All this talk in this thread and others about "compatibility and driver issues," and "consoles just work" and the like are all lunacy.

If your PC stops running the games you buy now more than two years from now, you're seriously doing something wrong with your PC! And if you're referring to playing new games on a 2 year+ old system, you're doing something even more wrong - buying old parts for twice as much or more as they're worth in belief they're modern. In some of Apple's desktops, this is often enough the case. :rolls eyes:

If you looked over the specs for parts, and spent a good half hour planning out your decision (probably something everyone should do when making a purchase of a few hundred dollars or more) you wouldn't get these issues. Hardware/software incompatibilities happen with upgrades, but they're usually infrequent, and even more frequently easy to fix and easy to avoid beforehand with just a little planning.

The ability to 'just buy the game...and get playing...' exists for PCs as well. Building your own system is *simple* and unless you make a huge mistake with different hardware brands being incompatible or your own users settings in your software and OS, you won't have the '...various hardware and software compatibility issues to worry about.' You are equally able to buy a game, install it and 'just play it.' With the advent of direct download services and delivery clients such as Steam, you can click several times and get to playing.

A PC is greatly more complex with more potential use than a console, and in kind has more options and settings to mess with. If you don't want or like to fiddle with that, that's fine! Nobody *should* ridicule you for feeling that way. But that's different than trying to justify the superiority of an functionally inferior product with a comparatively simplified User Interface because it requires less knowledge and effort to use. That's when you get a line of people arguing with you, like in this thread.

You're making a claim that an overall more expensive, less functional product with a shorter life cycle than an overall less expensive, exponentially more functional product with a comparatively longer lifespan is superior overall, because it doesn't require effort, learning and sometimes problem solving to learn to use. If you don't understand why that attitude would incite argument or deserve ridicule, you're all the more deserving of them.

If you don't want to deal with complexity, then say so. PC users often take the technical competence they gain over time for granted - it's similar in a sense to auto repair & maintenance, home remodeling, etc. etc. etc. in that it's much less expensive to do things, and you can do more, when you know how to do it yourself. But not everyone wants to be bothered with it, and if you're in that camp you WILL pay much more for your tune ups, your repairs and replacements, even be price-gouged, at the hands of someone with the know-how.

The larger point people try to make aside from protesting functional lack of options/simplicity == functional superiority, is that unlike auto maintenance or home remodeling, basic computer use is very simple & quicker to pick up - and is so pervasive in society and will continue to be so that you had better learn. For all of the cost of buying your geek friend lunch, a $60 weekend course at a community college, or a few hours starting from scratch, you can learn to use all that extra utility a PC provides.

Console and PC games both have different feels to them, and are socially different things.

Many games that are released for consoles are not released for PC... so, that in itself is reason for some people with the spare cash to invest in a console over a PC.

However, with a bit of technical knowledge, a PC can do everything and more than a console. You can hook up a desktop to a TV with gamepads for the inputs, and play games a la console style in your living room the same way a console can.

It's that extra functionality and overall life span that you're missing when you compare PCs and consoles, while the price points are similar. And that's the point pretty much everyone in the thread is trying to make.

You don't *need* to buy a completely new computer, unless you're running a system that dates back to Windows 98. And even then, there are probably some parts you can salvage and reuse. PCs are modular, you can decide for yourself when you want to upgrade, and what you replace for expanded performance.

Your monitors, hard drives, cd/dvd drives, cables, Plug and Play USB hardware are all reusable. With a console, you will *never* be able to do that. Ironically, you complained about the "cost of getting a completely new computer" in what seems an implied argument favoring console gaming over PC gaming... deciding instead to shoulder the cost of getting a completely new console, comparable to the cost of a completely new computer?

If this is what you meant - instead of protesting people assuming that there is no reason you'd want to game on consoles and do so because of lack of technical knowledge - you prove their point and provoke their arguments. There are reasons to invest in a console, or a laptop, over a desktop model PC. But hands down a PC will win on functionality, lifespan, and reasonable reasonable price. Consoles have been (mostly) less expensive, at least short term, than PCs have until the XBox 360 and PS 3 generation of consoles. Then they lost their short term expense advantage as well. Arguing in favor of reasonable price, functionality, lifespan, etc, all of the areas PCs dominate will only earn richly deserved ridicule.

