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Australian Counter Strike Shooters
jaronc writes "News.com.au are reporting an Australian court has been told that two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike' shot and killed a man during a Sydney home invasion in 2002. Let the blaming begin......"
At least it wasn't a GTA re-enactment, that woulda been much uglier... unless of course the CTs didn't difuse the bomb.
You're nothing; like me.
just as Australia allowed HL2 to be released...hope this doesn't hurt future games...
So this means they were wearing either army fatigues or a shirt with glasses. I fail to see how that's related specifically to CS, unless they went around screaming out "fire in the hole" and "it's gonna blow!".
Even assuming that they became unhinged from playing too much CS, doesn't mean that we should ban it. People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...
(This is still tragic, however, and I don't intend to lessen the tragedy.)
www.fearthecow.net
they think that violence can be blamed on videogames
as if before videogames, there were no violence
the concept also undermines personal accountability: "the devil made me do it"
if you pick up a gun and shoot someone in real life, you are 100% to blame, it doesn't matter if you have been playing fps games for 10 months straight, it just plain doesn't matter
if you believe in the concept of personal accountability, you can not blame the media for anything
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Some guys dressed as the Mario Brothers come to fix the pipes.
Let the blaming begin.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
How can you assume that they were dressed up as counterstrike terrorists/counter-terrorists? Dressing up as Goblez from Final Fantasy IV is one thing, but a terrorist/counter-terrorist is a common real-life/movies/video games thing, and it can't be narrowed down to just Counterstrike.
It doesn't say what gun they used to shoot people, does anyone know?
If the accused had dressed up as characters from the Clue(TM) boardgame, would boardgames be blamed, and why or why not?
~UP
Eat the Path.
Video games really are responsible for making the tiny majority of people without sufficient grip on reality to not go out and shoot people, go out and shoot people!
How the hell did they get weapons though? It's not like you can walk into a shop and press 'b', and i'm sure that l33t h4x0rz1ng the shopkeeper is gonna get you funny looks and nothing more.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
They know they were dressed up as characters from Counter-Strike because the one guy kept yelling at the other guy, "Stop team flashing! Ugh! Everybody type vote 3847 in console!"
Well, they looked like characters from a million other games too. The article does not mention if they were CT's or T's. Did they carry AK's. Put on a green army jacket and a gun and you quickly look like a character from many games. idiots
Except that the killers were dressed as Mario and Luigi.
...were they lame enough to use the AWP or the riot shield?
--Use ant to make
Art imitating life imitating art...
Counterstrike 'characters' are just people dressed in common attire that you would most likely see someone on a killing spree wearing...
Now did these guys play counterstrike?
As for let the blaming begin It amazes me how quick people are to strike down something they have no comprehension of.
For one thing, you strike down all media blame of computer games prompting violent behaviour (and films etc) and you simply pass it off as 1+1=3 in thier minds because you play violent games and you don't murder people.
That doesn't mean to say there is or isn't a connection, and there are no conclusive studies that some people who are a little socially eclipsed that are affected by continuous and sporting presentation of killing.
Now I am not saying either way, but I am not sarcastically throwing down the gauntlet for possible ridicule either.
These people must have been capable of this murder prior, and the fact that somehow (I do not know how, unless they jumped aorund whilst firing saying "I pwn you b1tch3s!" like most server players - or used an aim bot) the relationship between clothing attire and a computer game (shakey to me) just muddies the fact that someone got shot, and what was the motive for these people.
One day people might start trying to use computer games as a defence... or worse, it may be the cause, we do not know yet, but the portrayal of real violence and death in italy (see Gladitor flick) is sickening, and we are on the verge of that popularisation of gore and death (see Bad Boys 2, which was a shit aweful film for gratuitous violence, to an almost comedic extent)
I actually had flinching urges to try car jacking after playing GTA2 for 48 hours solid (better than studying at the time). Maybe I am weak.
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Ah, so you see guys like this only in computer games like CS?
I don't see where the game comes in. If one wants to play the blamegame, why not blame a movie or a book, for instance?
