companies intimating that my genitalia are too small. They're consciously trying to make me feel badly about myself so I'll buy their product. Do I have a case? Does the state?) I'd question the judgment of a parent who knowingly allows their child to use a service that puts their personal information in front of literally millions of anonymous strangers. If you're going to do that, though, you can't turn around and cry foul when the use of that service produces negative repercussions; honestly, what did you think was going to happen? I'm troubled by the notion that the charges in this case could be used to encourage people to play nice on MySpace. If there was criminal harassment here, charge Drew with criminal harassment. If not, let her get on with her sad little life.
It means that the gameplay was the important story element in Bioshock.
Which is why the film will suck.
A key underlying theme in Bioshock is the illusion of choice--sort of a meta-commentary on gaming itself as a medium. (*Spoiler warning*) The player is placed in a broad, seemingly very open environment, invited to make choices as he participates in the story. The twist in the plot is where you find out you're really NOT a participant at all, but an automaton performing as you are expected to by outside actors. I really thought this was a rather clever response to Ebert's principal argument against "games as art"--that games as an interactive medium lack authorial control. The Bioshock authors used the interactivity to demonstrate why authorial control is paramount to the way games tell stories.
There's no way to convey this through a film. The passive viewer loses the sense of interactivity and participation that made the game philosophically compelling. I'm sure the movie will look pretty, and I'm sure they'll spend a lot of money on it. I'm also sure it won't be able to add anything to what the game already accomplished.
If it was patented at some point, the patent must surely have expired anyway.
Which is exactly why copyright nets you more protection. Scrabble would have fallen out of patent ages ago. Copyright for a work for hire gets you 120 years of legal protection from the date of creation, as opposed to 20 years for patent. And even if your copyright does come close to expiration, you can always count on some big company to step in and lobby for an extension.
...but why on earth would you want to secure a computer used by a 7-year-old girl against parental scrutiny?
Her brother has to "endure" parental conrol software, which seems reasonable to me. If I had a 7-year-old daughter who secured her computer in such a way as to prevent me from knowing what she was doing with it, I'd take the computer away until she agreed to let me supervise.
Privacy is a great thing in most circumstances, but it's not an absolute good. The world is full of terrible things that a kid that age knows nothing about.
...but isn't theory the whole point of scientific investigation?
Science shouldn't be interested in holding out theory as fact, or absolute truth. Science is all about theoretical understandings based on experimental observations. If at any point the data don't correspond to your theoretical understanding, you junk the theory and start over with the new data. It doesn't seem to me that calling evolution a "theory" should cause any serious scientific mind to blow fuses.
After Newton, we had a theory of gravity and motion that was widely accepted as gospel by the scientific community for two hundred years. It was as much a bedrock understanding in physics as evolution is in biology. Then Einstein came along and the understanding changed. Maybe someday Einstein's theories (and they are properly so called) will also be revised.
So I don't understand the saber rattling that goes on every time someone suggests we call evolution a "theory"--that is, the best understanding we have based on the available information. Anyone who thinks it should be enshrined as anything more than that is guilty of the same rabid attachment to dogma as the Christian fundies.
After reading quite a bit of Vista hate in the last few days, I'll throw in my $.02: I really rather like Vista.
I purchased it (as many people have) pre-installed on a new laptop designed to be Vista compliant. So far, I haven't really had any problems with it. No serious software incompatibilities. No crashes. No horrible slowdown that I couldn't find an explanation for. It found my printer very quickly, and without having to download new drivers. (My parents recently purchased a new iMac, and getting it to talk with their printer was a two day ordeal. And before the catcalling starts, I do not work for Microsoft.) I was a little worried making the laptop purchase because of some of the things I had heard about Vista, but so far there have been no screaming, red-faced moments that have made me want to go back to XP (knock on wood).
Many of the people I know who did hate it (not all, but many) had problems with a new install on pre-existing hardware. Yes, Vista is resource hungry. (I'm running fine on 2 gigs of RAM.) Yes, it's designed (at least in significant part) to move new hardware and drive upgrades. No, I'm not entirely comfortable with that as a business model, but MS is what it is.
