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Crow T. Trollbot

Either:

Immunize your kids! Explain to them that porn is wrong, and that they should avoid it, and have the kind of relationship with them where they'll listen to you and respect you. Or explain to them why you think they aren't ready for it, but that you realize they'll have to see it eventually. Or just teach them to be a decent person, and not to trust strangers, especially pedophiles.

Oh, and by the time they hit 13 or so it's really too late to do anything except that last one. By the time they hit 13, they will have porn if they want it, and they will want it.

Or:

Read The Fucking Manual! Get involved. Don't let your kids buy a device until you have a deep understanding of how it can be used, and do the research. If you bought your kid a DS or cell phone without knowing it can chat, it is not Nintendo's fault, it is your fault.

Penny arcade makes a good point here:

Does your house have windows? Are these windows made of glass? Look how easy it is for me to peer inside.

It's just so scary to think that people can see through transparent objects. We knew that we could see out, but we didn't realize how easy it was to look in.

These are the people for which we have invented the cluebat. It's like buying your kid a BB gun to go play Cowboys & Indians with, and then blaming the toy company when the kid blows his eye out. It's not their fault, and it actually can be a safe toy, but you should've known the risks, and so should your kid. And if you don't like the risk, buy him a squirt gun instead.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/09

That's a good point. However, I wonder if this group has launched similar "porn-accessible" awareness campaigns for cell phones. Although a lot of conservative groups view technology distastefully in general, many seem particularly against video games. I wouldn't be surprised if they give the Wii or the "Playstation Pornable" (PSP) a worse rap than browser-enabled phones.

The Penny Arcade comic you're referring to is this one (02/09/2007).

Talking of Penny Arcade:-
"The Same As It Ever Was".

Don't forget the Jewel crusted chalice!

I know Sony-haters like to think that the fact that they saw a console or two on the store shelves is indicative of something

What's this "M$" you speak of?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020722h. gif

Sooner or later it's going to be your torso, unless you keep buying product. I didn't want to have to do this, but as nobody seems tyo be getting the joke

I guess they aren't the worst format ever invented, but they don't really fit anywhere. They're not quite good enough for professional use, but they were too expensive and user-unfriendly for recreational use. Most people can't stand the interface of minidisc players. Some players made it really hard to work out how to even start a recording.

The other problem was that to get the audio off the device onto your computer, you had to play back the content in real-time. I don't know of anyone who had a minidisc drive in their computer which could read the disc as data. Same for transferring audio from the computer to disc. May as well use a proper DAT tape if you have to do that.

The blank discs were also expensive, and when they did introduce the "Net MD" that could connect to a computer, the Sony software sucked, and it was full of proprietary formats.

Compare to the CD - cheap, ubiquitous, and you can rip or burn an entire CD in minutes - which was standards-compliant and could be used almost anywhere. Plus it has better audio quality.

Which is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format. It wasa obvious that hard drives and flash memory was the future - and they introduced a new optical audio disc right at the end of the optical audio disc's popularity and usefulness. Kind of like someone releasing a new line of 5.25" floppy disk drives with improved storage, at the same time as almost everybody had moved to 3.5" floppies.

Why didn't Sony just release their own "iPod" instead? They could have made a "pro" line of HD-based players that had professional quality audio inputs for recording, and a "consumer" line focused on playback, portability and fashion.

They did

The story is actually that someone's finally doing something to defuse, well, what Penny Arcade called the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. (Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.) There are a lot of people who did just that: took the supposed anonymity of the internet as just an oportunity to harrass, defame, cause grief, etc.

It can be a lot of damage even if you're not an "ImportantPerson(TM)", because we live in an age where bosses google their employees, neighbours google each other, and the village gossip googles the whole freakin' village for some gossip material. We're also in an age where people might glue posters to your door or drive you out of town because they found someone else by the same name rumoured to be a sex offender in some anonymous blog, or as was once the case because they were too stupid to know what "paeditrician" means. (It's a kind of doctor, not a paedophile.) We also live in an age of hypocrisy where someone might hold some rumour against you, not because they believe it, not because they are any better, but because it doesn't fit their bullshit PR corporate image.