The owls are not what they seem
So we all knew this was coming... TERRORISTS WIN!
Oh my good, they were wearing pants, boots and a shirt!
(Counter-Strike outfits have nothing-particular except that they look pretty similar to what you can find in reality.)
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
This is a really lame post. The man dressed as a CS character was a serial home invader, not someone acting out a CS scenario. The CS angle was not raised at trial and nobody is blaming it on CS. Must be an awfully slow newsday for Slashdot.
I blame Satan. Granted I do blame him for most things. That guy's an asshat.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I didn't realise Counter Strike uniforms had those wide bimmed hats with the corks on strings.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I wonder, who overplayed CS: two guys, dressed like freaks and shooting at people, or those who identified them as CS characters?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
You might want to read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Lepine
Maybe it was just a rumor, but I do remember hearing reports of kids jumping on their cats and wondering why they didn't respawn after leaving and reentering the room....
Of course, these reports were back in the early 90s when there were fewer FPSs to blame everything on.
but the portrayal of real violence and death in italy (see Gladitor flick) is sickening
The gladiatoral matches that were common entertainment were attrocious, and the glamourisation of all fighting sports, and by my reckoning the over violent nature of Hollywood (I mean, punisher is a marvel comic, yes comics are violent... but I found the violence in that film too graphic for an audience that would comprise of people who think, oh another comic>screen movie, like spiderman I bet..) I am not saying we should censor it for those people who want to see it, but I was mildly irratated that the movie houses wanted to put so much graphic content in that movie.
I hope the case is made. (see bad boys 2, after bad boys 1, a fairly decent flick, I was quite annoyed that the film went OTT with graphic violence)
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The problem on the surface is obviously the game itself, though I have doubts as to the importance of putting so much starch in your clothes that you look like a character in CS.
The games put the ideas in the head. The games provide a sort of desensitization to the violence. The games do not provide a real penalty in losing.
That said, the effect of the violent games, while undoubtedly unwholesome and mentally unhealthy, is largely overstated and likely only the most miniscule part of the reason this guy went on his murder spree.
Most people are not affected adversely, in any serious way, by these violent games. Social adjustment, upbringing, as well as other factors like mental stability at a chemical level protect most people from the violent imagery and its deleterious effects on the psyche.
However, for those who have had bad social experiences (social outcasts like Klebold and Harris), bad upbringing (this guy), or a history of mental illness (this guy again) are ripe for the kind of psychological damage that a violent game can do.
The difference between a game and news, which is always brought up by opponents to this kind of comparison, is that the news is passive. Something bad happened to someone else, no matter how gory or evil it may be. A game, though, requires that the player carry out the action themselves. It is the difference between seeing and doing. A soldier may watch another man die by his friend's gun, but his experience will be wholly different when he watches that a man die from his own gun.
I don't doubt that there are other factors involved here. I also don't think that such games ought to be outlawed, though some certainly do think their penalty outweighs any benefits of having such a game. However I do think that it is important not to look away from these games as having a dangerous effect on certain elements in society who are ill-equipped to handle the violent imagery inherent in such games.
Hmmm, hasn't this kind of behavior happened pre-video games? It's convenient for the media to blame a scapegoat (video games, France, crack babies, etc) than to actually have an informed factual discussion of the underlying issues.
I know the next time an orange hopping creature with a horn nose gets eaten by a snake, I'm blaming Qbert.
Lesson of the day, dont play counter strike, it kills.
is from Papua New Guinea.
News from down under...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I actually wrote a paper on this subject for an english class freshmen year and when you actually look at the percentage of crimes mimicing video games vs. total number of people playing these games, the percentage is very shitty. I don't have the paper on me but when I say the percentage was shitty, we're talking chances of getting hit by lightning shitty. I also found that studies conducted on the affect of violent games towards creating agression weren't very convincing. In some of them they would have you play a game for 15 minutes and then make you stop. I'd get kinda pissed too, wouldn't you? The bottom line is that when it comes to blaming people's actions on video games, there is hardly any evidence to support it, let alone anything even remotely compelling.