It's seems you're trying to justify your ideology by focusing on details that warp the original context and point.

His point was, that you buy a day long pass, you expect to receive access to whatever you want all day long. Similarly, you're contracted with the ISPs excepting the case of ISPs such as Comcast, to receive the full use of the bandwidth slice of the tiered service you're paying for.

Lines for rides in the Disneyland analogy can be a limitation on how many times you can use a ride, but the limitation isn't something that contradicts the terms of the sale - that you get unlimited use for the day - from the time you show up, to the time they start closing the park. You can, conceivably ride Magic Mountain 15, 20+ times if time, including time spent in line, allows. That's within the terms of the contract, and you don't hear anybody reasonable disputing that.

By contrast, within the nature of the technology and the contractual offering of the ISPs, you *are* contractually entitled to unlimited use of the slice of bandwidth you pay for, even if it's 24/7 for the duration of your billing period. What the ISPs are doing, is trying to impose limitations that contradict the terms of the sale - give you less bandwidth than you pay for, try to make you pay more for less than you were technically sold. And you hear plenty of reasonable people in the know disputing that

ISPs are currently being called out by the FCC and the FTC for data throttling - that is, ISPs such as Comcast especially have been caught red handed lowering connection speeds in general to certain categories of sites/hosts as the company sees fit - which is currently illegal, in addition to contradicting the nature of the service contract with subscribers. The contract doesn't say that they'll provide x amount of theoretical throughput when they feel like it, and only to places on the internet they approve of. It's x amount all the time, 24/7 to everyone and everything unless mandated otherwise by the Federal or State governments (like accessing illegal media).

If you get less bandwidth (say, 10 Mbps capability, or approximately 1 MB/sec downstream speed) than you're paying for in your contract, that's a few things... fraud being one of them. If the ISPs aren't actually able to provide the bandwidth you're contracted for within the terms of the contract (currently unlimited) then that's false advertising and again, fraud. Aside from doing what they were supposed to last time they were given large government grants and upgrade their infrastructure, the only way out of this bind they've put themselves in is for government deregulation, or to change the terms of their contracts, which is possibly what they will try next.

I really wish more people understood this, that internet bandwidth usage =/= utility usage, and the scale in costs to the parent company are incomparable between the two.

That, and the "it's unfair to pay for more than you use" garbage the companies started throwing around to cover up that their contracts ensure full usage of the bandwidth slice they've sold you, and they've both waaaaaay oversold and neglected to upgrade their backbone for both number of users and volume of data. If people get that, it's actually simple to see the nature of the problem. But noooooooo. =)

And you're probably the only other person in this thread I've seen to remember that more than $200 BILLION in subsidies and grants from Federal and Local gov'ts have been given for upgrades that never happened, the money being pocketed instead. No sympathy for these thugs that have already eaten mass amounts of public funds to upgrade the infrastructure for more than the volume of use than is common today, when they attempt to blame less than the top 10% of subscriber usage for the shoddy quality of connection. Takeovers and failures of companies such as Qwest and MCI, as well as AT&T acquiring the coverage of much of the Ma Bell network if I'm not mistaken, created technical loopholes in the obligations of the ISP companies to upgrade, that legislators simply haven't followed through on - all the congressmen that voted on the funding are no longer in office to boot.

Only thing about the utilities analogy I'd point out is that Electrical Utilities cannot possibly get away with laxity of service due to the absolute necessity of power supply to human life. Data communications are actually nigh unto required for modern society, but are still magnitudes less urgent than electrical power.

You missed everything I said and tried to justify yourself by say "in the real world" with a sheepish grin and a wink.

Since when aren't 'consume' and 'use up' synonymous? And in the quote you cite, you seem to have completely missed the "as water or electricity is" part.

I'll make this simple. The internet, including the part of the backbone your ISP runs is always on. When someone ties up bandwidth, it isn't transformed or destroyed, and returns as usable resources when you're done.