So basically carpet bombing the internet, Wikipedia included, with bits of defamation like "JohnTurner admitted in 2007 that he was trying hard to overcome his kiddy porn addiction" or "JohnTurner said he stopped beating his wife nowadays" or "see JohnTurner's guide to surfing for porn undetected at work and using the corporate appserver as a warez site. Excellent reading." can cause a lot of harm even if you're not some celebrity.

E.g., the HR drone for your next job googles you, they don't have the time or the inclination to do a thorough checking. Most of what everyone does at all stages is actually looking for some excuse, any excuse, no matter how lame, to discard as many candidates as possible. It can be just because they didn't like your email provider, or it can be literally by numerology or tarot. (Don't laugh, it's not a joke, there _are_ companies which use numerology or tarot to thin out the candidates pool. Assign a number to each letter in your name, sum them up, sum the digits up until you get a single digit, see if it matches the sum for the company name. If not, your CV goes directly into the garbage bin.) The underlying assumption is that you're just yet another dime-a-dozen peon in a sea of perfectly replaceable and interchangeable peons. PHBs love that assumption. So noone's going to do a thorough checking just for you, see the context, see if such a guide to surfing for porn actually exists anywhere, etc. They'll just google until something bad comes up, then stop.

And it's maybe not a bad thing that someone is suing such a fuckwad and proving once again that anonymity isn't as granted as people think. Sure, noone will bother getting your name out of the ISP if you just posted on Slashdot during work hours, but if you take the step to actively harrass and defame someone, or break any other law, all that anonymity may well be harder to maintain than just being behind a modem. For a lot of people it might just take the essential component out of that greater internet fuckwad recipe. It may even be a good thing.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/01

VAGiNA?

Gabe,

Your news post about the kids and the homeless man yesterday made me sick to my stomach, before I even read the CNN article. I knew what it was going to be about before even reading the article. It was not the article itself, or even your post that made me sick, it was the fact that I know this boy. Or, rather that I could be considered one of the "parents" of this boy.

The boy's father and I have been together for almost seven years, and I had what I guess could be called a "stepmother" relationship with the kid. To say that living with this kid was hell would be a complete understatement.

I don't think I have ever actively hated anyone in my entire life, but this kid just makes my blood boil.

As I write this, my teeth are clenched, my hands are shaking, and my whole body is seething with the hatred I feel for this kid and what he has done. Seeing the article brings back all the horrible memories from when he lived with us.

He was constantly in trouble in school, with the cops, with us, with his mother, and with anyone else who was an authority figure. Not a week went by that the school or the cops wouldn't call us for something. His attitude was basically "fuck you, I don't have to listen to you" said with a shrug.

We tried absolutely everything we could think of to get him to behave like a normal human being... we tried groundings, negative reinforcement / punishment, positive reinforcement, counseling, and anything and everything the counselors suggested. We tried to get him interested and involved in extracurricular activities, like hockey, drama, music, art, anything, but he got himself kicked out of every group he was in with his "make me" attitude. When we would ground him, we took away everything. No TV, no computer, no phone, no leaving the house, no snacks or junk food.... Everything. When he was grounded, he was only allowed to sit in his room and read or draw. He was actually a pretty good artist, and we tried to encourage him to spend his time working with his talent. He would just sit there and take it... the groundings had absolutely no affect on him at all. Most of the time, he didn't even remember why he was being grounded. At the end of it, we would ask him if it was worth it to have everything taken away in exchange for what he did... he usually just shrugged. He could be grounded for weeks, or a month at a time, and then the very next day would do something to get back in trouble again. Most kids get grounded or punished a couple of times, and then they want to avoid having to go through it again... not this kid, nothing seemed to phase him.

And we're not talking the usual teenager stuff, like coming home late, or refusing to do the dishes. We're talking stealing cars, setting fires, drinking, getting picked up for drugs, beating up handicapped kids at school (yes, really) stealing things out of our house... all with this "I'll do whatever the fuck I want" attitude.

