No, it doesn't go both ways, unless perhaps you have evidence of an entire fucking state adopting a liberal slanted curriculum such as you describe?
That's probably because the curriculum is already comfortably biased towards liberalism. I stand behind this bias 100% (when faced with the alternative), but I have no trouble admitting it exists.
For example, separation of church and state? A bias against good ol' fashioned Christian values. We are discriminating against their beliefs that they should be allowed to push their beliefs on our children.
I was going to moderate, but this warranted a reply.
Everyone always says Apple is not a monopoly, but exactly how is this good for the market or people? You don't need to be a monopoly to abuse customers.
That's true, but you need customers to abuse customers. The idea is that if customers feel abused, they can jump ship when they feel like it. But this only works when there is another ship, hence the monopoly restrictions.
If you don't like Apple and their iPad restrictions, then you are perfectly welcome to buy another tablet PC, hopefully from someone who doesn't abuse you. Sure, you may not get Apple's chic shininess, but you will get a comparable product (doubly so with the inevitable flood of copycats on the way).
* You will be put in a position to have to prove innocence instead of being assumed innocent
If the police find a knife at your house, with the blood of the victim, and upon questioning the neighbours, discover that several people saw you carry the bloody knife into the house, then you will be put in exactly the same situation.
Basically, this isn't a reason not to expand the database. Any evidence, that is at all convincing, will force you to prove your innocence, simply because the presumption of innocence has been shattered by evidence (as it should). Your other points, while speculative, are reasonably sound.
See, I think that would be utterly useless. Most politicians would have no trouble doing this. I mean, if a person cares about their privacy, then becoming a politicians is the absolute worst job you could ever apply for. They already have 99% of their life on show for everyone to see, and they aren't generally so stupid as to commit a crime traceable by DNA, so why would they care if their DNA is on file?
I think the only resistance you'd see is from token efforts to cosy up to the pro-privacy crowd ("Hey, we hate DNA databases too!").
You quoted me to the letter, yet somehow, you managed to make your reply have nothing whatsoever to do with my post (or anything that anyone has ever claimed, or ever would claim). Basically, your reply is one huge, laughably mis-aimed, strawman.
Still, that's the rigid standard for +5 insightful comments on slashdot about copyright.
Do you realize how many movies and records from the early days are destroyed forever. There is a crapload of Chicago blues artists and awesome songs that will never be heard again because of Copyright law.
As opposed to without copyright law where the works would be destroyed in exactly the same way, except this time conditional on them existing in the first place?
Copyright (like all property law) doesn't cause greed, despite it's natural association with greed. Just like wagging a dog's tail doesn't make it happy.
You're the one who brought "constant surveillance" into the thread. That's quite a strawman for someone who doesn't want them to be used.
It was a logical extension. If parents can't get external help to enforce their values on their kids outside the home, then in order to enforce those values, they would require something along the lines of constant surveillance. Next time I'll show my working.
[Your argument]
As I said before, I think we agree.
You attacked me as a Slashdot reader by implying that because I post here and you disagree with me that I must operate under some "groupthink". Go ahead and read your posts. You come off sounding like you think you're the only individual on Slashdot. That may not be your intent, but it does read that way.
No, because you post the same sentiment that is posted over, and over, and over again on similar threads, that makes you part of the groupthink. Everyone on slashdot is an individual, with their individual opinions, and individual choices, but somehow, the same crap gets spouted over and over and over again. It's natural that certain opinions will rise dominant in any such collection of individuals. It's not particularly healthy, but it's natural. I would just hope that the individuals of slashdot would choose to be more open-minded about newer, more sensible opinions. Many people, on many topics, are open-minded; I have experienced this first hand. Others, on certain topics, seem to be completely incapable of seeing the logic in anything other than what's in the/. groupthink. And the fact that they, and many people around them, agree with them on that topic, is sufficient to dismiss other opinions, for example, in the form of a flamebait or troll mod.
