I think a point that has been undermentioned is this: all the games in these bundles are at the end of their life cycle. Aquaria, World of Goo, etc have all been around for years. Everyone who cares enough to know what they are and shell out cash has already done so. Aquaria already had plenty of sales, World of Goo already had a Pay What You Think is Fair sale. Their usual mini-markets have been tapped out.

So, along comes Humble Bundle. With absolutely nothing left to lose, each penny they bring in after that is a miracle penny from heaven, and every piece of publicity they bring in is someone they didn't reach before. New Players get to try the games "they'd been meaning to get around to" or had never heard of, now at a price they pick so will find fair. It's kind of like roasting up some BBQ beast, eating off all the meat you can carve, and then burying the scraps- only to find that you can get extra mushrooms to grow and eat even more off your feast.

Would you take a new game and bury it directly hoping to get mushrooms? That's doubtful. You'd want to tap your primary market first. Is the mushrooms phase likely to detract from the BBQ phase? Not too likely. People with a hankering for fresh BBQ game content probably don't want to wait around through the life cycle of the game to eat the older mushrooms. Everyone hungry to pay for delicious bacon still will- those willing to settle for mushrooms didn't really crave the BBQ experience enough to pay for it anyway.

Maybe PETA could give you a queasy feeling about meat by making a game where disgusting meat, blood and gore splatters everywhere every time you fail. And you can easily fail every few seconds, splattering horror all around the world....

OH WAIT THAT'S WHAT SUPER MEAT BOY ALREADY IS!

What if I don't care about The Witcher 2 enough to download it even for free? I bought (bargain bin) and played Witcher 1- for about 30 minutes.

Right now I am not over the activation energy of playing Witcher 2 even for free, let alone paying for it. If I were over that, via free demo or torrent, I'd be one step closer to thinking "Hmmm... maybe I WILL pay for it." I've grown to love and then paid for a dozen games this way. Then they face the money activation energy hurdle. $49.95? Eh, probably not. $9.95? I could be persuaded.

But hearing that they think their not-that-amazing game is so precious that they want to take money-wasting punitive actions makes me more likely to file the entire experience on the "Nah" Category, case closed. This has happened for other games I was fully willing to pay for, due to DRM, (which at least they are skipping): Spore, Command and Conquer 4, Assassin's Creed 2

Their threats of punitive letters might prevent an unknown number of piracies, but it also prevents an unknown number of legitimate sales, including mine.

I was thinking about this and: we're not ready. To this day, we have people who use what little technology they do have (chemistry etc) to make bomb vests and blow themselves up. We're still an absolutely greedy, violent species who regularly wars all the time.

The mass and energy involved in interstellar travel is sufficient to destroy planets. (I always wondered why they needed the Death Star when they could just accelerate a smallish frigate into a planet at lightspeed and accomplish the same thing. Planetary shields maybe.)

Any aliens moving amongst the stars must have a code of social justice and cooperation sufficient not to destroy themselves with their own technology. That code almost certainly includes rules for not giving technology to belligerent pre-stellar species. Would YOU start handing out laser pistols to a room of tantrumy 2-year olds?

What do words like "orgy" morph into?

This topic gets so overheated that I think we can miss a subtler point- having a short unit on the the fact that some people believed Intelligent Design in history, and then discussing how to analyze claims like that scientifically. You can approach the topic as an observer rather than necessarily as an authority.

For example:

"In 1997, 39 people committed suicide via drinking poisoned Kool Aid, because they believed that would free their souls from their bodies to teleport to a hidden alien spacecraft hidden in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp. Let's use this example to discuss social psychology, peer pressure, and cult-like thinking in human behavior..." This could prove to be an interesting topic that makes kids think about just how far people can go. Teaching it does NOT mean teaching the children that alien comet-craft are real or that poisoned Kool Aid is a good, although hysterical claims to that effect could be made.

