I’ve been listening to a lot of southern alt-rockers 3 Doors Down lately. They’re good to listen to when playing video games. Below is “Loser”, one of their more mellow tunes as well as one of their darkest. That the video takes place in high school strikes me as quite appropriate.

And of course “Here Without You”, a song that for the longest time I had attributed to Nickelback:

In the videogame/media world recently, there’s been a major push for “download-based” or “managed server based” delivery systems. In particular in the videogame world, there are now two parallel, competing channels for content. Major games are released on disc and go to stores (Walmart, Target, Gamestop, etc). Minor games and past classics are distributed/resurrected via the download services provided by Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, and even for the computer over venues such as Valve’s “Steam” service.

Sony has recently taken this to a new level with their “PSP Go”, an ill-conceived console that can only purchase games from Sony’s download store, and takes ~3 hours to download a single purchase. Meanwhile, over at Slashdot there’s a raging debate over EA’s latest few debacles, most notable their constant stripping of game content off into “nickel and diming” paid DLC. Some estimates of the actual price of certain EA titles go to over $90 after the “release day” DLC, which most people agree is necessary to make the game playable.

Of a larger part in the picture, however, is the game companies’ repeated attacks on the used-games market. EA has teased the idea of games whereby certain downloadable content is only available to the “original” purchaser, making the title crippled (possibly even unplayable) if purchased second-hand. Sony, a while back, patented a system whereby games would “burn in” their processor ID number the first time a game was used, on a special section of a disc, and subsequently the disc would refuse to play in any other console (particularly vexing given that the failure rate of many consoles is 20% or higher, and an entire library of games could be made worthless by something as simple as a power surge). The PSP Go has no possible game cartridge slot unless Sony releases “pre-programmed” memory cards, meaning that the only time any store is likely to see any money from it is when they sell the console itself.

From the companies’ perspective, the more common internet access becomes, the easier it is to bypass the brick-and-mortar retailers. This isn’t unique to the video game industry, since the movie and music industries have been pioneering it (poorly) to some extent, but the hatred towards the secondary market (and to some extent, the multiple personality disorder, since Gamestop regularly cuts “exclusive release deals” with many game companies) in the videogame market is particularly strong.

I cannot put much of the blame for the situation on Gamestop or the other secondary-market stores (heck, it’s so lucrative even Wal-mart wants in on the action). Movies sell for (relatively) cheap, oftentimes less (thanks to ongoing borderline-illegal price fixing by music companies) than a movie’s corresponding soundtrack. Most people buying a movie have already seen it once (either in theater, over broadcast/cable, or via rental) and know what they’re buying. Videogames, by contrast, are purchased more or less blind. There are many cases in which a game has been preceded by a massive hype machine, only to be sold back to the store in droves because it was either way too short, particularly godawful, or some combination thereof. Most games have enough of a market of “hey, I don’t like this at all” types that within 2-3 days of release there will be at least a handful of “used” copies available at the secondary-market stores. Game manufacturers feel “cheated” by the fact that their new-title sales get cannibalized this quickly, and would prefer to stop it from happening entirely; at least one company attempted unsuccessfully to force Gamestop into a contract barring resale of their titles for at least a month after release, in hopes of making a bit more money that way. At the same time, rumblings of attempted copyright actions against Gamestop in the past smacked of antitrust violations and violations of first-sale doctrine, and attempts to claim a percentage of the revenue from Gamestop’s sale of used titles (via threat of withholding new-sales product) were outright extortion. In a market where a term for bad product (“shovelware”) exists and is commonly used, game companies are much more to blame for putting out product that’s so easily sold/forgotten and thus making the current system (whereby a given disc cycles through a Gamestop-style store an average of 5-6 times in its usable lifespan) to their own disadvantage.

Meanwhile, of course, from a pure revenue perspective I can’t blame the game makers from salivating over the prospect of both ongoing revenue streams (original title $59.99, DLC to the tune of $6-10 every couple months, onwards onwards) and for the “noncannibalized” sales model of downloadable content. It can’t escape them that every sale of a game over Xbox Live Arcade, for instance, can’t be resold or transferred to anyone else unless someone sells their entire console and transfers the Xbox gamertag information/login to the new owner (which may, or may not, violate some part of the Xbox Live ongoing subscription contract). From their perspective, when Gamestop sells a used disc they see no money, whereas any time someone buys a game via download they get “their cut.”