I like the interface, and am not terribly bothered by having to verify that yes, I really do want to install whatever program I just popped into the drive. The file management and media libraries are pleasant, and in my view an improvement over previous versions. I'm not trying to downplay the serious trouble other consumers have had with it (perhaps a large majority--hard to know from straw polls on/.), but so far my experience has been generally positive. I can't see that it needs anything in the way of a radical redesign; as other users have observed, it seems at least as stable as XP was at release, if not more so.
Long before WoW brought the graphical MMO into the limelight, text MUDs were doing the same thing with no pictures. They're still around, and in my experience tend to attract far fewer of the people TFA complains of. When the user interface forces you to use words and words only, the kiddies/spambots/racist losers usually get bored very quickly and leave.
Not to say that griefing doesn't happen--it just tends to happen in complete, coherent sentences.:)
The article mentions the MA bill will be patterned on the Utah bill that was booted by that state's legislature in 2006.
If even conservative Utah legislators figured this would run afoul of the 1st Amendment, I'm not sure how this became an issue in Massachusetts.
This sort of bill tries to class violent material with pornography, and approach that has been disallowed by virtually every jurisdiction to have considered the question. The Utah text is even more bizarre, criminalizing the sale or exhibition to minors of anything depicting "inappropriate violence"--a more legally hazy term would be difficult to imagine, and the definitions in the bill did nothing to clarify it. Included in the definition of "inappropriate violence" is "graphic violence used to shock or stimulate." Doesn't this cover pretty much any depiction of violence imaginable? Why is violence depicted, if not to shock or stimulate in some way?
I don't have any real problem restricting the access of minors to this sort of material, but isn't there some way of doing it besides criminalizing the retailers? I mean, I'm sure we can count on responsible parents to step in and...oh, wait...
As a matter of pure critical principle, I tend to agree that there's no real difference between capturing an image from a real life environment and capturing an image from a virtual environment. As far as posting the images to a site goes, it's all just light and pixels.
However, I think the very nature of the business model could answer your question. Flickr holds itself out as a photo-sharing site, geared toward the masses. They want the widest audience possible, including ecstatic grandmothers posting photos of slobbering babies. If such potential posters log on to Flickr for the first time, run a search, and see Quake 4 screencaps interspersed among landscapes and vacation photos, it might be a little off-putting. As has been observed, the screencaps are merely being de-listed, not deleted, allowing Flickr to maintain an initial public impression that it is what it holds itself out to be--a photo-sharing site for the masses.
And how, on a principled or practical basis, could you allow screenshots, but disallow actual photos of movie posters?
First, as has been rightly pointed out in previous debates on this subject, Google is a publicly-traded American corporation. This means it is under a legal obligation to make business decisions that maximize the value of the stock to its shareholders. Pulling out of the world's largest market, even on a matter of principle, is a poor business judgment decision that would likely result in Google getting sued by the stockholders down the line. If there is "evil" here, U.S. corporate law is as much to blame as anyone.
Second, the Chinese government does not care about the First Amendment. Laudable though it might seem to take a stand and protest Chinese censorship by refusing their business, the Chinese brass would likely respond with the Mandarin equivalent of "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" The censorship would continue as before, with only Yahoo and MS raking in huge profits for Chinese search traffic (Yahoo having been notably more cooperative with the People's Republic in quashing dissenting voices than Google ever was).
If Google is really concerned about the democratic privileges of the Chinese people (which incidentally, they don't enjoy--however much Americans may find censorship to be reprehensible, China is a different country, and free speech hasn't been established there), sticking around is one of the best things they could do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google has always been available in China--as Google.com. Google.cn just makes it more language- and user-friendly for the Chinese consumer. Additionally, every time the Chinese engine returns censored results, isn't there a note to the effect that the document has been redacted? This would seem, in my mind, to contribute to a heightened public awareness in China as to just how pervasive the censorship regime is. This will in turn spawn more, not less, dissent, tending more towards democratic reform in the long term.
