I have been wandering the wastelands of videogamedom for some time now patiently waiting for something deeper than the typical D&D clones and variations on the theme of first person shooters. My favorite types of games tend to be strategy games that have to do with resource management. But even those are progressing at a snails pace.
I adored Dwarf Fortress, at least for a while, until Toady made it absolutely clear that he is not going to outsource anything, isn't going to move to an open source business model and just in general is going to leave the game in perpetual alpha for the foreseeable future. And I can't blame him. Apparently people are paying him upwards of 50k a year to do so.
My complaint is simply this - the reliance of the entire video game industry on relatively shallow and formulaic variations on the same theme, all of which feature violence prevalently, is at least partly to blame for the constant media attention (ironic isn't it) on media violence.
Bottom line, society is not stupid, and as fun as it is to pretend, neither are the vast majority of politicians. There is an underlying reason why this tactic keeps climbing back out of the bag. It works as a deflection tactic because people are aware of this focus on mindless violence in a lot of video games.
I've been doing a horrible job at this, but one of my primary interests in IP law is the concept that IP law, from its inception, is more about retarding technology than promoting it.
Its original purpose appears to have been to draw talent from other regions, often times other nations, and set that person up with a monopoly in order to create "brain drain" as we now know it from the region the person came from originally.
This concept of a "war on technology" is right down my alley, and I am sorry but I haven't got a lot of information gathered yet. Indeed, my current reading projects all have little or nothing to do with it... But I still would be interested to see if anyone else is aware of this idea that IP is actually more about centralized control, and what if any documentation there is to support the idea.
I'm pretty sure the common law method of dealing with theft was returning the goods or their value plus some amount of money over that for time and trouble. The fact that we just jail everyone for everything is a huge piece of the puzzle if your question is, "Why is our criminal justice system so broken?"
Yes. Theft is theft. Congratulations. That doesn't mean we need people to go to jail.
Constantly lost in all the kerfuffle is that there was no theft here, but that's supposedly an entirely different matter. It wouldn't be if theft were treated like theft, and not the exact same as assault, for example.
Currently we have a private monopoly on the infrastructure which leaves no competition for the service.
With a public infrastructure, people compete for the business of providing the service. It's the same general principle as having public roads, and different trucking companies competing for the shipping business.
Of course, there are downsides as well. That's why I am asking for different input. I'm especially leery of technological government ownership because I am not sure why anyone would work on improving it then, and there is definitely a hardware aspect to better service here. Or well, in my opinion.
Thus the discussion of artificial caps................................................................................................ ..............................
Apparently, all this supply and demand stuff has been garbage almost since its inception.
We didn't have online backup, but rather shortly we had peer to peer, which benefits just as much from upload speeds matching download speeds. They attacked that despite no intrinsic fault, and indeed despite the fact that it distributes cost and eliminates single points of failure in a dramatically superior way to "cloud services", precisely because they knew they could not make a heck of a lot of money on people doing it all themselves on their home computers.
I am old enough to remember people complaining about this almost from the get go. It wasn't an accident.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Should the infrastructure be a public service? What are the risks of a lack of innovation in the matter of transmitting signal if that is done? Are there any?
What I mean is, if the infrastructure is a public service, what incentive is there to improve it, do research toward better infrastructure, etc? Or is there a regulatory regime that can help mitigate this?
I like the sound of this, but its kind of inescapable that SOMEONE somewhere has to lay the cable, and that group is going to want the lion's share of the profits from said cable.
Is this something that should be a public service, like roads? Or what exactly is your proposed set of regulations to do away with?
I have to admit to a great lack of information in this area.
I was actually not aware that this claim was totally bogus, and am left more concerned than ever that the "cloud" is really nothing but the centralized response to the continued harassment of peer to peer technology that lets people just share information and services on the net without recourse to large corporate based services.
I have always been miffed at the upload cap, as it is the primary reason a good web site needs to be hosted anywhere other than in your home and maybe a friend's house for backup.
No, seriously. I've been against the plea bargain system for a while now, though it has never worked it way this close to the top of issues I am concerned about before. Times past, I have tended to believe in some vague sense of propriety among folk that would tend to prevent abuses. More and more I am seeing us as a nation seeming to toddle off into the direction of rank immorality and indifference to injustice.
Swartz was a Wikileaks source for what? I imagine in his own mind Assange is making the connection thinking he is outing the government without realizing that in the U.S. he makes Swartz look bad to a lot of people by association, but unless someone comes up with something that Swartz leaked, and that something is important, there's no substantive change here.