Anyway, that's my groupthink rant. Now, for you specifically. As harsh as it may be, you lost points for propagating the groupthink fallacy that parents who support censorship are lazy. You would lose points for propagating that fallacy, part of the groupthink or not. However, if it weren't part of the groupthink, it would not fly. It would not make it to +5 Informative, and I would not make it to -5 Flamebait for contradicting you. It is your responsibility to check your own opinions for fallacies. Consider it the/.er's equivalent to parental responsibility.
I too agree with the/. groupthink on plenty of issues (and thus, I am part of it). In fact, I agree on this issue; R18+ games should not be banned! What separates me from those I criticise (AFAICT) is the fact that I frequently and fairly thoroughly check my opinions for fallacies, and I attempt to resolve them (or be open about their existence). I'm certainly not the only one (again from first-hand experience), but some people are certainly worse at it than others.
It's possible for kids to play games at other kids' houses, yeah. I think most of us did something at some point as kids over at a friend's house we weren't supposed to do at home. Kids will always do that, and parents will always try and often fail to keep track of standards set by the parents of the other kids. That still doesn't mean adults should be banned from playing adult-only rated games.
I agree (see my other post).
There is no strawman. The actual complaint about no 18+ games is that there is a valid 18+ market that cannot buy the games because the government won't allow them to be sold. I didn't say that was or wasn't your position, so I'm not even sure how you can try to call it a strawman. Here's a definition of "straw man" for you. I'm not telling you what your position is. I'm pointing out the complaint of many Australians that I have read over and over online.
You aren't telling me my position, that's true. You are, however, telling the specific group of parents and other censors what their position is, in the wider debate. I have played (here in Australia) many, many games which are not at all appropriate for "young teens". I suppose it was a little harsh of me to call "strawman" over that (I'm feeling a little defensive at the moment), but technically, all they're doing is banning the most adult of the adult games. It's not like every piece of software on sale in Australia is appropriate for 13-year-olds.
It's only a strawman if it misrepresents the argument of your opponent in the debate. I think you need to study up on your fallacies.
Right. And I suppose "It's too hard to parent children; let the government do it" is said often by parents.
I suppose by your definition, it wasn't technically a strawman, since this was never a debate. It more resembles gossip behind someone's back than an actual debate.
You're attacking Slashdot readers
Am I? That's news to me. And here's me thinking I was attacking the/. groupthink. Silly me.
Real parents who really care about their kids can get busy or lazy. Parents are real people. Parents who are picky enough about their kids playing violent or sexually charged video games shouldn't make excuses when they get too busy or too lazy, though, if there's a clear label on the merchandise. You can't keep kids safe by making everything in the world safe for kids. You need to keep the kids away from things that are unsafe for them.
OK, consider the situation here. No parent can control their kid absolutely. They have a reasonable degree of control in the home, but out in the world, when the kid is at school, at friend's house, or perhaps at a camp of some sort, the parents have very little control over what happens to their child, or what they're exposed to. No matter how much they free their schedules or pull their finger out, no matter how many labels they read, they can't rectify this situation.
Now, you say, correctly, that parents can't make the world safe for their kids. However, this is yet another (very popular) strawman. These parents don't want to make the world safe (which is impossible), they want to make the world safer (which is possible). With a ban on trading of violent games, the probability of an average child stumbling across a violent game becomes negligible.
It is not constructive to argue against this truth with strawmen and scapegoats. Rather, debate should be focussed on finding constructive solutions for parents' problems, and arguing that the value system of a certain group of parents, in a free country, should not dictate what all consenting adults want to buy and enjoy.
As I said earlier, I do not support this system, but at the same time, I am disgusted by how the debate is carried out, especially here on/.
It's about parents who don't want to keep track of their kids lives, not just what they bring home. It's all well and good banning adult games in the house, but it's another preventing their encounter in the real world. "Labelling" doesn't prevent this.