You're paying the ISP for a bandwidth allocation - unless you're with an ISP that has a data cap or contractually limits your access, it's unlimited, available for you to access up to capacity 24/7.

The ISP must pay to keep the entirety of their network online 24/7 as a cost of doing business. Therefore, using the allocation of bandwidth you've paid for, even constantly, up to capacity does not cost the ISP any more. Having *no* subscribers of their service with *nobody* using the network costs them the same to maintain as having the resources on the net maxed out 24/7 - they remit that maintenance cost by having subscribers. People using bandwidth on the network does not cost the ISPs more as bandwidth usage goes up.

Here's the hard part: this is *not* the same as gasoline, water, electricity, where more must be mined, harvested, generated, or otherwise acquired as it is used. It's renewable, if that makes it easier. When bandwidth on a network is used, it's only a temporary chunk taken of the total network resources for the duration of the connection. When someone is done downloading, those network resources can be allocated elsewhere on the same node. The only time where bandwidth costs money as it is used, is when a webhost or other business exceeds its data cap - unlike common subscribers, corporate subscribers often have a contractually (large!) limitation on how much throughput, or total data measured in MB/GB/TB they are allowed per contract time period. Go over, pay more.

The only way there wouldn't be enough for everyone, is if the ISPs do both of two things:

1.) They oversubscribe - they sell not just more bandwidth allocations, the contract you're paying the ISP for, than the network can handle at once... they sell *much* more than the total bandwidth capacity of the network within reason.

So, that if a small percentage of total subscribers, say people playing WoW or gaming online, downloading, watching youtube, etc are all using the network in the same time frame... the overall quality of connection suffers for everyone on that branch of the network, since the ISP never had the capacity to handle that many subscribers at the contractually offered bandwidth to begin with.

and 2.) Fail to expand their infrastructure to allow for growth in subscribers and volume of use, and continue using 20-30 year old technology as part of their backbone that are innate bottlenecks within the total network.

And if you want to talk about a practically unlimited upper throughput, rebuilding the base infrastructure so that it exclusively uses fiber would do just that. With extensive fiber networks as the base infrastructure instead of copper wire ethernet, you could reasonably increase the capacity of each network such that the bottlenecks would be in how quickly each host computer can process data, not how quickly data can be transmitted across the network.

And what you don't seem to understand is that the equipment and hardware costs, electricity, and human resource costs are all fixed, and already accounted for.

The routers, cabline, servers, etc all cost as do the utilities and labor. But, they're a fixed cost of doing business. They pay for all of their current capability for the network when they set it up - then they have to pay the cost to maintain it 24/7. That's just the cost of doing business. The *entire* network infrastructure must be on, and accessible at all times - all parts of the network, to full capacity. Whether it be average end-users, corporate clients, or government employees making a logical connection through that part of the network is irrelevant, it must always be accessible. That's part of the definition of the internet and how it works.

You've essentially failed the most basic "the internet and its uses for people who've never seen a computer" class at your average 2 or 4 year college for business and non-technical majors when you make the suggestions about cost and overhead, and "you cannot run everything at full capacity all of the time".

All this garbage about costs and usage amounts to the ISPs wanting to both oversubscribe their services and neglect to upgrade their infrastructure to allow for increasing number of users, and volume of usage. And if you want to talk about upgrading and costs - Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest already received over $200 Billion in Federal subsidies years back for infrastructure upgrades that mostly didn't happen.

Except even though internet connections are frequently considered as utilities, it doesn't work as if it's a utility.

You can't make the comparison between internet connection bandwidth usage from time period to time period and water, or electricity, gasoline or anything of the like...

...because bandwidth isn't a scarce, consumable resource as water or electricity is. When you use it, it isn't effectively gone forever, it's part of total capacity used while you are downloading, etc etc until you're finished. Then you're not using it anymore, and the bandwidth can be used by someone else in a user queue.

Internet service is just that, a service. You're hypothetically paying your monthly rate for the constant ability to use up to the theoretical limit of bandwidth you're contracted for (let's say 100Mbps). Unless your contract includes a data cap in the contract as those of some more unpopular ISPs and much of Canada do, your service terms are to hypothetically draw as much throughput as your bandwidth slice allows for, 24/7, month to month each and every year as long as you pay your bill on time.