What do the people of China really gain if Google shuts down? Even redacted information, if freely available, is far better than none if we want to motivate reform. If Google pulled out, it would lose business, subject itself to legal liability, and change nothing in China in the long term. By staying, it allows the Chinese one more tool (however controlled) for obtaining and disseminating information. No barrier is as porous as one that tries to limit the flow of information; the Great Firewall can't last forever. Maybe Google can help pull it down--but not if they leave.
In view of the huge financial incentives studios have to continue releasing repackaged original content ad nauseum, and with no end to this phenomenon in sight given the impending DVD format war, I move for an indefinite moratorium on the use of the term "final edition."
Honestly, are either of these incidents really that different than if Nintendo were to implement nude characters in super mario bros 3 that was unlocked through an a-b-a-b-a-a-a code?
Tried your lousy code. Nothing. Thanks for getting my hopes up.
The complaint "calls for the court to order that Google cease 'advertising, promoting, or distributing' child pornography through its site or otherwise providing any links to such content."
Given the measures Google already has in place to exclude illegal content, it's not really clear what more the complainants want. Do they expect the court to order Google to cease and desist their indexing of web pages, and making them searchable to the general public? It's already unclear (and probably unprovable) how the public has been emotionally damaged enough to warrant monetary compensation--and who that compensation should go to--but a judge is going to have a hard time ordering Google to take measures above and beyond what it already does.
As absurd as the decision may initially seem, the ESRB is certainly in an unenviable position here. They're doing their level best to try and apply some sort of consistent standard to a medium that by its nature doesn't lend itself to consistency. AND they have to do this in light of the lessons learned from Hot Coffee controversy, with all the bad press (to say nothing of the litigation) it engendered. Can you really blame them for altering a rating? Free speech activists and anxious parents have this to distinguish them: anxious (not to say opportunistic) parents are much more likely to sue (and win) over something as apparently trivial as a content indicator. You can complain loud and long about ridiculous double standards, but at the end of the day, the ESRB is sort of a compromise between free speech and the (oft-understandable) parental desire to have at least some pre-purchase indication of what goes on inside a game. This isn't censorship; no one's access to Oblivion is being cut off. As many have pointed out, there was enough violent content to make at least an arguable case for an 'M' rating to begin with.
The real problem here is the ESRB apparently shifting positions every time there's a complaint. If the ratings on the box aren't trustworthy AS OF THE DATE OF RELEASE, and are constantly subject to some sort of bizarre democratic revision every time someone's curious tot downloads a shady mod, then both free speech and parental information are frustrated. The ensuing vicious cycle will lead to more debate, more lawsuits, and less trust than ever in an industry already struggling for legitimacy. If the ESRB doesn't work, then legislators will step in, and we all know where that leads.
The author indeed confuses accessibility with complexity. Products in general (and tech products in particular) may seem simple enough at first blush, but even an apparently simple product has hundreds of man-hours and all sorts of hidden layers behind it. This is especially true of an OS, where the user interface is just the visible tip of an architecturally tangled iceberg. FOSS develops by accretion, without the (admittedly dubious) benefit of a marketing department to push developers towards ease of use for the technically disinclined. It has the added wrinkle, not as rare as we might like, of an elitist minority that equates inexperience with stupidity.
People are willing to learn up to a point, but the non-geek crowd doesn't view the elegance of an operating system on its own merits; they want an OS that will pose the fewest possible obstacles between them and accomplishing the tasks for which they bought the computer for in the first place. Even then, education is a daunting task (as my grandparents, now somewhat Windows-savvy after long weeks of effort, can attest). Not only daunting, but in a business context, costly. Commercial operating systems are geared for this--the nature of the FOSS beast is to cater less to the inexperienced end user than to those who have at least some knowledge of the coded nuts-and-bolts. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does put those who just don't want to put in the time to learn a less visually appealing user interface at something of a disadvantage; most people are visual learners by instinct, and the lack of a GUI can be intimidating.