Now, agree or not, no matter what your personal opinions about a parent's duty, "labelling" does little to help this particular situation, but a nationwide ban does.
Adults play an ever-increasing share of video games by both title count and by hours played. They shouldn't be limited by fear mongering to playing games appropriate to young teens.
And your strawman (men?) are these supposed parents who don't want to parent their children. The rare minority of real parents who don't want to parent their children generally don't give a flying fuck about protecting them from offensive materials. The giving of that flying fuck would contradict their disinclination to parent their children!
But hey, it's only a strawman if it contradicts the/. groupthink, right?
Yes, they are. But I'm actually talking about real parents, not these strawman inventions that you people seem to stereotyping parents as. You know, parents who do spend time with their children, who do teach them why something is wrong, but who still have a lot of trouble with the concept of 24 hour surveillance of their children.
OK, the parents you mention do exist, but they are a minority. Most parents in favour of this system are not just the lazy people you want them to be.
a few lazy parents who don't want to keep track of what their kids bring home for themselves
Yes, I'm sure those parents are such bad, lazy parents, that they can't be bothered to/don't want to keep their kids under constant surveillance, and verify that they never play such games. What awful parents! This is their parental responsibility! How apathetic of them to ask for help from the government!
I'm not in favour of the system we have now, but fuck, this scapegoating has to stop!
Yeah, but Apple is more than a hardware manufacturer. They also create and maintain platforms, and in that capacity, they have every right to act like dicks. So long as they are open and transparent about their decision to close their platform and make the development approval process completely opaque, then basically, it's their platform.
Pigeon-holing them as a hardware manufacturer is both false and pointless.
You're the lunatic who thinks that politicians who are lawyers will go out of their way to pass laws to piss off lawyers
That's not what I said. That's certainly not what I meant. It's one thing to not favour lawyers. It's a completely different thing to go out of your way to piss them off. Both are completely different again to what the OP said (which is what I was responding to) that politicians favour lawyers. The implied conspiracy in that is better, for the OP, left inexplicitly stated, because, like most conspiracy theories, it doesn't hold up to most scrutiny.
But, as you say, they don't need to do anything. You say it's because it favours the lawyers, they say it's because they want the legal system to be flexible enough to allow justice to actually be facilitated. I don't see nearly enough evidence to rule out their version, nor do I see enough to support yours. As far as I can tell, the legal system is a mess of good intentions, misguided attempts, necessary evils, and not particularly much corruption/malice built into the design (there is, presumably, corruption in some of the people who run it).
So, yes, you say there's nothing they need to do in order to favour lawyers. This was not what the OP was saying. He was saying that lawyers run the country, that they are tyrants, strongly implying that they were conspiring to make everyone guilty so they could rule them. The OP was talking about some active favouring of lawyers.
That was the OP. Now you decided to point out that Obama and Biden were lawyers. Interesting. Is that fact particularly relevant to this stance of yours? If Obadman is supporting lawyers passively, if you're not claiming that they're doing what they're doing for lawyers, then why bring it up? I think the answer is (although I have no proof) that you actually do believe that Obadman is supporting the lawyers, actively.
See, it's a problem for me here, as it always is arguing with you paranoid types, is that you rarely ever actually come out with an accusation. And if you do, it's nothing solid or verifiable. That puts me at an incredible disadvantage, especially when so many people here on/. feel the same way, even though their "knowledge" is based primarily on other people's paranoia and chinese whispers. Suddenly, all these half-baked vague accusations become/. fact, because everybody agrees.
But yeah, chalk it up to the "busy schedules" of the "crab people congressmen" or whatever crazy conception you have for how congress works.
Perhaps you're right. Perhaps they just screw with the public for the fun of it. Maybe the moon landing was a conspiracy, and maybe the crab people have taken over Washington.
Whatever. This discussion was never particularly interesting.