Rumor has it he was camping.
In criminal law the lawyers will use whatever they can to influence the jury. What is said in court is used to influence and emotive plays are stock in trade. Frankly this brings nothing new except another legal gambit to light.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Some posters are doubting whether the alleged perps were really dressed specifically as CS characters, and not as generic swat team members or terrorists. I'd give them the benefit of a doubt for the time being, but keep in mind that just because the linked article didn't say what the supporting evidence is doesn't mean there isn't any.
There is one small clue, however. Look at his name. Is Sophear Em really his birth name?
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
I heard that there's a bunch of people who after playing too much "America's Army", stormed through this country in the middle east, killing thousands of people for nothing more than oil!
Forget Video Games. The american military causes violence, let's ban that instead.
Looks like a plain case of open murder.
Too bad about the wife. Her husband was murdered and she became a widow.
The 'Counterstrike' angle was just used by the killer(s) as a disguise.
Some people cannot or will not separate reality from virtual reality in video games.
Yeah, such games can be (great) stress relievers but when you start feeling compulsion to do deadly stuff from the games in 'real life', you should think about stopping playing that particular game and play something more abstract like the (in)famous game TETRIS where nothing is killed or hurt in the game. Other alternatives would be non-violent sports games like golf, or board games. I would suggest pinball games but most of those have violent content or themes in them--however small.
Again, it is all left up to individual and what they want to do in such situations--I am only making non-violent suggestions.
PS: I am surprised the court case is still ongoing nearly nearly 3 years after crime.
I thought Australia was supposed to be some kind of gunless utopia.
Where'd they get the guns to do this?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Wow, perfect article. Everybody can righteously rant about how there is absolutely no evidence that violent games affect people or kids. Mod points for everyone!
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This will always bother me. Society looks for scapegoats responsible for the violence such as TV, Movies, and how video games. Perhaps it's time we look the perpetrators in the eye, in this case, a couple of people one of who is said to be an adult dressed up as elite commands from Counter Strike, and say, "Dude, you're fucked up". Someone who attempts to fly off a building because they got too caught up in a
Dungeon and Dragons style adventure is fucked up. Someone who drives around in a swamp and tries to jump over cop cars with a trunk load of moonshine is fucked up. I guess we could take a moment to gasp at the fact that they lacked any sort of imagination to do something very stupid but it doesn't change the fact that they are a threat to others and likely would have been a threat anyway. What's next, dressing up like a bus driver to escape accountability for domeic violence?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Well because
tv makes people kill people.
video games make people kill people.
rap music makes people kill people.
the only thing that is safe for our children is books... on something completely unreleated: has anyone read that book by Tom Clancy were that one guy crashed that plane into the whitehouse? that so cool and impossible to emulate.
it was good luck that they dressed as counter-strikers, it will be much easier to prove they were "extremely" premeditated in their crime. counter-strike should get credit for help nailing these kooks not blamed for corrupting an already crazed couple of human beings.
They must have been dressed as 'terorists' :P
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
There's not enough information in this article to make any conclusion. It seems nothing more than sensationalized reporting. Australians seem to fear video games more than most, having banned manhunt, Postal 2 and others. This is just to inspire fear in the public and unite them against a non-enemy (something that should have a regulatory eye kept on it, but nothing to be banned)
The most outrageous thing about this article was that it is given this much attention before the facts are apparent.
A man who was dressed like Kerry killed someone. Now the government examines if the Democrats should be forbidden.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And? The same could be said about the Bible or Quran, for instance. It is also important not to look away from these books as having a dangerous effect on certain elements in society who are ill-equipped to handle the violent imagery inherent in such books.
The owls are not what they seem
I think what many people fail to see here, is that what violent games create and feed is a culture of violence. You say its sport? Entertainment? Perhaps... But ultimatly, how does a game where you imitate the actions of a commando going for the "kill" help our society be a healthy, happier place? Do games like CS/DoomIII/Unreal etc, contribute?