Though no great Nintendo adherent myself (I tend to prefer a somewhat more durable experience than their titles offer), I have to admire the approach they've taken, especially in recent years, in reopening and reniventing interactive media as a mode of entertainment. Nintendo really was one of the first great innovators in the field, and they have been working hard--both on the technology and marketing ends of the spectrum--to counter what they view as a trend towards gaming being pigeonholed as a niche market, targeting only a wealthy, hardcore elite with a limited range of highly technical genres (FPS, RPGs, etc.)
The DS is one good example. Though not a DS owner, I stand up and take notice when I hear titles like Brain Training being discussed in the media. Nintendo has shown a willingess to gamble to gamble against cost-prohibitive high-end tenchnology (no high-def for the Wii) in favor of--fascinating notion indeed!--fun and universality. Nintendo was one of the first companies to give electronic entertainment a really ecumenical appeal, and they seem to be continuing the trend. The company seems to have a very healthy preoccupation with reducing the number of technical details interposing themselves between the user and the experience; the new controllers are just one example which, if successful, would make for a more intuitive and less intimidating interface.
"Wii" is, I think, just one more whimsical step in this same direction. Its announcement has already generated tremendous discussion in public and private media--when was the last time a single syllable had so many people talking? Granted, much of it has been highly critical commentary in the "what were they THINKING?" vein, but really, given that we're talking about a product that has yet to launch, is there any such thing as negative publicity? One interesting comment I read emphasized how easy Wii is to pronounce, write and remember in any language. Though it does sound fanciful (not to say outright strange) in English, the iconic multicultural appeal of it is hard to dispute. And it's not as if companies thinking up names in their own language have never embarrassed themselves--anyone remember the "Reebok Incubus?"
You might find http://www.gamerdad.com/ useful in that regard. Individual titles are reviewed for content, with an extensive forum that parents can post to seeking information from other community members about the child-friendliness of a prospective purchase.
Reminds me of the lawsuit brought by that grandmother several months back over the whole "Hot Coffee" debacle. She apparently wasn't bothered by her grandson playing a game--clearly marked for the 17 and up crowd--that involved shooting cops and beating crack whores, but the moment she finds out there's a poorly-rendered naughty scene that can be viewed by any child enterprising enough to buy additional hardware and download hacks off the internet, there's grounds to seek a multimillion dollar judgment against Rock Star.
Legislators complaining over ratings inadequacy, opportunistic adults seeking cash awards after the fact rather than reading the letter on the box--the fact is, criticizing the ESRB is a good way to move capital, be it economic or political.
Brass tacks: the ratings do *exactly* what they're designed to do: they give any parent with a modicum of common sense the information needed to make an initial thumbs up/thumbs down call as to the appropriateness of a given title relative to the maturity of their individual child. Grandstanding house reps don't know how mature your child is, nor does the ESRB--that's mom and dad's responsibility. Of course, you don't have to go to Game Stop or the local cineplex to know that common sense isn't a legal prerequisite to having children, but so far neither the courts nor the legislature have done anything to remedy that.
Slashdot Mirror
Not meaning to be pedantic, but I don't think the Bible was "supposed" to be anything. It's a collection of discrete documents with a variety of authors, spread out over a fairly large swath of history. As far as Christianity goes, there weren't even any attempts to put them all in one volume until some four hundred years after the man named Jesus died. Even today, there's only limited consensus as to which documents are part of the Christian canon, and various books have been added or subtracted by various councils, synods, conventions, etc. at various points in time.
I think we can all agree that the charges in this case would never even have been considered if this had been a garden variety case of teens using false user IDs to say nasty things to each other on MySpace. That said, I think criminal case against Drew is a proxy for two separate matters of public concern, both of which I find to be pretty disturbing.
First, this case is really about some sort of public retribution against Drew for her actions. The victim's family want closure, and the public wants blood. Given the conduct involved, this is understandable. However, a lot of the comments to date suggest (or outright assert) that Drew somehow "caused" this suicide through her acts. I question that conclusion as a matter of moral principle, and I flatly disagree with it as a matter of legal principle (as did the federal prosecutors--hence the lack of a homicide charge). Tenuous charges of illegal access and "conspiracy" (conspiracy to do what, exactly?) are a stand-in for the homicide charges that a lot of people seem to want, but which could never stick, and that's a good thing. Drew's actions were repulsive, and probably indicate that she had some mental problems of her own, but they weren't criminal. The point of the criminal law is not to prevent people from being miserable bastards to each other--it's there to ensure the bare minimum of conduct for a functional society.
