Clover sold poorly because it was mediocre. I tried the demo when I saw Jones's comments earlier, and I doubt that any marketing could have persuaded me to buy it.

The best part was the comically ham-handed political message. (I recommended the demo to friends for this reason, but I don't think any of them bought it either.) This same small-mindedness seems to have inspired Jones's whine campaign, blaming other people's software for his team's failure. Even this clever strategy to get free advertising probably won't help much, because the product can't stand on its own.

There's no need for that because this decision isn't what Mark says it is. This isn't a censorship case, this is an administrative law (law governing agencies like the FCC, FDA, etc.) case. The issue in this case is whether the FCC erred in applying a law banning obscene language over the airwaves, not whether the law itself is constitutional. Agencies like the FCC are traditionally given a lot of deference by the courts, and their decisions are only overturned when they are "arbitrary" or "capricious." The argument against the FCC here is that it should have provided more of a justification for changing its policy regarding "fleeting expletives," which Scalia rejects, in keeping with that tradition.

Scalia's opinion doesn't address the constitutionality of the FCC's censorship at all, because, based on his ruling, the case is remanded, which means here that he's sending it back to a lower court to deal with the potential First Amendment issues before the Supreme Court gets to look at the case again. Additionally, a separate opinion by Thomas suggests that Thomas thinks the rule against expletives is unconstitutional. If all four dissenters also believe that, then the Supreme Court would probably declare the FCC's censorship authority unconstitutional if the case ever comes back to it.

How can something be unsurprisingly disappointing?

streaming to the mooooooooooooon

i would rent all of them

I'd put fives in the bag. That way, anywhere I'd go, I would have a nearly unlimited supply. A nearly unlimited supply of fives.

I like Joystiq, but I don't read it for Geopolitics Comedy Hour. Even if the political humor were better, it's not something I want to see here. If we give the writers feedback about what we do and don't like, they can use that information to make the site better.

So for instance, if I'm out running and injure my ankle, I shouldn't see a doctor because someone in Africa is sick and dying? If people acted like that, life would be worse everywhere.

The engine of productivity that creates the wealth that allows us these excesses also benefits the impoverished people of the world, both directly in the form of resources spent on charity and indirectly in the form of technological advances that they can also use.

An interesting fact about Africa is that the current standard of living there is as bad as it is as a result of medical technology. The things that used to easily kill people, such as common diseases or undernourishment, are now survivable thanks to Western medicine. Instead of dying, these people go on living, but with an unprecedentedly bad quality of life. Still, as long as they are alive, there's the potential to escape poverty and its accompanying miseries.

To respond to Christopher Grant's reply, being criticized by both sides doesn't mean you're doing good journalism. I vote Republican, but I'd oppose hit pieces like this against, for example, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, just as much as I oppose ones like this. The problem with this piece isn't that it's taking "my" politicians to task but that its argumentation is shoddy. Videogame regulation has no more to do with waterboarding, which I and many others don't consider to be torture, as it does with tax policy or any other hot-button issue. If you feel like publishing an article criticizing Hillary Clinton for pandering about videogames when she could be working to stop the AMT from making lots of middle-income families pay unfairly high taxes, I'd be happy to register my disapproval of that one too.

This isn't the place for political hit pieces, especially ones as poorly written and one-sided as this. Interrogation practices and the culture wars are separate issues, and I get the impression that the point of this non sequitur was just to shoehorn this rant into a blog where it doesn't belong.

Not to mention that by singling out Republicans, one would infer that Democrats aren't equally guilty of scapegoating videogames. Until the voting public punishes the politicians who take these potshots, both parties will keep at it.