I'm not seeing your stats add up. Is there a stat somewhere out there you are referencing that includes both NRA and ACLU?
As far as your claim that no one will ever take up arms for the good guys, what do you call the Union troops in the Civil War? Are you aware of how much of the labor movement was backed, in this country, with guerrilla warfare? Companies hired Pinkertons to bully workers, ordered assassination attempts at specific union leaders.
Some of your "examples" are issues still highly contentious. "War on drugs." I am against it, but I am not ignorant of the reasons for it either. People get sick of drug abusers behaving badly. They think to prevent it by banning the drugs without much thought to other solutions. Even after years of the policies failure, apparently many people still are just that angry at drug users, and I for my part am a little mystified as to why people don't just stop using. I mean... yes on the one hand it is idiotic to criminalize pot. On the other hand, I don't have a huge hard time not smoking it either...
So it seems to me you are painting a very one sided picture in order to make the right to bear arms, coupled with the demand the Constitution makes that the armed forces in general be made up mostly of volunteer militia, to seem to be an instrument of injustice. The problem is the only solution to the injustices you point out is to never pay any attention to what most people want.
That's just not acceptable. When you want MOST people to be stripped of rights so a FEW people can have them, you have crossed the line over into Fascism.
Hitler had no idea he was "evil". There may come a time when people finally realize it was not Hitler, but all of Germany, that gave rise to the Third Reich. They may even eventually understand that it was all the rest of the world that set the stage for its rise.
I have to admit that part never gelled in my mind, despite the fact that I do not believe it makes much of an argument for defending the government's behavior in this case.
"why overall violent crime has dropped in the period that videogames have gained mainstream popularity, and why other countries have significantly lower gun crime rates despite the same titles being popular there."
Only if you ignore the underlying argument in favor of personal attack.
Firstly, cars are NOT as useful to society as a well ordered mass transit system would be. This would cut down on a whole panoply of maladies, not the least of which would be traffic fatalaties.
Secondly, the utility of a gun is specifically as an instrument of death. It is mentioned in the Constitution precisely because of what it is designed to do. It is there along with Article I Section 8 of the Constitution to order our institutions of enforcement and warfare such that they cannot be turned against us. This utility is far from being less important than getting from point a to point b.
On the post: Ralph Nader Makes First Serious Bid For 'Crazy Old Man' Position; Refers To Video Games As 'Electronic Child Molestors'
P.S.
Anyone?
The industry community orientation.
On the post: Ralph Nader Makes First Serious Bid For 'Crazy Old Man' Position; Refers To Video Games As 'Electronic Child Molestors'
Voice in the Wilderness
I adored Dwarf Fortress, at least for a while, until Toady made it absolutely clear that he is not going to outsource anything, isn't going to move to an open source business model and just in general is going to leave the game in perpetual alpha for the foreseeable future. And I can't blame him. Apparently people are paying him upwards of 50k a year to do so.
My complaint is simply this - the reliance of the entire video game industry on relatively shallow and formulaic variations on the same theme, all of which feature violence prevalently, is at least partly to blame for the constant media attention (ironic isn't it) on media violence.
Bottom line, society is not stupid, and as fun as it is to pretend, neither are the vast majority of politicians. There is an underlying reason why this tactic keeps climbing back out of the bag. It works as a deflection tactic because people are aware of this focus on mindless violence in a lot of video games.
On the post: The War On Computing: What Happens When Authorities Don't Understand Technology
Asleep at the Wheel
Its original purpose appears to have been to draw talent from other regions, often times other nations, and set that person up with a monopoly in order to create "brain drain" as we now know it from the region the person came from originally.
This concept of a "war on technology" is right down my alley, and I am sorry but I haven't got a lot of information gathered yet. Indeed, my current reading projects all have little or nothing to do with it... But I still would be interested to see if anyone else is aware of this idea that IP is actually more about centralized control, and what if any documentation there is to support the idea.
On the post: Retired Federal Judge Criticizes Carmen Ortiz's Handling Of Aaron Swartz Case
Stealing is Stealing
Yes. Theft is theft. Congratulations. That doesn't mean we need people to go to jail.
Constantly lost in all the kerfuffle is that there was no theft here, but that's supposedly an entirely different matter. It wouldn't be if theft were treated like theft, and not the exact same as assault, for example.
On the post: Dish Turns CBS' Actions Against It; Touts Its Revoked 'Best In Show' Status With A Damning Footnote
Hee hee
I love that line.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re: Re: Re: Re:
With a public infrastructure, people compete for the business of providing the service. It's the same general principle as having public roads, and different trucking companies competing for the shipping business.