It doesn't cost the service provider any more when a user ties up the maximum throughput of their allocated bandwidth 24/7 than it does someone who seldom or never uses their connection. It costs the provider a minimum just to maintain the backbone in personnel, electricity, hardware, etc etc that is required to maintain the entire network at full capacity 24/7 as they are required to do. Let's even say that 100% of their user base ties 100% of their allocated bandwidth to full capacity 24/7. Doesn't cost the provider a cent more than it does to maintain the network anyway

One thing it *doesn't* allow them to do is to oversubscribe on their lines, without needing to upgrade their infrastructure. What they'd love to do is look at 'average' usage over xyz time periods throughout the week and project how much of their total network resources are used by their current customer base... and then estimate how many additional subscribers they can add onto the network. That is, they want to continue adding more users, with increasingly higher bandwidth allocations ('faster' speeds) far beyond any expectation of being capable of providing the contracted quality of connection most of the time to its users, let alone all of the time, unlimited, as most service contracts currently imply. And they want to do this without having to spend a dime on improving the same infrastructure they've been using for more than the past 10 years.

Somehow, somewhere along the line the telecoms and cable companies, etc running the connections dreamed up this concept that it somehow "isn't fair" for some users to "use more of the connection" than others, but pay the same. That if they get people with a mean libertarian + anti-public welfare streak that doesn't understand Internet & Networking Technology 101 to swallow this line that "they shouldn't have to pay as much for their connection as someone who 'consumes more'" they'll be able to continue their trend of charging increasingly more for increasingly less of their service. And continue to sell it to increasingly more subscribers, without upgrading their backbone to something that allows for future expansion and is more practical, like say Fiber Optics all around, as many European countries and Japan employ. Or maybe it was hairbrained end-users that started this idea? Who can tell?

Metered internet usage would be their ultimate wet dream, along with abolition of any concept of Net Neutrality allowing them to decide what you can connect to and at what speed. They'd love to continue to whine to the FCC for subsidies for "infrastructure upgrade" whilst blaming poor connection speeds on file sharers, and subscribers that "use more throughput than other users" in the same breath. They'd love to get away, and/or have Federal approval or otherwise deregulation allowing them to apply metered charges for internet service, also completely ignoring all data and studies during the dial-up era of ISPs and the transition between dial-up and broadband service, that flat-fee unlimited access sells *more* and generates more profit than metered "pay as you go" services.

And it seems people like you are swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker.

Not the US Government, no sir. Not the Federal or State divisions of government.

Citizen-run organizations such as the American Liberty League had large portions of their membership supporting and funding the Nazi party shortly before the war broke out, and before the US joined the war.

The American Liberty League was a large financial supporter of Fascist regimes, opposed FDR's presidential campaign and his New Deal that saved the country from the Great Depression, and had many large corporate leaders in its membership.

Standard Oil (Rockefeller), US Steel (J.P. Morgan) were among them, and perhaps not-so ironically targeted for anti-trust operations later.

There have been supporters of the Nazi party(which was a legally elected political party at the time, BTW) and Fascism within the US, but the US *itself has never lent Hitler money, or supported the Nazis.

The article link is only one short page and does not describe in detail how they came to their conclusions.

However, from the words they're using, they're implying common vulnerabilities exploited in corporate server-side applications. Not client-side.

SQL Injection and XXS Scripting are much bigger issues with implementation of web applications in web pages on the server side, use databases and scripting flaws in the code of the web apps to circumvent browser security.

They're talking about something that has little to do with the integrity of security of individual browsers, and more with the decisions webmasters make and what web applications they use.

Also, when they refer to Safari, they say they're referring to the iPhone Safari version: ...followed by Apple Safari, whose browser showed a vast increase in exploits, due to vulnerabilities reported in the Safari iPhone browser... Looks like they're pretty clearly full of shit, and they're trying to be ambiguous and obscure by explaining little and using jargon to discourage people from searching for what all the terms they're using means.

The overall point is that the law is uncomfortably ambiguous in this case, as I see it.