Of course, the generalized form of this debate is nothing new. A long time ago, booksellers tried to kill the idea of public lending libraries on the idea that it would put them out of business, and an attempted deal for Google to offer a sort of “online” booksearch/lending library model is going through all sorts of hell currently. What is new is the fact that, armed with the DMCA (some of the worst garbage legislation ever written), certain companies actually have been given the option to try to hide their content behind so many layers of “protection” that they have, in fact, begun attempts to destroy the customer’s right of first sale entirely.

I can’t imagine that this bodes well for consumer rights, or for the market in general. At the very least, should trends continue, Gamestop’s in real trouble 10-15 years down the road and we might see Target/Best Buy/Wal-mart’s electronics sections seriously reduced in size.

A back-and-forth between Sheila and Phi reminded me of a thought that I had earlier today and that I have from time to time:

There are two main goals in romantic relationships: sex and monogamy. If a girl wants a stable relationship, that can be a bit of a challenge. But sex is not so much. If a guy wants sex, well that’s a challenge. But if he wants a stable relationship without sex… well, that’s a challenge, too. Sex may be a poor bargaining chip, but guys don’t even have a similar weak-arse equivalent. We can’t say “I promise a sex-free relationship!” and expect to get one (even a temporary one until something better comes along) as easily as a woman can get a sexual partner by offering strings-free sex.

There’s no real solution to this dilemma and ultimate this isn’t a particularly deep or insightful thought (and not one original to me, I’m sure), but there ya go.

A few weeks ago I got into it with a guy named Justin at Phi’s place. Justin suggested that women like guys with more flab than they have. That runs contrary to my great deal of experience on the issue both as a former tubmeister and a former beanpole. I’ve heard the statement made before, but frankly it comes across to me somewhere slightly less credible than “I just want a nice guy” and somewhat more credible than “I don’t care about looks.” Women that are comparatively heavier than myself are overrepresented among the women that have actively campaigned for my romantic companionship. The attention I got as a beanpole was significantly greater than the attention I got as an even moderately overweight guy. The attention I got as a substantially overweight guy – even from heavy girls – was negligible.

But where Justin’s comments about girls liking a bigger guy because of some feeling of being protected is not completely without merit. The thing is, though, that it doesn’t apply to weight nearly as much as it does height. I have fairly extensive catalog of my strengths and weaknesses in the dating market from back in the day. The more I weighed, the bigger the score in the “weakness” column. My height, though, was always a plus. This was particularly true among comparatively tall women, but somewhat true among moderately tall women and even true, from time to time, among shorter ones.

I was thinking about this as I read the Frisky post about how to date a tall chick. I found the discussion to be much more interesting than the post itself. In my experience, taller women are actually more self-conscious about being abnormally tall than the guys that date tall chicks, provided that the guys themselves are not themselves abnormally short. My experience is, of course, not as a tall girl but as a tall guy that is appreciated by tall girls. My wife (5’10”) is not generally the type of person to care about such things, but even she expressed an appreciation of being shorter than her husband even when she’s wearing 3-inch heels. An old flame of Clint’s (6’0″) actually lined two suitors up to decide which of two guys that asked her she would go to the school dance with (Clint won). And so on. That’s not to say that all tall women are hung up on their height, but in the same way that many of my tormentors in high school were short guys with something to prove, the women I know most hung up on male height are those that are themselves tall. Some guys prefer shorter girls and so tall women with an open mind can be discriminated against, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as common. Maybe that’s just me.

One of the things that some of the taller guys didn’t get is that it’s different when a tall guy is joshed around with because of his height and when a taller girl is. Tall guys, unless they’re freakishly tall, do not generally have reason to be self-conscious about their height. None of the bullies I ever had made fun of me because I was tall. Maybe it’s because my width was a more obvious point of criticism, but I also think because there’s no percentage in going after a guy because he’s tall. Notably, some people made fun of Clint for being short. But he wasn’t short. He was just standing next to me a lot. For girls, though, it’s different. Being tall is considered unfeminine by some. Some guys do discriminate against them. They are likely to have an even more difficult time finding clothes that fit than a tall guy is and the clothes they purchase matter more. So even lighthearted ribbing on a woman’s height that would be perfectly acceptable on a guy can be more problematic with a woman.