We had absolutely no idea what else we could do. We already had him in counseling, and we did everything the counselors suggested. We tried rewarding his good behavior (what little there was) to try to get him to see that when he behaves like a normal human being, things are good and people enjoy being around him. Nothing phased him at all.

Then, things took an even worse turn when he decided that whenever he didn't get his way, or we did something he didn't like, he told his counselors and teachers that we were abusing him. (Never happened.) And for some inexplicable reason, everybody believed him. I understand that child abuse is a very serious situation, and that they have to take every possible case seriously, but this was clearly a case of him manipulating people to get what he wanted. We had people from the school, cops, and social services over at our ho

Yeah, ads in games... http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/19

Which version is that?

They have dictionaries for a reason. It's not his job to tell you what a word that's been around 70 years means. There's a statute of limitations on these things.

I heard that Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, can't have an orgasm unless he kills a dog.

That's just what I heard somewhere

Did you get your $1200 from Sony yet?

Don't feel bad if you didn't - you're not the only person waiting...

Sony Execs say some hilarious things sometimes.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/10

You don't even need to go into the more exotic games with procedural content- plenty of conventional games have branching storylines, tremendously time consuming side quests, and mutually exclusive material that would require a very large number of 50+ hour playthroughs to fully explore. And what about games that add content after release? Games like World of Warcraft and Eve are constantly adding official content after release, it would be impossible to fully review them until after it stops being possible to play them.
This isn't even touching on user created material. The ESRB seems to have no problem with retroactively changing its rating based on users modifications of the game if it gets enough press (hot coffee and to a lesser degree Oblivions nude textures), if you include everything your game could possibly be, you might as well just give up and rate every game as M, because someone, somewhere will eventually figure out how to replace one of your textures with some porn.
This is what happens when people try to legislate things they don't understand. The ESRB may not be great, but at least it's done inside the industry by people who have some idea what they're dealing with. If the FTC gets involved, things will get much, much worse.
I am reminded of a penny arcade strip:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/02/14

I believe this pretty much covers how the bill is expected to work.

There's a serious shortage of these systems, dispite the price.

Dude, haven't you heard? There's no PS3 shortage.

At least he's not offering $1000 per site hacked, unlike the shmuck who offered a $1,200 bounty on every unsold PS3.

=Smidge=

"I would not go so far as to say that (what is known as) the hardcore sustain the entire industry, but what Sony is learning is that they do catalyze it - they make livable the period between when a platform is released and when it becomes a mainstream proposition. These are the people that they are taking for granted. Let's see how far it gets them"

Lost Garden: Nintendo's Genre Innovation Strategy

Tycho of Penny Arcade called it the "probably the most interesting article I've ever read.". That article is longer than TFA, but definitely worth reading and digesting.

When questioned on why PS3s were sitting on store shelves instead of on entertainment center shelves, Tretton responded with "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than a few minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." He continues, "I can get any retail buyer on the phone with you and get them to verify that not a single retail location in America where there's a PlayStation 3 on the shelf for sale. They've all been sold in a matter of minutes."

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/10

I don't know what (google cache) you're talking about. (second link has a great pic below the PA comic.)

Isn't that the same Sony that declared, and I quote: "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it."

Penny Arcade strip

Who would have thought that reality would need defenders?

They need to recoup the money that Jack Tretton lost :
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070210.j pg
http://kotaku.com/gaming/kotaku-magu/kotaku-magu-t retton-offers-to-buy-unsold-ps3s-for-1200-235204.p hp

This coming from the same company that owes me $9,600 for all the PS3's at my local walmart! source

I present to you: John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

This could be useful for silencing those cuntbags with an annoying robot-like voice.

Pfft. Everyone knows that girls want RAM.

They offer graphic DVDs of animal fights as well.

So what? If the fight itself was legal (maybe it was recorded in a foreign country), and the film itself is legal (because of freedom of expression), then they're doing nothing wrong.