There are levels of legality or illegality. In this case, I would not so strongly argue that possession is/is not or should/should not be illegal, as it is minor enough to be unworthy of active tracking by law enforcement save for mass distributors of child pornography.

This is also how law enforcement in the US treats it for the most part - that unless you do something stupid to get yourself caught, like look at CP on a company computer and/or view it while at work using company computers, take film rolls of your newest home-made stash to Walgreens or something equally absurd - they don't care too much. They are first and foremost tracking the people making CP, followed closely by child predators using the internet to meet and rape underage children, followed by major online traffickers of CP. For practical and logistics reasons possession is too petty and too difficult a crime to track on an individual basis for them to devote energy to. It *is* still a crime.

As far as how much sense making/keeping possession illegal makes, I'd say it's situational. Perhaps treat it like drug possession. If you just have a dime bag of weed and you're caught with it, the penalty is comparitively minor to possessing large quantities which qualifies "intent to distribute/sell," and cops usually don't go sniffing for people who only have small amounts, even though all possession is illegal.

"...However I think you were trying to make the point of "who is damaged" in the scenario. Well, you seem to have made the assumption that there is no damage to individual who "uses" child porn. I'd like to know how many studies or testimonies of previous "users" will it take to convince you that it is/does"

You are making an equally fallacious assumption that it *does* damage individuals who use child porn. And damage to oneself is not a crime and falls under personal choice not withstanding restriction on controlled substances, and with contraband substances (drugs for instance) in which case the law concerns not the damage to yourself but the ban of the material altogether. And, you're going to run into a *LOT* of trouble trying to make that argument, for numerous reasons. At a baseline, it's similar in form to arguments/"studies" that pornography damages your character, hurts relationships, ends marriages, instills unhealthy addictions and so forth. These assumptions, and their not-so-hidden assumptions are only conditionally true, taken as a global generalization they are very false.

Modern rigorous studies of Human sexuality and relationships that are scientifically conducted and published demonstrate that pornography overall and its use is only destructive in the presence of other behavioral-cognitive issues. To illustrate a point by comparison, it's very similar to video games being potentially destructive to people who have underdeveloped or unsound reasoning skills and are unable to realistically evaluate priorities, distinguish between fantasy and reality, and or has predisposition to commit a criminal act beforehand. So, videogames didn't make your college student flunk out last semester, their inability to priorize their activities and budget their time was, video games were simply a replaceable tool used to that end. Pornography does not make one ignore their partner, view women only as sexual objects, make one disregard their responsibilities, and break up families - nor does it provoke them to commit rape or sexual crimes. The person in question was unable, unwilling or uninterested in maintaining a healthy relationship. They had pre-existing misogynistic or otherwise unrealistic attitudes toward the opposite sex that was not and could not be instilled by the existence and usage of pornography. They didn't abandon their family because of porn or the lure of another person in cyberspace - they quite frankly weren't cut out for the commitment involved with a spouse and/or family, or were unsatisfied with what they had, and were trying to escape reality to begin with, porn happening to be the tool used.

Arguments made, and "studies" that "demonstrate" "damage" done to individuals using porn have historically been religiously motivated, and on all counts have been demonstrated to be patently false. On the contrary, studies suggest that porn used by individuals and couples without aforementioned complications is healthy and can help maintain relationships long term - especially for partners with different appetites for sex, and who frequently want sex when their partner does not. There are plenty of people that don't like that idea and have issues multiple issues with the proliferation of porn including religious convictions, strong beliefs relating to fidelity sexual identity and the role of women in relationships and in society, and those who have strong associations of shame, disgust, and vulgarity with sex, sexual acts and open sexuality in general being among them... and these have always been the originators and supporters of such arguments. They're untrue, demonstrably untrue, and only work with crowds of people motivated by personal believe and emotion rather than reason and logic - similar to those who would take "...I'd like you to honestly think to yourself if you would have the same opinion if someone drew cartoon images of your wife, daugther, mother, or sister being raped." as rationale instead of objective logic.