The short women also don’t get it. You think it’s hard for you to find clothes? It’s much harder for tall people. Casually, it’s easier to wear something too big than too small. A lot of smaller people can continue to buy kid-sized things but bigger people don’t have that option unless they can buy men’s clothes (which they often do!). And while it’s inconvenient to have to reach for things on the top shelf, it’s also inconvenient not to fit in a plane seat or the back seat (or front seat) of a car. Women generally have longer legs than men so leg-space can become an even bigger issue for women than for men of the same height. Okay, I’m probably selling short the inability to reach things and that may be slightly worse than having to crouch in the car, but it’s closer than short people think.

Plus, for short women, they have the ability to make short guys and moderately-sized guys feel tall and they rarely put off tall guys. When I was younger, I was actively attracted to shorter girls until I realized that it was a market mismatch. Again, while discrimination against taller women is not universal in the dating marketplace, it’s still not unheard of. And if tall women would prefer a taller guy, that’s very much their right. But it’s an inconvenient desire. Tall guys are in a similarly beneficial place, of course, as I described before. Short chubby women in particular seem predisposed to be attracted to taller but not as chubby men. Sort of allows them to feel like the guy is “bigger” in that “protect” sort of way but without having the disadvantage of having to date someone with a comparable BMI. I don’t think it generally works. Certainly didn’t work on me.

Of course, being a tall woman is not without its disadvantages for some of the same reasons that I rejoice in being a tall guy. Not just because you can reach things! Being tall allows you to eat more. Weight loss may be less apparent (despite losing similar poundage, people notice my wife’s weight-loss a lot more quickly than they notice mine), but weight gain is less problematic. I think that this is more true for guys than for girls since we can get away with more extra weight than can girls, but I think it’s also true (to a lesser extent) for girls. At some point you can be described as “big” in a way that’s not meant in an unflattering way. Some of the chubby shorties I was referring to earlier aren’t actually that much overweight from a pure poundage standpoint, but what little extra weight they have seems to clump up in unflattering places. So tall women at least do have that.

Short men, on the other hand, don’t even have that. About all they’ve got is the ability to fit into more places. It’s hard not to be sympathetic.

An interesting case before the Supreme Court this time around offers an interesting question: when does the “Miranda Rights” warning expire?

Miranda, of course, is the famous case that gave us the famous warning-to-all-people-being-arrested that begins “You have the right to remain silent…” The followup case, Edwards V. Arizona, established that anything said after you say “I want a lawyer” can’t be admitted to court unless it is proved that your lawyer was right next to you, in the room, during any subsequent police interrogation.

This time around, we get Maryland V. Shatzer. The bare-bones are: a suspect was in jail. A police detective came to interview him, read him his rights, the suspect said “I want my lawyer”, and the detective simply closed up the case rather than spend the time getting the lawyer present. Two years and 7 months later, a different police detective turns up, reopens the case, goes to the prison, interviews the suspect, reads him his rights again, and begins “interrogating” the guy without a lawyer present, eventually getting him to waive his right to counsel and getting an admission of another crime out of him.

The case is interesting on two points. The first point is how long a “Miranda warning” lasts, the second is possible ways police could try to get around it. Under the initial Edwards test, from the moment a suspect invokes the right to counsel, and as long as they are “in custody”, the police may not speak with them (at least to get admissible evidence) without a lawyer present, and requires a “re-reading” of rights if they “break custody” and then bring them back for another interview. So (for example), the police can’t read you your rights and then hold you in custody for a week after you ask for a lawyer, constantly bringing you back for an “interview” every hour or two and badgering you to waive your previous exercise of your right to counsel. They can, however, read you your rights, say “we’re done, you can go home” when you ask for a lawyer, send you home, and then call you back in (say, a week or a month later) for another “interview” and ask you to waive your right to counsel again as long as they have broken the “chain of custody” in the meantime. They also can get your lawyer in the room, yell, scream, lie, and otherwise badger you (with your lawyer likely constantly telling you “don’t answer that”), and pretty much do whatever they want hoping to provoke a reaction and a statement that they could use, with your lawyer then being “under the gun” to convince a judge to throw any statement you made in his presence out on the grounds of coercion.