Similarly, at least rationally discussing the historical fact that some people believed in Intelligent Design and concepts like scientific provability, experiment replication, hypothesis and how to support them with evidence could be a fine topic, worth discussing. I know this sounds a little like capitulating to the whole "Teach the Controversy" approach, but I think there is potential in valuing how people came to believe "controversies" that absolutely no longer are. Examples: Sun revolves around earth, earth is flat, etc etc.

That original social "contract" assumes that the government actually enforces the protections of copyright. Millions of copies of Blizzard games have been copied and played through by people who had no intention of, and didn't, pay Blizzard for the honest effort that went into the games. So the government didn't actually offer them any copy protection for their side of your "bargain."

This is where Blizzard, in order to collect enough money to develop the next fun games we all enjoy, needed to put in slight speed bumps to people stealing their way around the no actual protection afforded from the government to their product.

"Welp, we didn't stop anyone from stealing your product, now you owe it to the public domain forever and ever" doesn't sound like a very fair bargain. Hence the (light) DRM.

Blizzard folks know they won't stop everyone, they just want to catch a large chunk of people who want their games in the initial rush to actually compensate them with some cash, before the crack comes out and they are too lazy to pay.

Technically speaking, isn't there a sphere of locations that would all be the same light-distance from the message sender? (I'm picturing an equilateral triangle here.) I don't know how you'd read the qubits to know the distance, but if you could, maybe you could position yourself at one of those equal points and thus be the right distance (and time) away.

You want to make it even less likely that I have ever herad of, or will ever play your game?

Let's not mince words. You're trying to convince me that your game is worth $50+, or more than six movies. Your game probably has a learning curve. That learning curve intimidates me from plopping down money on it. If I play your demo, I am now over your game's learning curve, for free. You have removed an obstacle of risk and fear that was holding me back from buying your game. That is good for YOU.

Believe me, if you won't help me over the learning curve before I risk $59.95 on your game, I'm happy to go find much lower-risk, lower learning curve alternatives. I can watch movies, buy CDs, iTunes up some MP3s, or download little $4.95 casual games, all of which have a much smaller learning curve, and all of which risk less than 1/6th the monetary investment in your game if I don't like it. In a world jam-packed with alternatives, taking your free demo removes one of the few hooks you had left for me caring about your game or even knowing it exists.

This kind of thing of thing gives me a little hope that if I can just hold on 40 more years or so, they'll keep inventing better and better stuff that could keep me alive for several more (former) lifetimes.

Honestly, dying right before that stuff really gets going would be quite a shame.

I want to disagree that Tetris and Minesweeper are the immediate candidates for "Best Games". I've played both, but only about 5 hours each. They are ultra-simple. Compare that to games like Civilization, Knights of the Old Republic, or World of Warcraft, all in the hundreds of hours.

I guess the "problem" with Tetris, Minesweeper, even things like Pac*Man is to me they are way too sparse and limited. Inorganic. They just play like a limited algebra problem with a slightly prettier graphical interface. That comes across as mental busywork to me, emphasis _work_, not play. I perfer games with either more story to them, or else complicated, open-ended strategy that can bloom outwards into choices wider than "Hmm, should I put this piece in column 1 or 8? And if so, which of 4 rotations?" Or "Which X,Y coordinate should I click on next using deductive, sudoku-like reasoning?" I prefer "What is my grand strategy for this next entire phase of the game?"

So, according to some, teachers aren't supposed to be allowed to teach sex education with an approved, professionally developed curriculum? Well, ok. With today's level of internet tech, teens can just turn to YouTube.

Kicesie- "Virginity Part 2" 9:24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x09G3xEgifs

The video is just Kicesie laying there in her flannel pajamas talking to the camera on her thoughts on virginity, having sex, some of the considerations on when might be a good time. It's the internet, and as Dan Savage sometimes says, the only qualification on giving advice is to give "a suggestion about what could or should be done" and have people who are willing to seek you out for advice. She doesn't claim to be a teacher or a doctor or anything. She's more like a big sister just talking about what's on her mind.