This argument becomes even trickier when applying it to deviant sexuality, like genuine pedophilia and pornography associated with it. Much more rigorous studies on use of pornography focused on deviant sexualities and fetishes such as bondage, sadism, masochism, rape fantasy, incest, loli & shotakon (drawn, juvenile female and male porn respectively), bestiality and the like show that there is a disconnect between arousal and use of such porn, and likelihood of committing similar sexual acts or crimes associated with the sexual acts. That is, looking at incest porn won't make you want to rape your sister, bestiality porn won't push you to couple with animals, lolikon won't make you go out molest children. These studies, while somewhat obscure being fringe studies of sexuality, are pretty thorough in establishing there being a false or null correlation between perusal and action - studies conjecturing damage to individuals, morals, families, etc. are unable to adequately support a correlation, and are typically motivated by religious faith within the researchers which strongly blurs any scientific integrity their studies might have had.

It's a close extrapolation to extend the pattern to child pornography. There's a general lack of data studying people who peruse or are aroused by CP, and child molesters, for reasons I'm sure you can imagine. What data does exist including survey of people caught for trafficking and possession, as well as anonymous survey, support the trend seen in other deviant sexual arousal.

"...Third, I'd like you to honestly think to yourself if you would have the same opinion if someone drew cartoon images of your wife, daugther, mother, or sister being raped."

Your reasoning is unsound. You're making an argumentative appeal to emotion instead of using sound reason, which is what law and appeal and amendments to laws are meant to be based upon. And, it's dangerously close to "For the Children" arguments, which many people in support of heavy penalty and criminalization of CP possession rely upon, and you rely upon for in your arguments suggesting damage to individuals and others when one uses child porn, and that therefore there is a victim.

Yes, I'm sure most people would feel uneasy and enraged if they discovered there were cartoon images of their wife, daughter, mother, or sister being raped. My point is that unease and anger does not an illegality make, that hurt feelings and/or violation of one's moral and sexual sensibilities does not make the foundation of a crime and you can't justify criminalization or penalty purely by violation of one's sensibilities.

One of the larger issues with this, and legislation of pornography of various sorts is that you're far distancing yourself from legislation regarding material crime, or even crimes of intent (a large partof why studies demonstrating little or no link between pornography use and intent to commit a sexual crime) instead hovering uncomfortably near criminalizing ideas and feelings. Let's say I *DO* want to rape your wife, your sister, your daughter - but I never do. And I never take steps toward, or demonstrate a plan to do so. While that may be unsettling and upsetting to discover, it's not illegal. Nor is a fantasy of that nature, or what could be called a creative work of such an act (as with illustrations of rape, etc.). Going too far in illegalization and more so enforcement of possession of child, animal, rape, etc. porn differing from acting upon such arousal comes too close to legislating the expression and form of sexuality itself outside of material or intent crime committed... which is a large part of why US law generally does not go further than it currently does. In the past, we've seen such abusive lawmaking and enforcement applied to homosexuality. You can't uphold the letter of the law while violating the spirit and intention of the law.

Which touches upon your last statement, your quote of John Adams - "Lastly to address your comment about "land of the free," I'll just quote John Adams: "Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for any other." "

Yes, the constitution was made for a moral and religious people. But you miss both the letter *AND* the spirit of the constitution when you attempt to use that as justification for imposing YOUR specific morality and religion upon another person, which the Constitution and Bill of Rights expressly forbids in no uncertain terms. The intention of the Constitution and the establishment of a Federal Government and Judicial system was to protect its citizenry - not declare what is and is not, what is right and wrong and subject the people to it, outside of protecting personal rights and the common welfare. That would be fascist, not republican. Laws regarding transgressing the sensibilities of others on a moral and religious basis have been passed and enforced in our nation's history, and over time have systematically been revised if not overturned, since the framing of such laws are based in "community standards". The outlook and standard of moral and religious sensitivity changes depending on the community and time, and must be revised as these community standards change. In very conservative states, the sale of and distribution of porn within borders is outright illegal (Oklahoma last I checked, for example). Standards relating to "obscene or objectional media content" vary widely by states, based on what is determined to be the "community standard." Likewise, penalties regarding possession of CP and/or other exotic porn and engaging in such acts are stricter than in others. Some states drawn pornography depicting juveniles is outright illegal, whereas in others it isn't. Max Hardcore of video pornographic infamy was convicted and sentenced to several years in jail after years of his opponents seeking a way to shut him down, on a technicality of Florida state law which prohibits sale or distribution of pornographic materials through the mail... based on community standards of obscenity and indecency.

