The strip isn't what I was talking about, actually - that strip was Democrat-controlled. There were a bunch of other districts that were redrawn at the same time, and only the Democratic one was found to be infringing. Here's a map of the districts after they were struck down. They're still just as fucked up, but unlike the 23rd in my original image, none of them can be considered to be racially drawn - which was the only reason the 23rd was struck down.

According to just one map, how the fuck do you think people are being represented fairly when their votes are being combined with votes that are hundreds of miles away and absolutely not a part of the same community? This one instance literally shows Republicans added 4 seats by calculating their ability to win districts if they were drawn in a very specific way, and used their power in the Texas legislature to make it happen. That's what happens with gerrymandering, and any study you've seen that claims this doesn't have an effect on Congress is bullshitting you. Even when parties come together to agree to redistrict in a given way, they're specifically looking to ensure incumbent victories in as many districts as possible.

The two party system is fine, until the parties have the ability to redraw their own districts without any rules as to how those districts should be shaped. Over time, they have to continue pulling farther and farther extreme from each other in order to compete within their own parties, and end up with guaranteed general election wins, which ends up leaving everyone with representatives who refuse to compromise. When you have to appeal to a wide variety of voters in the general election instead, parties end up electing the most extreme they can get away with in a general election instead of a primary - someone who has conviction yet who can compromise. This ends up being a moderating influence in multiple directions - it prevents the parties both from becoming too closely aligned and collude or too far apart to work together.

The solution is to limit the way district boundaries can be drawn - no more districts with a giant tail to add that group of republicans on X highway or the democrats on Y side of the city. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Congress is up to the task right now, which is a massive problem since the problem will continue to get worse, which makes it even less likely to happen...

They're only bad for keeping people working if nobody else has the same restrictions. If every other state had the same level of restrictions, California would be in contention without having to waive rules. If the entire world had the same restrictions, jobs wouldn't be outsourced to third world countries with near slave laborers.

That's the real problem with rules like environmental or worker protections - if only a subset of countries are onboard, companies move to those places where they have more power. If they have the same amount of power everywhere, the laws have no effect on the state of employment.

Your statement, and the sentiment many people hold towards regulation, is ignorant to the facts. You present it as if these companies are choosing between creating jobs and not creating jobs, when the reality is that they're creating the jobs anyway, and they're just choosing where to create them, with a substantial basis in the regulatory environment. Tesla is building a battery factory, they're just not considering California because it's easier to create them elsewhere.

Israel never signed the treaty. There was no withdrawal.

If a US company has a subsidiary in Iran, they have bigger legal problems to deal with.

Lazy.

The point is that coming from that background, of being one of the few survivors thanks to a licensing regime, they're going to think much harder than someone writing one sentence saying "the console should be opened up, that would solve all their problems!".

Given that they have billions in capital and a proven track record of turning around poor initial sales with killer apps, they're not going to immediately switch to an open platform when one generation seems to be faltering halfway through. If they fail for 2 generations consecutively, and don't turn them around mid cycle, then you might see a change.

It's 1983. Atari just settled a lawsuit over Activision's ability to create games for the 2600, and did not get a restraining order against the practice. Shovelware is running rampant, and many of the companies creating the shovelware are small startups. Games are not selling because they were overall fucking terrible. Stores lose a ton of money on having merchandise they couldn't sell. Many of both the distributors and developers are going of business. The distributors that are diversified and survive, like Toys 'R Us, refuse to use inventory space on games. It's a business decision they're making based on what happens when games are completely shitty.

In comes Nintendo with a way to ensure that truly shitty games don't make it onto their console, and they rejuvenate an industry that almost killed itself entirely with too much openness.

Again, this isn't some hypothetical bullshit argument about whether open source is superior on moral grounds from someone who holds no real stake in the outcome. It's what actually happened in the industry.

The last time sharing was the norm, it caused the entire industry to collapse. There's a reason it was called the Nintendo Entertainment System, and not console. Nintendo, as it turns out, were the ones who led the industry's recovery, largely by instituting strict third party licensing. Sid Meier considers the Nintendo "Seal of Quality" one of the three most important innovations in gaming history because of the impact that it had.

Coming from that background, you can understand why Nintendo isn't going to take the decision to open up the platform as lightly as some open source keyboard warriors on Slashdot.

Your point is that games are inherently advantaged. The reason they're inherently advantaged over physical sports is because they can be designed to be amazing spectator experiences.

Go play Craft the World - it's clearly not nearly as good to spectate as any of the large spectator games out there right now like LOL or DOTA2, and in about 5 minutes you'd be convinced of it too. Here's a portion of a video specifically addressing spectator games, skipped to the relevant portion. If you feel like doing a bit more legwork instead of having the mental exercise done for you, watch this video - it points out a bunch of design features relating to the map in League of Legends, and is very easily digested by someone unfamiliar with the game. Think about each element they point out, specifically focusing on how it relates to the spectator experience. If you do that, and you genuinely believed that design was irrelevant, those 7 minutes will completely blow your mind.

The AC is right about what they are, although the point is that they're specifically designed with spectators in mind. That's not true for most games, and as a result there's a huge number of games that aren't good spectating material. These games (and others in some of their genres), btw, along with fighters, make up a substantial majority of games that are watched. People don't watch Mass Effect, or The Wolf Among Us, or the Batman Arkham games - it's very specific genres that even work for spectators, and then it's still mostly games designed for it from the start.

That's not true as a generalized statement. The games that are being played now by professionals in front of an audience, like LoL, DOTA2, SC2 and CS:GO are actually designed around being good for spectators. There's a whole lot more in the gaming sector that doesn't work for spectators.

Our third problem is that plenty of people think it's cool to blame it all on a particular president of a political leaning they do not agree with, even though the US has had African Americans in the military in their own segregated units at least as early as the Revolutionary War.