The police in Maryland are claiming that the original canceled interview, and the new one, constitute this break in “custody.” The problem for them (at least for a lawyering perspective) is that this guy was sitting in prison the whole time, “in the custody” of the state. Yes, he might not have been in the lockup of that one specific precinct, but as far as his lawyers are concerned, he was in jail – movement restricted, access to even his own lawyer restricted, etc. From their perspective, the second police detective had no right to show up (even a couple years later) and conduct a second interview without the guy’s lawyer present.

As a thought experiment, it’s supremely interesting. The question of “chain of custody” between police jail, and county/state lockup, is odd – saying the police had “broken custody” on those grounds could lead to police simply transferring suspects over to a neighboring county lockup, then badgering them there, in order to get around an exercise of right-to-counsel. The question of police trying to reopen an old case – and launching a new “interview”, with a new reading of rights, while not paying attention to previous directives from the suspect – is dodgy at best. The underlying real “nasty tactic” which seems to be legal, would be the police letting someone go home and then showing up the next morning to arrest and “interview” them each day until they finally gave up their right to counsel, though it seems any competent lawyer at trial ought to be able to quickly get that tossed out on grounds of coercion, harassment, and abuse of police powers.

Fairly warned, the case is unlikely to have any aid in its defendant; indeed, one of the tenets of legal thought (“easy cases make bad law”, with its necessary corrolary “hard cases also make bad law”) comes to mind. The problem? The guy is serving time for “sexual abuse of a child”, according to the court docket, and the subsequent interview and the crime he supposedly admitted to (with the level of officer-badgering unknown and no lawyer present) is sexual abuse of another child, and the reopening of the case was prompted by his wife (or possibly ex-wife, court documents sometimes being vague and referring to things as they were “at the time of offence” rather than current situation). This makes him, as defendants go, roughly as unsympathetic as can be. The Supreme Court is theoretically pretty good about setting aside the idea of the unsympathetic defendant (especially given that they only see the lawyers for each side) but it’s a crime that tends to raise emotions regardless.

There’s a drawn out conversation occurring over at Phi’s place about the propriety of older or married or less attractive men sparking up conversations with young, attractive women. One of the factors is that it’s common for guys to go out of their way to strike up conversations with attractive women that they wouldn’t with guys or unattractive women. Do I myself do this? Not sure. Sometimes I think that I go too far in the other direction. I remember when I was a regular at Seattle’s Best Coffee back in Estacado, I could be downright skittish with the attractive barristas. Not because I was nervous in the same way I would get nervous around girls that I wanted to ask out, but that if I looked at them for a period of time that was construed to be too long they might see me as a lech.

I got a Friend Request today on Facebook from someone that looks not the slightest bit familiar. I have a few friends on Facebook that I don’t know personally, but at least with them I can identify mutual friends. If they’re okay by Hubert, they’re okay by me. That sort of thing. This young woman has no mutual friends. I saw that we went to the same high school, though to be honest her first name rings absolutely no bells with me. It also says that she went to Southern Tech, so I figured maybe we went to high school together and she recognized me from the Sotech student paper. Back when I was a columnist I would periodically get emails from people that never really talked to me in high school. So maybe that was it.

The only thing that gives me pause, though, is that she is relatively attractive. Definitely looking like the sort of girl that would have nothing to do with me in high school. That makes me think that it’s something illegitimate. Sort of like how 90% of the people who added me on MySpace were spam accounts. But so far I haven’t run into that sort of thing at all on Facebook. Besides, how worth their while could it possibly be to mix and match area high schools and colleges? Since we did go to the same high school and college, I was probably a system recommendation or something.

Anyway, I added her figuring that I could un-add her at a moment’s notice if she starts pushing viagra or her new erotic website or something. I just found it interesting to note that if she was a man or an unattractive woman, I doubt I would have even thought twice about adding him/her.

I got the pretend Nintendo 64 hooked up and have been playing Super Mario 64 and F-Zero X on an exercise ball. I’d been wanting to get some sort of J-chair or beanbag to play video games on, but that crap’s expensive. Meanwhile, Clancy had that exercise ball and I thought that would work. Worked quite well. Prevents me from playing for too long and gives me enough of a workout that I am actually sore. Okay, that probably says more about my weaklingness than the intense workout I get sitting on a big rubber ball, but still.