/. readers are gamers. But surely there must be something true in the above to some of us here
Yes, this is an anon post. So flame/mod down at will because I am sure a great deal of
Its more likely a tactical move by the defence in setting things up.... later on when it goes to trial they'll can the game as an excuse..... In years gone by people just used to claim insanity.....
I mean.... they didn't even tag the ground!!!
sig's are for weenies
... can only be blamed on the influence of the "video-game", Counter-Strike.
(well, somebody was gonna say it.)
These kids today and their make-out parties... grumble... mutter... grumble...
Pierre, left alone to do his homework, got his father's rifle and went to the lounge to watch "Shrek". After a while he loaded four cartridges into the gun.
does the violent movie turn a normal guy into a killer?
or does the violent movie placate the violent tendencies in us all?
does the pornography turn the normal guy into a rapist?
or does pornography take antisocial urges and empty them in a magazine instead of a real woman?
so i take your "media influences" and throw it right back at you: if media does influence, then it takes our violent and antisocial sexual urges and provides a harmless outlet for them
even if, even if you somehow show me some normal guy who shoots someone because of a videogame or a movie, which i don't even believe, i can still show you ten guys who would be shooting real people if they weren't doing it in a videogame
so you want a more peaceful society?
more pornography and violent videogames- I AM NOT JOKING!
human nature is not a picture of innocence that media comes along and warps... human nature is a seething cauldron of sex and violence that media placates
got it?
if you honestly believe plays ANY hands in making people violent or sexually depraved, then you are trying to tell me that before media: before videogames, movies, records, books... that we were somehow peaceful and loving
bullshit!
violent movies and videogames and pornography prevents thousands of murders and rapes every year
i sincerely, wholeheartedly believe that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's cut books and Holywood movies, they promote this kind of outfit.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
I was arrested for dropping heavy objects off a building. I had a perfect stack going and all I had to do was drop this one last girder. That was when the blue men with guns broke down my barricade on the roof door and were quite rough with me.
every day, theres hundreds of lethal incidents worldwide, caused by people under alcohol influence
shouldnt it be banned first then?
After the incident, one of the men shot the other in the foot, at which point the second called him a "f**king n00b teamkiller" and tried to ban his IP.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
As Goldie Lookin Chain sing... ;-)
If they hadn't spray tagged the walls "Pwn3d by Sophear" :-)
No shit let the blaming begin! Could someone please tell me how this is NOT at least influenced by CounterStrike?
...They won't respawn.
This is sure to draw a lot of personal responsibility nuts out of the woodwork. Political and ideological dogma compels them to ridicule even the most reasonable doubts or concerns about the glorification of excessive violence in entertainment. Because to them, principle is everything, regardless of where it leads.
Even if we are disgusted with, or just plain tired of, games that idealize wanton violence and nihilistic solipsism, at the end of the day we should just put those feelings aside and join the crowd to cheer on the society that keeps churning them out by the dozens. Because such is freedom, baby.
Let the blaming begin.
Yes, I'd like to start by blaming two guys who shot and killed someone during a home invasion in Australia for giving Counter Strike a bad name. By turning up in clothes that in some way bore an uncanny resemblance to a couple of fictional characters they've allowed the prosecution team an easy play. This in turn will bring a fun computer game into disrepute as the media swings it influence-ray around catching enough moronic members of the public in it's beam to have at least some lasting effect.
Had these guys been dressed as George W Bush and Tony Blair... well... maybe we could ban those two warmongers who are responsible for thousands of brutal murders.
I remember seeing a pic of a CT in a real-life situation before. I know it's a cheap joke, but...
*taps 'E'*
Come with me!
http://www.cubanet.org/mira/nyt_photo.jpg
DeMeh!
An acquaintance of mine is convinced that excessive playing of Quake saved his life. The story goes that, one morning after a protracted gameage session, he was nearly mown down whilst cycling to school. The hairtrigger state of his nervous system resulted in him swerving out of the errant van's path before his tired brain had even grasped what the fuss was about.
The legend is silent on whether he subsequently rocket-jumped onto the van and shoved a grenade through the windscreen...
