Apparently “restricting” violent video games from minors violates free speech rights. While I’m all for not selling NC 17 equivelent games to kids over the counter, their parents seem to do most fo the buying. And to truly get an idea of what these restrictions entail, you’d have to take a look at the law itself. “Restricting” is pretty vague, when you get down to it.

I really question who these laws are aimed at protecting. Is it the 16 year old gamer buying GTA3? Somehow, I think that it’s a little late. If the purchaser is too young, their parents should have a fairly good handle on their gaming.. and restrict it if necessary.

It seems that video game “violence” is the next political football to get tossed around.

In what I’d consider an act of sensationalistic journalist Ars has blown a Sony story wee bit out of proportion. Unless they’d like to contest a shop owners right to have his wall painted with grafitti.

While I was right there with them at first.. the little snippit hidden at the bottom stating that Sony was actually paying the building owners to have the logo painted on the side made me wonder why there’s even an article.

The English of this article is a bit wonky. I’m assuming that it means the French .gov is being lobbied to out and out ban free software. While I’m unsure of the details this seems absurd even by American standards. Our IP and copyright law gets a bit out of hand at times but I’ve never heard of anyone in these parts proposing a ban on open source software.

Porn won’t be getting it’s own domain anytime soon. Vint Cerf has delayed the release of the .xxx domain once more, this time citing the need to release a report no one really cares about. It seems that the only the US .gov currently opposes it’s release.

Why the US would oppose the ghetto-izing of porn on the internet is baffeling. With the current administration’s stance on anything deemed to be a threat to America’s Joan Cleaver like existence you’d think they would welcome the chance to relegate anything deemed offensive to it’s own ghetto then restrict access.

It’s almost as if the US .gov is pulling strings with ICANN over the Internet.. but they promised not to, so we know that can’t be it.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin is proposing pay-per-channel cable as solution to all the talk of indecency on television. After all, you can’t complain about what you yourself paid to watch. While I’m certain he’s under the impression this will possibly put the “offensive” stations off the air, I’m pretty sure it’ll have the exact opposite effect.

And of course, cable companies are fighting the move. Anything that would offer lower prices or “choice” will cause our entire social system to collapse into anarchy and worse, higher prices. I still haven’t worked out the paradox in that statement.

David Henderson has a fairly on-the-ball piece up about MIT’s 100$ laptop for poor countries getting mired in a bureaucratic nightmare. He points out that there’s a serious problem with having .gov’s buy the laptops and then distribute them to the people.

Logistics aside, I see another problem there. Unless this is the most splendidly brain-dead easy to use piece of technology ever invented, they’re going to need some training. In many years of reviewing products I have yet to see an advanced system that runs various pieces of software in multiple languages that needs no introduction.

Better distribution methods can be seen in South American countries that offer very low interest loans to purchase computers. That way, people that can use them can buy them without any upfront cash and benefit from them while having a vested interest in keeping the laptop running. And learning how to use it.

Subsidizing the cost and offering them up for whatever the market will bear (even if that’s only a few pennies on the dollar) is good. Punting them all over the globe might not be so hot. We’ll see.

A new device on the market takes advantage of our (humans, that is) hearing degrading as we get older. The Mosquito is pitched so that younger people will be irritated by it’s buzzing but older folks will be unawares.

This might be a bit of age discrimination.. it seems there might be a better solution to loitering. Like playing light classical music. You get the same effect without annoying the odd shopper with acute hearing.

The US government is under the impression that it is doing something to protect the atmosphere from contamination. They were defending not signing up to the Kyoto protocols indirectly by stating they are “doing more than most countries”. Choice quote:

“With regard to what the United States is doing on climate change, the actions we have taken are next to none in the world,”

If you can get a positive meaning out of that, you’ve been in Washington far too long.

What I’ve noticed is that the United States is attempting to curb it’s harm to the atmosphere in spite of the federal governments efforts. Cities and towns around the states are creating their own markets and statutes to curb pollution. Statutes that are largely being fought by the Federal government.

South African billionaire Elon Musk is about to see the maiden voyage of SpaceX’s new rocket. Constructed for a meer (in rocket ship money, anyway) 6.7 million USD, it’s been created to further the goal of cheap space travel.

You might remember SpaceX from the recent competition to launch a commercial manned spacecraft.

Looks like Sony’s insistence on driving in the screws on their customers may be affecting sales. In a recent business week article it’s stated that one of their hotter selling CD’s has been falling rather precipitously from the charts, at least on Amazon.

No toy is safe from the NYPIRG hit list. This year the venerable potatoe based play is being seen as a chokeing hazard.. despite having been available for many years.

Somehow I think parents are bright enough to gauge their childs toy chewing habits and purchas appropriate playthings. These are, after all, parents of children and therefore hopefully older than the children themselves.

And with a grand total of 16 child deaths (I’m assuming in the USA… there aren’t any other countries, right?) from toy related injuries their furvor might be a bit misplaced. Imagine what all that money they raise and spend could do for some, possibly any, other cause.

Apple has obtained a good portion of the music market in total. Offline retailers Borders and Tower Records have been surpassed in sales by iTunes.. and that’s only including the PC user base. Also, the numbers being touted around only include some digital sales and only on Windows making me question their accuracy.

Based on that I’d assume that non-US based digital music sales sites aren’t being covered by this survey. Outfits like AllofMP3.com could make a big difference in overall sales figures.

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