OK, let's examine just how absurd your position really is. If it weren't for the sheer number of fellow citizens who are so eager to think like you (which would be evidence enough that you're wrong), your opinion would be laughable.
This apathetic American... largely a myth designed to explain why people don't care about $PERSONAL_BUGBEAR. The truth is that everyone is apathetic to a great number of issues, but the reason is not necessarily because they're lazy, but because they genuinely don't think it's a problem. Some are more apathetic to the government than others, but that's because the government is actually providing what they expect from society: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness. "Apathetic" people are the sign that people are happy with what you're doing, i.e. you're doing something right.
Now, back to the lawyers, my point was that the OP's comment makes no sense, unless you assume some kind of collusion between politicians and lawyers. Voters being apathetic or not is actually not an integral part of my argument. If Obadman is favouring lawyers, there needs to be some kind of incentive to do so. When you have as busy a schedule as many politicians do, you don't just pass possibly alienating bills for shits and giggles.
Slashdot Mirror
That's probably because the curriculum is already comfortably biased towards liberalism. I stand behind this bias 100% (when faced with the alternative), but I have no trouble admitting it exists.
For example, separation of church and state? A bias against good ol' fashioned Christian values. We are discriminating against their beliefs that they should be allowed to push their beliefs on our children.
If women open-sourced their biology, any geek could have any woman they wanted, as many times as they wanted!
And if you're worried about STDs, just compare Windows to Linux. Which has the most infections?
I was going to moderate, but this warranted a reply.
That's true, but you need customers to abuse customers. The idea is that if customers feel abused, they can jump ship when they feel like it. But this only works when there is another ship, hence the monopoly restrictions.
If you don't like Apple and their iPad restrictions, then you are perfectly welcome to buy another tablet PC, hopefully from someone who doesn't abuse you. Sure, you may not get Apple's chic shininess, but you will get a comparable product (doubly so with the inevitable flood of copycats on the way).
If the police find a knife at your house, with the blood of the victim, and upon questioning the neighbours, discover that several people saw you carry the bloody knife into the house, then you will be put in exactly the same situation.
Basically, this isn't a reason not to expand the database. Any evidence, that is at all convincing, will force you to prove your innocence, simply because the presumption of innocence has been shattered by evidence (as it should). Your other points, while speculative, are reasonably sound.
See, I think that would be utterly useless. Most politicians would have no trouble doing this. I mean, if a person cares about their privacy, then becoming a politicians is the absolute worst job you could ever apply for. They already have 99% of their life on show for everyone to see, and they aren't generally so stupid as to commit a crime traceable by DNA, so why would they care if their DNA is on file?
I think the only resistance you'd see is from token efforts to cosy up to the pro-privacy crowd ("Hey, we hate DNA databases too!").
You quoted me to the letter, yet somehow, you managed to make your reply have nothing whatsoever to do with my post (or anything that anyone has ever claimed, or ever would claim). Basically, your reply is one huge, laughably mis-aimed, strawman.
Still, that's the rigid standard for +5 insightful comments on slashdot about copyright.
As opposed to without copyright law where the works would be destroyed in exactly the same way, except this time conditional on them existing in the first place?
Copyright (like all property law) doesn't cause greed, despite it's natural association with greed. Just like wagging a dog's tail doesn't make it happy.
You don't want to incite a public orgy, do you!? There might be children in the room!
Oh noes!
It was a logical extension. If parents can't get external help to enforce their values on their kids outside the home, then in order to enforce those values, they would require something along the lines of constant surveillance. Next time I'll show my working.
As I said before, I think we agree.
No, because you post the same sentiment that is posted over, and over, and over again on similar threads, that makes you part of the groupthink. Everyone on slashdot is an individual, with their individual opinions, and individual choices, but somehow, the same crap gets spouted over and over and over again. It's natural that certain opinions will rise dominant in any such collection of individuals. It's not particularly healthy, but it's natural. I would just hope that the individuals of slashdot would choose to be more open-minded about newer, more sensible opinions. Many people, on many topics, are open-minded; I have experienced this first hand. Others, on certain topics, seem to be completely incapable of seeing the logic in anything other than what's in the /. groupthink. And the fact that they, and many people around them, agree with them on that topic, is sufficient to dismiss other opinions, for example, in the form of a flamebait or troll mod.