Second, a lot of people seem to want some sort of criminal punishment to be imposed for "cyberbullying." (I'm not even sure what that word means. Not to be indelicate, but I regularly receive e-mails from drug companies intimating that my genitalia are too small. They're consciously trying to make me feel badly about myself so I'll buy their product. Do I have a case? Does the state?) I'd question the judgment of a parent who knowingly allows their child to use a service that puts their personal information in front of literally millions of anonymous strangers. If you're going to do that, though, you can't turn around and cry foul when the use of that service produces negative repercussions; honestly, what did you think was going to happen? I'm troubled by the notion that the charges in this case could be used to encourage people to play nice on MySpace. If there was criminal harassment here, charge Drew with criminal harassment. If not, let her get on with her sad little life.
It means that the gameplay was the important story element in Bioshock.
Which is why the film will suck.
A key underlying theme in Bioshock is the illusion of choice--sort of a meta-commentary on gaming itself as a medium. (*Spoiler warning*) The player is placed in a broad, seemingly very open environment, invited to make choices as he participates in the story. The twist in the plot is where you find out you're really NOT a participant at all, but an automaton performing as you are expected to by outside actors. I really thought this was a rather clever response to Ebert's principal argument against "games as art"--that games as an interactive medium lack authorial control. The Bioshock authors used the interactivity to demonstrate why authorial control is paramount to the way games tell stories.
There's no way to convey this through a film. The passive viewer loses the sense of interactivity and participation that made the game philosophically compelling. I'm sure the movie will look pretty, and I'm sure they'll spend a lot of money on it. I'm also sure it won't be able to add anything to what the game already accomplished.
Which is exactly why copyright nets you more protection. Scrabble would have fallen out of patent ages ago. Copyright for a work for hire gets you 120 years of legal protection from the date of creation, as opposed to 20 years for patent. And even if your copyright does come close to expiration, you can always count on some big company to step in and lobby for an extension.
...but why on earth would you want to secure a computer used by a 7-year-old girl against parental scrutiny?
Her brother has to "endure" parental conrol software, which seems reasonable to me. If I had a 7-year-old daughter who secured her computer in such a way as to prevent me from knowing what she was doing with it, I'd take the computer away until she agreed to let me supervise.
Privacy is a great thing in most circumstances, but it's not an absolute good. The world is full of terrible things that a kid that age knows nothing about.
...but isn't theory the whole point of scientific investigation?
Science shouldn't be interested in holding out theory as fact, or absolute truth. Science is all about theoretical understandings based on experimental observations. If at any point the data don't correspond to your theoretical understanding, you junk the theory and start over with the new data. It doesn't seem to me that calling evolution a "theory" should cause any serious scientific mind to blow fuses.
After Newton, we had a theory of gravity and motion that was widely accepted as gospel by the scientific community for two hundred years. It was as much a bedrock understanding in physics as evolution is in biology. Then Einstein came along and the understanding changed. Maybe someday Einstein's theories (and they are properly so called) will also be revised.
So I don't understand the saber rattling that goes on every time someone suggests we call evolution a "theory"--that is, the best understanding we have based on the available information. Anyone who thinks it should be enshrined as anything more than that is guilty of the same rabid attachment to dogma as the Christian fundies.
Check out No Country for Old Men. Leave the kids at home, though.
After reading quite a bit of Vista hate in the last few days, I'll throw in my $.02: I really rather like Vista.
/.), but so far my experience has been generally positive. I can't see that it needs anything in the way of a radical redesign; as other users have observed, it seems at least as stable as XP was at release, if not more so.