Of course, there are downsides as well. That's why I am asking for different input. I'm especially leery of technological government ownership because I am not sure why anyone would work on improving it then, and there is definitely a hardware aspect to better service here. Or well, in my opinion.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Apparently, all this supply and demand stuff has been garbage almost since its inception.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I am old enough to remember people complaining about this almost from the get go. It wasn't an accident.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re:
What I mean is, if the infrastructure is a public service, what incentive is there to improve it, do research toward better infrastructure, etc? Or is there a regulatory regime that can help mitigate this?
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re:
Is this something that should be a public service, like roads? Or what exactly is your proposed set of regulations to do away with?
I have to admit to a great lack of information in this area.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re: Eastern Europe
http://www.adamo.es/en/blog/adamo-brings-100-mb-internet-via-ftth-to-10-000-homes-in-lleid a/
Symmetrical. Out government and our business leaders are getting rich off of us by doing crappy work and creating laws against improvement.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Is there some documentation anywhere on this? For the lazy such as myself? I just googled but help is always appreciated.
On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
Total Internet Solution
I have always been miffed at the upload cap, as it is the primary reason a good web site needs to be hosted anywhere other than in your home and maybe a friend's house for backup.
On the post: Aaron Swartz's Death Leads To Public Attention Towards Prosecutorial Overreach
Re: Root Issue
"Stop Plea Bargains!"
No, seriously. I've been against the plea bargain system for a while now, though it has never worked it way this close to the top of issues I am concerned about before. Times past, I have tended to believe in some vague sense of propriety among folk that would tend to prevent abuses. More and more I am seeing us as a nation seeming to toddle off into the direction of rank immorality and indifference to injustice.
On the post: Aaron Swartz's Death Leads To Public Attention Towards Prosecutorial Overreach
Re: hippies on a witch hunt
http://laboratorium.net/archive/2013/01/16/my_career_as_a_bulk_downloader
On the post: WikiLeaks Reveals Aaron Swartz May Have Been A Source: Wise Move?
Meh
On the post: Obama Tasks CDC With Study Of Video Games And 'Violent Media'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What will they find??
As far as your claim that no one will ever take up arms for the good guys, what do you call the Union troops in the Civil War? Are you aware of how much of the labor movement was backed, in this country, with guerrilla warfare? Companies hired Pinkertons to bully workers, ordered assassination attempts at specific union leaders.
Some of your "examples" are issues still highly contentious. "War on drugs." I am against it, but I am not ignorant of the reasons for it either. People get sick of drug abusers behaving badly. They think to prevent it by banning the drugs without much thought to other solutions. Even after years of the policies failure, apparently many people still are just that angry at drug users, and I for my part am a little mystified as to why people don't just stop using. I mean... yes on the one hand it is idiotic to criminalize pot. On the other hand, I don't have a huge hard time not smoking it either...
So it seems to me you are painting a very one sided picture in order to make the right to bear arms, coupled with the demand the Constitution makes that the armed forces in general be made up mostly of volunteer militia, to seem to be an instrument of injustice. The problem is the only solution to the injustices you point out is to never pay any attention to what most people want.
That's just not acceptable. When you want MOST people to be stripped of rights so a FEW people can have them, you have crossed the line over into Fascism.
Hitler had no idea he was "evil". There may come a time when people finally realize it was not Hitler, but all of Germany, that gave rise to the Third Reich. They may even eventually understand that it was all the rest of the world that set the stage for its rise.
On the post: Aaron Swartz's Death Leads To Public Attention Towards Prosecutorial Overreach
Curious
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully
I have to admit that part never gelled in my mind, despite the fact that I do not believe it makes much of an argument for defending the government's behavior in this case.
On the post: Obama Tasks CDC With Study Of Video Games And 'Violent Media'
Niiiiice
Quoted for truth, as they say.
On the post: Obama Tasks CDC With Study Of Video Games And 'Violent Media'
Re: Re: What will they find??
Firstly, cars are NOT as useful to society as a well ordered mass transit system would be. This would cut down on a whole panoply of maladies, not the least of which would be traffic fatalaties.
Secondly, the utility of a gun is specifically as an instrument of death. It is mentioned in the Constitution precisely because of what it is designed to do. It is there along with Article I Section 8 of the Constitution to order our institutions of enforcement and warfare such that they cannot be turned against us. This utility is far from being less important than getting from point a to point b.
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