On the Camelot BBS I came to sorta know a girl who went by the name Whirlwind. I was a poor friend to her brother and a good fake son to her mother. For some reason (I can think of a few), she just didn’t like me (even in that brotherly way I had come to fear and expect). Without much choice, I chose not to like her, either. She dated my friend Clint for a spell as well as another friend whose online name was Cladger. Cladger was one of those guys that I always wanted to be friends with because he was a great guy on paper but he was a little too much of a sycophant in reality.

Cladger called me up one day and said that there was something that I had to get in on. What? He wouldn’t say. He needed a ride to Southfield Mall, though. Oh, and he’d be bringing a couple other guys, Kermit (whom I knew) and Nathan (whose handle, “Nathan”, I’d seen online, but whom I’d never talked to). I picked up Cladger first so that he could guide me to Kermit’s house, where Kermit and Nathan would be. As I drove, I quizzed him on what exactly was going on. He said that Whirlwind and Nathan had struck up a little online romance and that they were going to meet.

Seeing as how everyone seemed to be having better romantic luck than I was, I didn’t know why in the world he thought this would be something that I would want to see. “You brought me here to chaperon Whirlwind meeting some guy?”

“No, I brought you a front row seat. You’re going to want to see this.”

The second that I saw Nathan, I said three words to Cladger: Oh, wow, and thanks.

It wasn’t just that Nathan was obese – I’d seen heavier. It was the slimy, repellent nature of his obesity that was truly astonishing. His skin looked like it was struggling to keep the fat inside of it like a pillowcase holding four pillows and about to burst at the seam. His elbows were hidden under a rag of peachy fat. He had no neck, which you almost didn’t notice except that when he looked down what he had of a chin immediately became buried in fat. Had his face been covered end-to-end in acne, it wouldn’t have looked any worse than the pin-sized pores on his face barely visible through a waterfall of sweat.

Whirlwind had declared herself too good for Cladger. She had declared herself too good for my best friend. She had declared herself too good to be even the most casual of friends with me. I cannot presently recall where I was on my weight rollercoaster at this time, but I am pretty sure that I was significantly below my peak and, while perhaps not desirable to most, not repellant. Not like Nathan. How in the world was she going to respond to this guy meeting her at a mall?!

After the girls were running half an hour or so late, we decided that maybe we hadn’t communicated where it was that we were supposed to meet, so we started walking around the mall. And walking, and walking. After about half an hour we did stumble upon them. They politely waved and said hello, but never stopped walking. They acted as though it was a coincidence that we happened to see each other. As though there hadn’t been plans. As though she hadn’t spent the previous week spilling her guts to a guy that had hooked a ride to the mall to meet her. It was enough that I began to wonder if Cladger had misrepresented the nature of the meeting.

“That’s weird,” Nathan said, “I thought we were supposed to hang out.” It was only when he said that when the obvious occurred to me. Of course they were here to meet him. Upon seeing him, meeting him was the last thing that they wanted to do. It was a real let down compared to the show that I was hoping to see, but the idea of all the icks she must have been feeling over the span of weeks would have to be reward enough.

“Maybe they didn’t recognize us, Nathan,” Cladger said, ignoring the fact that he and Whirlwind had dated. “How did you describe yourself?”

“5’8, brown hair. Glasses. Kind of overweight, but I work out.”

I found that hard to believe.

Nathan was ultimately unphased, even when she hid from him immediately after the meeting. He made his way to a couple of Camelot parties afterwards and almost singlehandedly ruined them due to his very unpleasant odor and appearance. The smell was easy enough to avoid in the mall because it was a very open atmosphere. It was much harder at Excalibur’s house and so when he entered a room, people would find a reason to disperse until we eventually all ended up outside in the insane Gulf Coast summer heat because it was so much easier to spread out and shift as the winds carrying the odors requested.

Though he may have never knew how badly he smelled, he must have known that there was something putting everybody off. He tried to make up for it by talking as though he hadn’t been the reject all of his life that Tom confirmed he was. He spoke vaguely of an ex-girlfriend, described himself as “bi-curious” as it was considered cool and edgy to be at the time. Over and over again he tried to present himself as alternative. As many of our peers reasoned, if you can’t be better, try to be different. Really, though, it had the equivalent effect of putting on heavy cologne to cover up the smell of cigarettes: even it wasn’t quite as odious, it was twice as strong and even more unpleasant, on the whole.