I purchased it (as many people have) pre-installed on a new laptop designed to be Vista compliant. So far, I haven't really had any problems with it. No serious software incompatibilities. No crashes. No horrible slowdown that I couldn't find an explanation for. It found my printer very quickly, and without having to download new drivers. (My parents recently purchased a new iMac, and getting it to talk with their printer was a two day ordeal. And before the catcalling starts, I do not work for Microsoft.) I was a little worried making the laptop purchase because of some of the things I had heard about Vista, but so far there have been no screaming, red-faced moments that have made me want to go back to XP (knock on wood).
Many of the people I know who did hate it (not all, but many) had problems with a new install on pre-existing hardware. Yes, Vista is resource hungry. (I'm running fine on 2 gigs of RAM.) Yes, it's designed (at least in significant part) to move new hardware and drive upgrades. No, I'm not entirely comfortable with that as a business model, but MS is what it is.
I like the interface, and am not terribly bothered by having to verify that yes, I really do want to install whatever program I just popped into the drive. The file management and media libraries are pleasant, and in my view an improvement over previous versions. I'm not trying to downplay the serious trouble other consumers have had with it (perhaps a large majority--hard to know from straw polls on
Long before WoW brought the graphical MMO into the limelight, text MUDs were doing the same thing with no pictures. They're still around, and in my experience tend to attract far fewer of the people TFA complains of. When the user interface forces you to use words and words only, the kiddies/spambots/racist losers usually get bored very quickly and leave.
Not to say that griefing doesn't happen--it just tends to happen in complete, coherent sentences.:)
The article mentions the MA bill will be patterned on the Utah bill that was booted by that state's legislature in 2006.
If even conservative Utah legislators figured this would run afoul of the 1st Amendment, I'm not sure how this became an issue in Massachusetts.
This sort of bill tries to class violent material with pornography, and approach that has been disallowed by virtually every jurisdiction to have considered the question. The Utah text is even more bizarre, criminalizing the sale or exhibition to minors of anything depicting "inappropriate violence"--a more legally hazy term would be difficult to imagine, and the definitions in the bill did nothing to clarify it. Included in the definition of "inappropriate violence" is "graphic violence used to shock or stimulate." Doesn't this cover pretty much any depiction of violence imaginable? Why is violence depicted, if not to shock or stimulate in some way?
I don't have any real problem restricting the access of minors to this sort of material, but isn't there some way of doing it besides criminalizing the retailers? I mean, I'm sure we can count on responsible parents to step in and...oh, wait...
Those scientists must have fine tweezers and steady hands...
As a matter of pure critical principle, I tend to agree that there's no real difference between capturing an image from a real life environment and capturing an image from a virtual environment. As far as posting the images to a site goes, it's all just light and pixels.
However, I think the very nature of the business model could answer your question. Flickr holds itself out as a photo-sharing site, geared toward the masses. They want the widest audience possible, including ecstatic grandmothers posting photos of slobbering babies. If such potential posters log on to Flickr for the first time, run a search, and see Quake 4 screencaps interspersed among landscapes and vacation photos, it might be a little off-putting. As has been observed, the screencaps are merely being de-listed, not deleted, allowing Flickr to maintain an initial public impression that it is what it holds itself out to be--a photo-sharing site for the masses.
And how, on a principled or practical basis, could you allow screenshots, but disallow actual photos of movie posters?
A few points.
First, as has been rightly pointed out in previous debates on this subject, Google is a publicly-traded American corporation. This means it is under a legal obligation to make business decisions that maximize the value of the stock to its shareholders. Pulling out of the world's largest market, even on a matter of principle, is a poor business judgment decision that would likely result in Google getting sued by the stockholders down the line. If there is "evil" here, U.S. corporate law is as much to blame as anyone.
Second, the Chinese government does not care about the First Amendment. Laudable though it might seem to take a stand and protest Chinese censorship by refusing their business, the Chinese brass would likely respond with the Mandarin equivalent of "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" The censorship would continue as before, with only Yahoo and MS raking in huge profits for Chinese search traffic (Yahoo having been notably more cooperative with the People's Republic in quashing dissenting voices than Google ever was).
