The first post to the Red Cross article is: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176887&cid=14682756

And it gets a score +5: Insightful, what for? for saying this about the Red Cross:

Hard to defend the trademark...

That'll be an interesting trademark to defend:

1. Its been used in games for two decades now with nary a lawsuit. You have to actually defend a trademark to keep it.
2. The developers used it in the first place because they routinely saw the symbol in military movies and TV shows emblazoned on the medical jeeps.
3. Its a symmetrical red plus-sign on a white background. I'm sure its possible to create a more generic symbol but I can't think of any off hand.

So, here's the problem with this comment, and the failure of the slashdot moderation system.

It's *WRONG*. The Red Cross and other protected symbols are a matter of international law, specifically the Geneva Convention. It has nothing to do with TRADEMARK, it has to do with the necessity to setup an Internationally Recognized Symbol that can be trusted to be authentic and actual, that can be used to identify those that are neutral to a conflict.

Next thing you know, someone is going to get rated +5: Informative for saying that "SOS" is protected by copyright law, or somethings stupid like that.

Unfortunately, there's no solution to this problem. You can't actually spam enough truth into a slashdot article to get it back to the truth once it's running off on a tangential falsehood, and the moderators, and people with moderation points are generally going to apply them where their lay opinion drives them to put it.

It should be noted that this is completely different from the Wikimedia principle, where people are only driven to provide input when they know a fact to be wrong, or believe a fact is correct enough to place into the article. You don't get crackpot arguments over tangential falsehoods, because there are more people ready to correct information than there are people unintentionally misleading people.

It's still frustrating, because when the whole slashdot crowd is chattering about some stupid wrong prospective, no one can make our your yelling that says "HEY! YOU'RE ALL RETARDED AND HAVE IT WRONG." Grr....

I don't know who wrote this, but I got it from Scott Kurtz at http://www.pvponline.com/

10 reasons Gay Marriage is wrong:

1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Of course MH42 raises point 6, and maintains its validity. I personally find that position as absurd as the author of the rest of the jokes. This is primarily the reason why I posted this journal.

Get some discussion going on.

Meh, I just thought I'd post my first journal.

Post a comment if you read this.