The notion of Instant Replay is somewhat controversial in football. On one hand, you have the importance of accurate calls. If the video cameras catch something the refs missed, then shouldn’t that be corrected? On the other hand, you have pure pragmatism. There are all sorts of things that the refs always miss. There are plays that are simply too close to call. A three-and-a-half hour game could easily be stretched to five or more hours with too liberal an instant replay rule. Coaches could use replay challenges as defacto time-outs, which is precisely what happened when the NFL first tried instant replay (they’ve changed the rules since). So the leagues came up with their rules. Nobody is really satisfied with them because, well, what it would require for them to be satisfied with them changes from week to week and play to play depending on whether the rules favor their favored team or the opposing ones.

Several years ago, there was an NFL playoff game between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo where what appeared to be a forward lateral was thrown in a play that determined the game in favor of Tennessee. The refs did not call a forward lateral and though it appeared to be one in the replay, it was not deemed conclusive to reverse the call. And so the Tennessee Titans went to the Superbowl. Bills fans remained bitter and many suggested that they should reverse the result or if they win the Superbowl there ought to be an asterisk or somesuch. Titans fans argue that it wasn’t a forward lateral to begin with or, if it was, it doesn’t matter because that’s just how the ball bounces sometimes. Both stances have their merits. Teams should not win because the refs make a mistake. But there is also a point where you have to move on and accept that life is not fair.

However, one would imagine that had the circumstances been reversed, Bills fans would have been talking about moving on and Titans fans about the importance of the rulebook. There’s really no question about this. That doesn’t stop each team’s partisans from getting on their soapbox and saying that it isn’t about this particular game it’s about fairness or being an adult and accepting the unfairness of life.

Of course, sports are a multibillion dollar exercise in frivolity. It doesn’t reach the same importance as, for instance, public policy. Or the makers of public policy.

The Massachusetts State Legislature recently enacted a law allowing the governor to appoint a temporary senator until the next special election. The All Important Factor in this was that Massachusetts should not be denied representation between now and the election simply because a senator died. Several years ago, the same legislature passed a law denying the governor the right to make appointments and creating special elections with the All Important Factor being that appointments are anti-Democratic. Of course, that there was a Republican governor in office the same year that there was a good chance of a vacancy being created back then and that there is a Democratic governor and an important vote coming up in the senate now is hardly a coincidence. But in each case, they dressed it up as a matter of principal. Democracy, on one side, and pragmatism on the other. Both are valid arguments.

Republicans, of course, point out the inconsistency and charge that the change of heart is {gasp} politically motivated, but they themselves have rather suddenly embraced Democracy when it’s prudent. In 2002 in Texas, when they won the state legislature, suddenly it was undemocratic to have a majority-Republican state represented by more Democrats than Republicans. Throwing all of their supposed allegiance to tradition in process out the door, they created new districts that, quite astonishingly, lead to more Republicans in congress. But… they did have a point about a Republican state being represented by Democrats in congress. And the Democrats had a point about the bald partisanship involved as well as the dangers in changing congressional districts at the drop of a hat. But neither position was particularly in-keeping with their philosophy so much as it was politically expedient.

There are times when abstract philosophy and political expediency meet. For instance, even setting aside partisan factors, it is extremely likely that Democrats would support as many recounts as possible to get the “most accurate” result. Likewise, Republicans are, in general, more likely to say that if somebody didn’t fill out their ballot correctly they forfeited their own vote. So when the 2000 election hit, everybody lined up in their “proper” formation. When it was inconvenient, of course, the Democrats had no problems tossing unfavorable ballots and Republicans had no problem accepting a Supreme Court verdict they would have abhorred if it had gone the other way. And these reversals were genuinely considered fair and proper. Sure, in some cases it was cynicism, but there were two valid sides to this argument and each side found it pretty easy to clutch to the side that was most convenient for them and believe it.