Anyway, that's my groupthink rant. Now, for you specifically. As harsh as it may be, you lost points for propagating the groupthink fallacy that parents who support censorship are lazy. You would lose points for propagating that fallacy, part of the groupthink or not. However, if it weren't part of the groupthink, it would not fly. It would not make it to +5 Informative, and I would not make it to -5 Flamebait for contradicting you. It is your responsibility to check your own opinions for fallacies. Consider it the /.er's equivalent to parental responsibility.
I too agree with the /. groupthink on plenty of issues (and thus, I am part of it). In fact, I agree on this issue; R18+ games should not be banned! What separates me from those I criticise (AFAICT) is the fact that I frequently and fairly thoroughly check my opinions for fallacies, and I attempt to resolve them (or be open about their existence). I'm certainly not the only one (again from first-hand experience), but some people are certainly worse at it than others.
I agree (see my other post).
You aren't telling me my position, that's true. You are, however, telling the specific group of parents and other censors what their position is, in the wider debate. I have played (here in Australia) many, many games which are not at all appropriate for "young teens". I suppose it was a little harsh of me to call "strawman" over that (I'm feeling a little defensive at the moment), but technically, all they're doing is banning the most adult of the adult games. It's not like every piece of software on sale in Australia is appropriate for 13-year-olds.
Right. And I suppose "It's too hard to parent children; let the government do it" is said often by parents.
I suppose by your definition, it wasn't technically a strawman, since this was never a debate. It more resembles gossip behind someone's back than an actual debate.
Am I? That's news to me. And here's me thinking I was attacking the /. groupthink. Silly me.
OK, consider the situation here. No parent can control their kid absolutely. They have a reasonable degree of control in the home, but out in the world, when the kid is at school, at friend's house, or perhaps at a camp of some sort, the parents have very little control over what happens to their child, or what they're exposed to. No matter how much they free their schedules or pull their finger out, no matter how many labels they read, they can't rectify this situation.
Now, you say, correctly, that parents can't make the world safe for their kids. However, this is yet another (very popular) strawman. These parents don't want to make the world safe (which is impossible), they want to make the world safer (which is possible). With a ban on trading of violent games, the probability of an average child stumbling across a violent game becomes negligible.
It is not constructive to argue against this truth with strawmen and scapegoats. Rather, debate should be focussed on finding constructive solutions for parents' problems, and arguing that the value system of a certain group of parents, in a free country, should not dictate what all consenting adults want to buy and enjoy.
As I said earlier, I do not support this system, but at the same time, I am disgusted by how the debate is carried out, especially here on /.
It's about parents who don't want to keep track of their kids lives, not just what they bring home. It's all well and good banning adult games in the house, but it's another preventing their encounter in the real world. "Labelling" doesn't prevent this.
Now, agree or not, no matter what your personal opinions about a parent's duty, "labelling" does little to help this particular situation, but a nationwide ban does.
Oh man, you just pile on the strawmen don't you?
And your strawman (men?) are these supposed parents who don't want to parent their children. The rare minority of real parents who don't want to parent their children generally don't give a flying fuck about protecting them from offensive materials. The giving of that flying fuck would contradict their disinclination to parent their children!
But hey, it's only a strawman if it contradicts the /. groupthink, right?
Oh you're so manly! Japanese kiddie software? Wow! You must have a really large penis!
I wholeheartedly agree, but it is a matter of opinion. That's my point.
Yes, they are. But I'm actually talking about real parents, not these strawman inventions that you people seem to stereotyping parents as. You know, parents who do spend time with their children, who do teach them why something is wrong, but who still have a lot of trouble with the concept of 24 hour surveillance of their children.