The spirit and wording of the Constitution makes it clear that personal choice, action and opinion are protected no matter what they may be so long as they don't fall into categories of property and material damage, physical damage to other persons, treason, or somehow damaging or impeding progress of the community. And correctly so, the Supreme Court has generally ruled when reviewing criminal laws and laws relating to personal rights that outside of quantifiable damage being done, people are free. You can someone for 'emotional distress,' but only if you can prove in a legal sense that concrete material harm or ability to engage in gainful activity has been harmed. Not just for hurt feelings.

The moral and religious people that framed the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights did not impart the right to impose laws based solely on your own or others systems of moral and religious judgement.

In Science, authority means *nothing* and evidence means everything. One of the points here, is that he has nothing that amounts to meaningful evidence both in the number of subjects in his experiment, and the lack of any causal evidence that having this gene will make you a bad driver. His sample size alone, and the distribution of gene-carriers to non-gene-carriers immediately rules out any possibility for him to possess data on which he can base a conclusion. Not to mention the fact that he is making an assertion that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to substantiate. In science, everything is *false* until proven true, and he is not providing any explanation as to *why* this gene might do as it does, nor testing his hypothesis. Which makes this not Science, but faith and hand-waving.

So. This guy sets up an experiment we have close to no details about, and his data show that the 7 people that scored lower than the rest of the group has this magic gene he's going on about? Does that demonstrate a causal relationship between the gene and bad driving? If you said yes, you are dead, dead, dead wrong. Sample size is extremely important, and experimentation with different number of subjects is definitely needed. But what is more needed than that is increased repetition of experiments and peer-review. This study reeks of the lax and lacking methodology of most social science fields.

Well first, you're confusing total sample size with experimental sample size. What's being discussed here is the total sample size, and 29 individuals most certainly is **NOT** enough to draw meaningful conclusions. We're not even sure he is testing a hypothesis. He could easily have picked people he knew to be predisposed to bad driving, poor choices, or overall poor sensory awareness for his 7 subjects 'with the gene'. There could be a manifold of other reasons genetic and otherwise responsible for the poor performance of these subjects. The gene could have nothing to do with bad driving. He could have administered the test in such a way that 7 subjects with said gene would perform poorly in comparison to the others. We don't know anything about how he selected his subjects, how they were tested, how said tests could possibly account for other factors that could be the cause of the results, and because we know nothing aside from it being some guy saying stuff, I can't make many more constructive criticisms. We don't have any idea why this gene could possibly be responsible, and in what ways, specifically for bad driving - and most likely, neither does he. What makes him believe the gene is responsible? How does he know? What evidence does he have that *proves* this? A geneticist, molecular biologist, and/or a physiologist would be extremely hard pressed to isolate such a causal relationship and a neuroscientist is none of those. I would be extremely, extremely impressed if he could *demonstrate* the gene causes bad driving. He would definitely make publication in scientific journals if he could. But, it's unlike he can or ever will. Which is why we're hearing about this first on a small webpage clipping from the department at the university he works at, and not a peer reviewed journal, or even a trash magazine like Psychology Today.

It's not just the sample size. He isn't, and *can't* explain how or why the gene causes bad driving. He has absolutely no means for *demonstrating* why the gene causes bad driving, even if his sample size were significant. It's simply his belief. He believes the gene makes people drive poorly. But you know what? I also believe that Raptor Jesus went extinct for our sins, and will rise out of the Rapture to bring a new age on Earth. The two are roughly equivalent in the eyes of science. At best he is describing what he believes is happening... which is what Psychology does. Describing something does not make Science. I don't see a hypothesis or a meaningful test in all of this. Just some eugenics driven kook.

I don't have time or space to outline here precisely why Sociology and Psychology are **NOT** Science, but these links outline it pretty succinctly: http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/ http://www.arachnoid.com/what_is_science/index.html