If Google is really concerned about the democratic privileges of the Chinese people (which incidentally, they don't enjoy--however much Americans may find censorship to be reprehensible, China is a different country, and free speech hasn't been established there), sticking around is one of the best things they could do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google has always been available in China--as Google.com. Google.cn just makes it more language- and user-friendly for the Chinese consumer. Additionally, every time the Chinese engine returns censored results, isn't there a note to the effect that the document has been redacted? This would seem, in my mind, to contribute to a heightened public awareness in China as to just how pervasive the censorship regime is. This will in turn spawn more, not less, dissent, tending more towards democratic reform in the long term.
What do the people of China really gain if Google shuts down? Even redacted information, if freely available, is far better than none if we want to motivate reform. If Google pulled out, it would lose business, subject itself to legal liability, and change nothing in China in the long term. By staying, it allows the Chinese one more tool (however controlled) for obtaining and disseminating information. No barrier is as porous as one that tries to limit the flow of information; the Great Firewall can't last forever. Maybe Google can help pull it down--but not if they leave.
"On a large pile of money, with many beautiful ladies."
C'mon, these guys figured out a way to get paid to surf MySpace and compile vast amounts of information on (purportedly) attractive women.
Should Slashdotters really be casting stones at them for this?
In view of the huge financial incentives studios have to continue releasing repackaged original content ad nauseum, and with no end to this phenomenon in sight given the impending DVD format war, I move for an indefinite moratorium on the use of the term "final edition."
All in favor?
Do astronomers in the newly discovered galaxies point their telescopes at us and claim credit for the discovery of a "freakishly tall" galaxy?
Honestly, are either of these incidents really that different than if Nintendo were to implement nude characters in super mario bros 3 that was unlocked through an a-b-a-b-a-a-a code?
Tried your lousy code. Nothing. Thanks for getting my hopes up.
The complaint "calls for the court to order that Google cease 'advertising, promoting, or distributing' child pornography through its site or otherwise providing any links to such content."
Given the measures Google already has in place to exclude illegal content, it's not really clear what more the complainants want. Do they expect the court to order Google to cease and desist their indexing of web pages, and making them searchable to the general public? It's already unclear (and probably unprovable) how the public has been emotionally damaged enough to warrant monetary compensation--and who that compensation should go to--but a judge is going to have a hard time ordering Google to take measures above and beyond what it already does.
As absurd as the decision may initially seem, the ESRB is certainly in an unenviable position here. They're doing their level best to try and apply some sort of consistent standard to a medium that by its nature doesn't lend itself to consistency. AND they have to do this in light of the lessons learned from Hot Coffee controversy, with all the bad press (to say nothing of the litigation) it engendered. Can you really blame them for altering a rating? Free speech activists and anxious parents have this to distinguish them: anxious (not to say opportunistic) parents are much more likely to sue (and win) over something as apparently trivial as a content indicator. You can complain loud and long about ridiculous double standards, but at the end of the day, the ESRB is sort of a compromise between free speech and the (oft-understandable) parental desire to have at least some pre-purchase indication of what goes on inside a game. This isn't censorship; no one's access to Oblivion is being cut off. As many have pointed out, there was enough violent content to make at least an arguable case for an 'M' rating to begin with.
The real problem here is the ESRB apparently shifting positions every time there's a complaint. If the ratings on the box aren't trustworthy AS OF THE DATE OF RELEASE, and are constantly subject to some sort of bizarre democratic revision every time someone's curious tot downloads a shady mod, then both free speech and parental information are frustrated. The ensuing vicious cycle will lead to more debate, more lawsuits, and less trust than ever in an industry already struggling for legitimacy. If the ESRB doesn't work, then legislators will step in, and we all know where that leads.
Now all I need is an article explaining how to swipe a laptop.
Ah, but try proving the non-existence of an invisible device...
...although it could use some refinement.