But the above video has about 1.8 million page views at the time of this post. What does this say? I think it says that we have some starvation-level hunger for sexual knowledge that isn't being met anywhere else, and this includes schools, which are SUPPOSED to be the sources of critical life knowledge for children and teens.

We could make sex ed entirely illegal. That will leave a gap of needed knowledge that teens will crave to fill. Youtube and other sites like it will be one way to try and fill the gap, although they aren't held to nearly the same academic standards that our public school systems are. Do we really want to outsource responsibility for critical life skills like understanding sex and contraception to Youtube? Making sex ed illegal or focusing on abstinence-only education will do exactly that. Either our teachers will teach teens about sex or Kicesie and her successors will. And either of those are preferable to NOBODY doing it and them just stumbling through unprepared.

Condoms/contraceptives are to sex as seat belts are to driving: useful tools that can prevent unplanned, life-altering events.

Some people might argue that teaching teens how to use seatbelts somehow makes them more likely to drive recklessly. Or that teaching about seat belts will increase their feelings of invincibility and trivialize the risks related to driving. I would say that teens that are aware of the reason for seatbelts will be more sober about the realities behind them. Those responsible enough to buckle up are those more likely to drive safely instead of recklessly.

DA Southworth wants to criminilize knowledge of sexual protection for teens at the same age we allow them to begin driving. We can't pretend that ignoring the teen desire to drive cars is going to reduce it. Teens naturally want freedom, want to drive, and they will even if we ignore proper training. If anything, it should be criminal NOT to teach teens critical skills that can prevent derailing lives- and these skills include driver safety and safe sex both.

Flawed thinking. You are using the mechanics of only brain waves and heart beat as the only metric of if a brain is operating. (Forgivable, the ancient Egyptians were sure the heartbeat was the only measure of thinking.) The brain operates on a lot of other levels- ionic salt transfer, radio waves from the tips of dendrites, and probably a dozen other processes including some on the quantam level we don't know the slightest thing about yet.

Analogy: Using primitive instruments from a seismic sensing station a mile away, we decide if a car is turned on if we can sense the engine rumbling. Then we see the rumbling stop. Is anything else happening in the car? You are in effect saying "Well, the engine is turned off, therefore there is no WAY the radio could be on!" But the battery works for a while even if the engine is off. The radio/CD player could be turned up to 11, and it happens to be a CD about peacefulness and light. If anything, the passengers can hear it clearer than ever because the background engine noise is turned off. But you can't hear it from the seismic station. You can only ask someone who was in the car at the time.

Just because the seismic station can't sense the engine rumbling doesn't mean the car doesn't have other more subtle processes going on.

This is like saying that although I live outside my computer, I am irrelevant to the lives of the Sims living in it.

I could never enter their world in person, and maybe I will just watch them and let them live their entire lives on autopilot without any input. But for them, my whims are absolute. Get in the shower! Go have a snack! My power increases if I get a trainer to alter them more directly.

If they displease me I am totally building an unescapable maze house around them while they sleep ("For the love of God, Montressor!"), or pulling out the pool ladder while they swim. Does their code have anything where they feel a rush of hormones and peacefulness as they die? > : -)>

Maybe I will play the game as a benevolent guide, helping them meet their needs and finding love and progressing through their career. But nothing in the game says I have to do that. I'm just as free to make their lives a living hell for my amusement.

What is really interesting is, what if a Sim somehow achieved sentience? They somehow reverse engineered that they were in a program, figured out their linear address in RAM and so forth, realized I was watching. What if they looked directly at the screen and addressed me by my user name, begging for me to sypmathize with and help them?

That would probably be akward. But it could also be touching. Would they ask me to help guide their life, or butt out and live it the best they could? Could the Sim who figured out s/he was a program convince has family and neighbors or would s/he just be seen as insane? Would they become a Prophet? Would they end up nailed to a SimCross for being too insane? Maybe they could ask the user to open up their code and change the WillDieIfThisOld{76) variable to 100,000 or something. Then the NDE hormones wouldn't be needed!

There's probably a good movie in this somewhere.