The list really goes on and on. Parties out of power suddenly gain all kinds of new respect for the Filibuster while parties in power suddenly feel reverence towards pragmatic democracy. Consensus and democracy are both important concepts. Protests that are scary and immature when your side is in power are suddenly importantly protected free expression when your side is out of power and vice-versa. Protests are both immature and importantly protected free expression. The entire notion of freedom itself is constantly under review. When talking about smoking in bars, some people will wax philosophic about the importance of freedom. Then, in a discussion about insurance companies, the exact same person will demand that the government step in and sort everything out to make things fair for the “little guy”.

It’s a lawyer’s job to defend his client in court. He is expected to do this (within certain parameters) whether he believes in it or not. An uninterested party, the judge or a jury, are supposed to take both sides into consideration and come to a conclusion on whose interpretation of justice, facts, and the law is correct.

I used to be a political blogger and I used to discuss politics quite frequently with anybody that would listen. I still follow politics closely, but rarely discuss it anymore. The main reason for this is that almost everybody that is anxious to talk about politics is a lawyer at heart. They are discussing things with you to Make Their Case and that’s pretty much it. The balancing of valid points of view is rarely given much heft. The notion that there are competing ideals that provide a solid basis even for views that you are ultimately unsold on is extremely hard to establish. Instead, the right and wrong of a situation come down, more than anything, to allegiance to political party and political philosophy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with partisanship. It’s a rather necessary function of democracy. Just as lawyers are a necessary function of our court system. What exasperates me, though, is that the legal maneuvering seems almost never to end. And the uninterested observers are actually apolitical “moderates” and “independents” who are among the least educated and least thoughtful voters out there. And even in cases where they are neither of these things, they typically “hate politics” and are always in search for some “middle ground” that doesn’t even exist were it not for two sides pulling the rope feverishly. So you’re left to talk politics with the lawyers, and that’s as much a cross-examination as it is any sort of actual discussion. Where the stakes are more important than a Titans-Bills football game, but the discussion ultimately isn’t.

-{If your response to this is to say “It’s really the people that disagree with me that do this. The people on my side rarely do.” or a quest to prove that even though both sides do it the other side is much worse, please don’t bother.}-

Forbes’s Brian Caulfield thinks that Sony and Nintendo ought to be panicking because of Apple:

Here’s the news. Apple announced Monday that users have downloaded more than 2 billion apps through its App Store. That’s the service Apple users to distribute applications from software developers to anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Of the 85,000 applications available through the App Store, something like 80% are free. More than 21,000 of them are games.

I don’t disagree with Caufield’s main point, which is that the iPhone could put the PSP and DS in great peril. The iPhone’s games are crazy-cheap and crazy available. Not having an iPhone or a DS/PSP, I don’t know what difference there is between the quality of the games. I would wager that the $26 games are significantly better and the $3 games are rather simple. Ultimately, though, I’m not sure how much that matters. When it comes to portable gaming, I think five simple games are better than a single complex one. For the big, complex games, those are better for the consoles where you’re sitting down to play for a longer haul.

Of course, actual consoles get barely a mention in Caufield’s piece. And even then, the primary mention is to gloat that Forbes was right about the failure of the Gamecube. I’m not sure it’s really a great idea to gloat over an article entitled “Nintendo’s Game May Be Over”. The death of Nintendo is oft predicted and yet they are doing phenomenally well. I remember a couple decades ago when people were talking about how the PC was going to put the console out of business. Then people argued that the PlayStation and xBox were going to put Nintendo under because they were falling behind. Nintendo’s true value has always been creating games that are quick-to-be-learned and fun to play and of course the Wii has exploited that to great success. So kudos, I guess, for Forbes calling the GameCube a failure early on, but they haven’t earned the title of prescient just yet.

Anyhow, reading the article, you might believe that Sony (or at least Sony’s gaming division) and Nintendo are in the primarily portable game business. Or that portable gaming will supplant traditional consoles. This is typical Apple-booster thinking, of course. If Apple does it, it’s important. If Apple doesn’t, it’s irrelevant. Just as some gomers are congratulating themselves for being so bold as to predict that people are going to trade in their PCs for smartphones, and yesteryear congratulated themselves for boldly predicting that the PC was going to replace the gaming console, is the new prediction that people are going to trade in playing their game consoles on their 30″ LCD screens and surround sound for $2 games on a 4″ monitor because the iPhone is just that awesome?

Caufield doesn’t say that (and may not think it), but I do have to wonder if that’s where this is going. Until Apple TV lets people play games. Then consoles will become important again.