The author indeed confuses accessibility with complexity. Products in general (and tech products in particular) may seem simple enough at first blush, but even an apparently simple product has hundreds of man-hours and all sorts of hidden layers behind it. This is especially true of an OS, where the user interface is just the visible tip of an architecturally tangled iceberg. FOSS develops by accretion, without the (admittedly dubious) benefit of a marketing department to push developers towards ease of use for the technically disinclined. It has the added wrinkle, not as rare as we might like, of an elitist minority that equates inexperience with stupidity.
People are willing to learn up to a point, but the non-geek crowd doesn't view the elegance of an operating system on its own merits; they want an OS that will pose the fewest possible obstacles between them and accomplishing the tasks for which they bought the computer for in the first place. Even then, education is a daunting task (as my grandparents, now somewhat Windows-savvy after long weeks of effort, can attest). Not only daunting, but in a business context, costly. Commercial operating systems are geared for this--the nature of the FOSS beast is to cater less to the inexperienced end user than to those who have at least some knowledge of the coded nuts-and-bolts. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does put those who just don't want to put in the time to learn a less visually appealing user interface at something of a disadvantage; most people are visual learners by instinct, and the lack of a GUI can be intimidating.
Though no great Nintendo adherent myself (I tend to prefer a somewhat more durable experience than their titles offer), I have to admire the approach they've taken, especially in recent years, in reopening and reniventing interactive media as a mode of entertainment. Nintendo really was one of the first great innovators in the field, and they have been working hard--both on the technology and marketing ends of the spectrum--to counter what they view as a trend towards gaming being pigeonholed as a niche market, targeting only a wealthy, hardcore elite with a limited range of highly technical genres (FPS, RPGs, etc.)
The DS is one good example. Though not a DS owner, I stand up and take notice when I hear titles like Brain Training being discussed in the media. Nintendo has shown a willingess to gamble to gamble against cost-prohibitive high-end tenchnology (no high-def for the Wii) in favor of--fascinating notion indeed!--fun and universality. Nintendo was one of the first companies to give electronic entertainment a really ecumenical appeal, and they seem to be continuing the trend. The company seems to have a very healthy preoccupation with reducing the number of technical details interposing themselves between the user and the experience; the new controllers are just one example which, if successful, would make for a more intuitive and less intimidating interface.
"Wii" is, I think, just one more whimsical step in this same direction. Its announcement has already generated tremendous discussion in public and private media--when was the last time a single syllable had so many people talking? Granted, much of it has been highly critical commentary in the "what were they THINKING?" vein, but really, given that we're talking about a product that has yet to launch, is there any such thing as negative publicity? One interesting comment I read emphasized how easy Wii is to pronounce, write and remember in any language. Though it does sound fanciful (not to say outright strange) in English, the iconic multicultural appeal of it is hard to dispute. And it's not as if companies thinking up names in their own language have never embarrassed themselves--anyone remember the "Reebok Incubus?"
You might find http://www.gamerdad.com/ useful in that regard. Individual titles are reviewed for content, with an extensive forum that parents can post to seeking information from other community members about the child-friendliness of a prospective purchase.
Reminds me of the lawsuit brought by that grandmother several months back over the whole "Hot Coffee" debacle. She apparently wasn't bothered by her grandson playing a game--clearly marked for the 17 and up crowd--that involved shooting cops and beating crack whores, but the moment she finds out there's a poorly-rendered naughty scene that can be viewed by any child enterprising enough to buy additional hardware and download hacks off the internet, there's grounds to seek a multimillion dollar judgment against Rock Star.
Legislators complaining over ratings inadequacy, opportunistic adults seeking cash awards after the fact rather than reading the letter on the box--the fact is, criticizing the ESRB is a good way to move capital, be it economic or political.
Brass tacks: the ratings do *exactly* what they're designed to do: they give any parent with a modicum of common sense the information needed to make an initial thumbs up/thumbs down call as to the appropriateness of a given title relative to the maturity of their individual child. Grandstanding house reps don't know how mature your child is, nor does the ESRB--that's mom and dad's responsibility. Of course, you don't have to go to Game Stop or the local cineplex to know that common sense isn't a legal prerequisite to having children, but so far neither the courts nor the legislature have done anything to remedy that.