This crap is what happens when everyone has been drumming up mass hysteria of Think-of-the-children 24/7. Read any newspaper, watch any channel on TV and you will get a couple of makenews items related to the same awesome phenomenon. Why is everyone surprised that people are actually losing track of why such a law seemed like a good thing initially? This is inevitable with everything which is started with a emotional reason rather than a logical one - sooner or later the reason is forgotten and everyone blindly follows the 'consequence' part of the law. I bet that if some angry lawmakers were able to pass a law back then which asked for public molesting/raping of the child molesters/rapists then you would be reading about how the court has decided a date for public stripping and molesting of those two kids because of some bullshit way they could have hurt themselves in some possible future.

This is all the more disgusting because majority of the media is a part of the hysteria campaign. You can bitch about it as much as you want but as long as no one wants to take a public stand against such bullshit nothing will change.

This crap is what happens when everyone has been drumming up mass hysteria of Think-of-the-children 24/7. Read any newspaper, watch any channel on TV and you will get a couple of makenews items related to the same awesome phenomenon. Why is everyone surprised that people are actually losing track of why such a law seemed like a good thing initially? This is inevitable with everything which is started with a emotional reason rather than a logical one - sooner or later the reason is forgotten and everyone blindly follows the 'consequence' part of the law. I bet that if some angry lawmakers were able to pass a law back then which asked for public molesting/raping of the child molesters/rapists then you would be reading about how the court has decided a date for public stripping and molesting of those two kids because of some bullshit way they could have hurt themselves in some possible future.

This is all the more disgusting because majority of the media is a part of the hysteria campaign. You can bitch about it as much as you want but as long as no one wants to take a public stand against such bullshit nothing will change.

You should read Tycho's thoughts on Hotel Dusk. It starts at the second paragraph.

Hotel Dusk is also getting good reviews at amazon.(that's an associates link-- if you feel like picking it up and want to throw a little something my way in the process, thanks in advance.)

Tycho has a few comments on the game that may be of use in deciding if you are interested in picking it up.

Which give even more credence to this

Prick.

It's possible that Viacom will see the slashdot story and will not send future takedowns for this video.

It's possible that readers of this story have also gotten videos taken down unfairly but only now realize they aren't isolated cases.

It's possible readers will contribute money to legal defense funds for this case or others like it.

It's possible that in a free society that one method of redressing wrongs is to bring attention to those wrongs to a wider audience.

It's possible that the public image of Viacom will be so damaged that they will be more careful about takedown notices in the future.

It's possible that in a society with a free press the government will move to restrain the actions of corporations that are being abusive, but only when the outcry has reached a sufficient level.

when buying and selling are controlled by legislatures, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.

oops you probably meant this one

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/02

Who needs freedom when there's just got so many cool options?

Who needs freedom when there's just got so many cool options?

"Moral Kombat" - comic 5 Jan 2007.

"Obviously he [Jack Thompson] didn't mention anything to the police department about his "Modest proposal" in which he asks that a game be developed in which players urinate on peoples brains and murder kids who work at game stores. He never mentions that he offered ten thousand dollars to charity and then said it was just "satire." He doesn't tell the police chief that Jerry and I just donated the ten thousand for him. I wonder why he left that part out?" - Penny Arcade

Tshirts > Gaming > I Hate Jack Thompson...
Virtually every living creature hates Jack Thompson, professional scold and slavering ambulance chaser. Squirrels, policemen, sea captains, fruit bats... - black t-shirt

"Moral Kombat" - comic 5 Jan 2007.

"Obviously he [Jack Thompson] didn't mention anything to the police department about his "Modest proposal" in which he asks that a game be developed in which players urinate on peoples brains and murder kids who work at game stores. He never mentions that he offered ten thousand dollars to charity and then said it was just "satire." He doesn't tell the police chief that Jerry and I just donated the ten thousand for him. I wonder why he left that part out?" - Penny Arcade

Tshirts > Gaming > I Hate Jack Thompson...
Virtually every living creature hates Jack Thompson, professional scold and slavering ambulance chaser. Squirrels, policemen, sea captains, fruit bats... - black t-shirt

...which version of Vista are we talking about?

I was curious about that too; the leaky cauldron fan site holds that it's the 10th anniversary of the pub date of book 1.

Then, of course, I felt a bit ashamed for going to look up the rationale of the release date. Put me in mind of a certain penny arcade cartoon.