@capnrob: I'm gonna disagree. I think that Idoru was MUCH stronger than any of the Bigend books. The Bridge Trilogy might have aged really badly, and All Tomorrow's Parties is the worst offender in terms of Gibson's habit of ending trilogies with a whimper (and something magically turning up in the last twenty pages,…

Honestly I thought it was a very weak book. It's got most of the problems that the other Bigend books have (repetitive structure, too much /and then/ storytelling, recycling the C-Plot from Count Zero) but the additional problem of having a plot that, well, just seems stupid. There's honestly no compelling reason for…

I haven't found Gibson to be terribly interesting in ages. The problem with the Bigend trilogy is that it reproduces the C-Plot to Count Zero in the first two books and then does a variation on it in the third.

@Ursus-Veritas: Why would anyone panic? Lady Gaga is amazing.

EXTRA EXTRA: YOUNG PEOPLE RELATE TO NARRATIVES ABOUT BEING POWERLESS IN THE FACE OF INSTITUTIONS, BEARS SHIT IN WOODS

Is this ad copy? Because it scans like ad copy.

@Jim81Jim: There's a lot of meta-data analysis on the APA site about it. There's a plain language summary here: [www.apa.org] that debunks most of the counter-arguments. The tl;dr of it is that more research is needed to differentiate video games from other violent media and to deal with whether or not the effect is…

@Jim81Jim: You're right we shouldn't pay any attention to the growing body of scientific evidence that links repeated consumption of video games and/or other violent media to increases in aggression that persist longer than they would if it were merely emotional arousal.

@EndangeredRed: If they were serious about not being evil, they never would have colluded with the Chinese government on the censorship issue. Nor would they have the worst privacy rating of any company listed in Privacy International's 2007 privacy report or engage in monopolistic business practices.

I have to say that I agree with LeGuin. The settlement being opt-out sets a dangerous precedent. Copyright law might need reform, but the goonish, linux neckbeard position of utterly destroying it to replace it with a culture run on smiles, happiness and linux distributions is even more idiotic and repugnant than the…

Voting for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Best Wii game so far, one of the few to actually use the console's controller in an intuitive way, plus it's one of the best narrative experiences I've had all year.

@metaslugx: Actually you haven't addressed my original argument in ages because you refuse to actually read the thing I linked, so whatever man.

@metaslugx: Sorry man, It's just kind of ridiculous because your whole economic and political philosophy is predicated on the belief that human beings are predominantly rational or individualistic when that is most definitely not the case. So it's kind of like arguing physics with someone who believes in Luminiferous…

@metaslugx: Like an economic libertarian? Because if so LOL.

@metaslugx: So one study trumps years of meta-analysis? I don't buy it, sorry. That's not how the social sciences work. The whole reason we have meta-analysis in the social sciences is that outlying studies do occur and it's important to understand consensus of research and identify structural weaknesses like…

@NotGodot: Also before anyone jumps all over him for citing himself, or making claims that are related to quality of methodology rather than raw data, a bunch of the papers he's citing are meta-analysis.

@xot:

@StarDrowned: You can keep saying that all you want but it doesn't change the APA consensus. Seriously, the foremost body of psychological researchers in the US back the conclusion that violent video games encourage violence.

@metaslugx: Tell that to the APA, because they disagree, and frankly they'd be the ones to know.