OK, the parents you mention do exist, but they are a minority. Most parents in favour of this system are not just the lazy people you want them to be.
Lol!
Yes, I'm sure those parents are such bad, lazy parents, that they can't be bothered to/don't want to keep their kids under constant surveillance, and verify that they never play such games. What awful parents! This is their parental responsibility! How apathetic of them to ask for help from the government!
I'm not in favour of the system we have now, but fuck, this scapegoating has to stop!
What did you expect? We were caught with our pants down.
why is it rude?
Yeah, but Apple is more than a hardware manufacturer. They also create and maintain platforms, and in that capacity, they have every right to act like dicks. So long as they are open and transparent about their decision to close their platform and make the development approval process completely opaque, then basically, it's their platform.
Pigeon-holing them as a hardware manufacturer is both false and pointless.
That's not what I said. That's certainly not what I meant. It's one thing to not favour lawyers. It's a completely different thing to go out of your way to piss them off. Both are completely different again to what the OP said (which is what I was responding to) that politicians favour lawyers. The implied conspiracy in that is better, for the OP, left inexplicitly stated, because, like most conspiracy theories, it doesn't hold up to most scrutiny.
But, as you say, they don't need to do anything. You say it's because it favours the lawyers, they say it's because they want the legal system to be flexible enough to allow justice to actually be facilitated. I don't see nearly enough evidence to rule out their version, nor do I see enough to support yours. As far as I can tell, the legal system is a mess of good intentions, misguided attempts, necessary evils, and not particularly much corruption/malice built into the design (there is, presumably, corruption in some of the people who run it).
So, yes, you say there's nothing they need to do in order to favour lawyers. This was not what the OP was saying. He was saying that lawyers run the country, that they are tyrants, strongly implying that they were conspiring to make everyone guilty so they could rule them. The OP was talking about some active favouring of lawyers.
That was the OP. Now you decided to point out that Obama and Biden were lawyers. Interesting. Is that fact particularly relevant to this stance of yours? If Obadman is supporting lawyers passively, if you're not claiming that they're doing what they're doing for lawyers, then why bring it up? I think the answer is (although I have no proof) that you actually do believe that Obadman is supporting the lawyers, actively.
See, it's a problem for me here, as it always is arguing with you paranoid types, is that you rarely ever actually come out with an accusation. And if you do, it's nothing solid or verifiable. That puts me at an incredible disadvantage, especially when so many people here on /. feel the same way, even though their "knowledge" is based primarily on other people's paranoia and chinese whispers. Suddenly, all these half-baked vague accusations become /. fact, because everybody agrees.
Hahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahaha! Whoosh!
Perhaps you're right. Perhaps they just screw with the public for the fun of it. Maybe the moon landing was a conspiracy, and maybe the crab people have taken over Washington.
Whatever. This discussion was never particularly interesting.
OK, let's examine just how absurd your position really is. If it weren't for the sheer number of fellow citizens who are so eager to think like you (which would be evidence enough that you're wrong), your opinion would be laughable.
This apathetic American... largely a myth designed to explain why people don't care about $PERSONAL_BUGBEAR. The truth is that everyone is apathetic to a great number of issues, but the reason is not necessarily because they're lazy, but because they genuinely don't think it's a problem. Some are more apathetic to the government than others, but that's because the government is actually providing what they expect from society: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness. "Apathetic" people are the sign that people are happy with what you're doing, i.e. you're doing something right.
Now, back to the lawyers, my point was that the OP's comment makes no sense, unless you assume some kind of collusion between politicians and lawyers. Voters being apathetic or not is actually not an integral part of my argument. If Obadman is favouring lawyers, there needs to be some kind of incentive to do so. When you have as busy a schedule as many politicians do, you don't just pass possibly alienating bills for shits and giggles.