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I think mostly people are bothered cos it tends to be geeks and/or social outcasts - the sort of people who frequent slashdot - who get caught in the crossfire. Read Voices from the Hellmouth from the Slashdot Hall of Fame for a classic example.
Damn right we're bothered by this issue.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
"as if before videogames, there were no violence"
Certainly in the UK, before videogames it was "Video Nasties" that was corrupting the youth into violent deeds. Today, nobody seems to care that kids watch "Zombie Blood Massacre III". I'd imagine in a decade there will be some other piece of technology being blamed by some for the downfall of society.
I cannot afford preventive medical care at the moment, but I will soon be able to get mental health support if i go crazy from dental pain. What kinda morons vote to tax millionaires an extra 1 percent for mental health services, but dont provide preventive care for anything else?
Ok, I find this thing intriguing: weren't the counter strike player models made trying to copy the reality? (copying the policemen as they appear on the street, terrorists like in the tv...) So I think that the game characters were dressed as the two persons did...
Rimember: Jappi Pipol In Da Jaus
True, but of the mass murderers we have had in this country, none appear to have been motivated by computer game experience.
Martin Bryant was a racist, redarded nutcase with an unfortunate source of money given to him by a well meaning older person. Julian Knight was really in the military, and pissed off with life in general.
From everything I have read about these people, computers and games don't appear to be a factor. I can't recall CS or a similar game being a factor in the high school massacres of recent years in the US, either. And you would expect it there because those students are right in the network gaming demographic.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Learning from this, the US did the same for many years. There was a nice big civil war in which all the people too aggressive to survive in a developing civil society obligingly killed one another. Then there were gold rushes and the development of the West, and the antisocial thugs were able to go and fight one another over land and gold until eventually civilisation caught up with them.
And now? The thugs are too dim bulb to get into the armed services, which don't work by getting killed en masse any more. So they hang around civil society and become gang members and drug dealers, and we have to catch them and lock them up. Some of them grow out of it and some don't.
Games are an expression of the way homo sapiens sapiens was originally designed to work. Blaming them for our lack of ways of dealing with psychopaths is easy because actually fixing the problem is very hard. Never before have we had a society where the majority of sociopaths and psychopaths aren't simply killed off before they reach the age of 21 or so.
Sometimes I wonder if the answer isn't simply to execute not only all killers, but everyone who commits an unprovoked violent assault on another person with a weapon. The effect would be much the same as the policy that built the British Empire and the US.
I'm not really putting this forward seriously, but what are the objective reasons why this is a Bad Idea?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Are we sure that they weren't *actual* C-T agents (officers, goons, whatever) on a raid?
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
well seeing as they were dressed as either Seal Team 6, the British SAS, the Israeli GSG-9 or the French GIGN, since those are the outfits worn in Counter-Strike the logical thing to do is ban them. Yes, let's dismantle the worlds best counter terrorism units because this guy dressed up like one of them and shot someone. The CT's in CS are not original costumes, all of them are taken from these real life counter-terrorism units. If your suggesting we should ban CS because it includes these costumes it would make a lot more sense to dismantle these groups - after all, even the most disturbed minds there is still a barrier between reality and virtual reality they'd need to cross.
Is murder a crime? Who can really judge ones acts as immoral, righteous, hypocrite, murder-ish; Not I. Believing a video came can brain wash ones mind into a murderous state is down right wrong. Who here has not murdered anyone? I have, and I'm proud of it. No longer will I be forced to pay for child support due to a car "accident". How do we know the producers of counter strike did not base their 2 characters off these 2 murders? Did the 2 murders even play counter strike? These are all questions I would love to have asked before I judge them as murders
Well, if you assume that a world in which I don't beat my sister round the head with heavy objects is healthier...
Computer games have saved me on two occasions when I was literally seeing red. It doesn't happen much but, when it does, shooting the proverbial out of a terrorist bot is about the best therapy I've come across. For comparison, the time I didn't manage to get to a computer resulted in a big hole in the plasterboard, which was certainly not healthy for my fist.
I have a very irritating sister. Thanks to computer games, this state of affairs continues.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Errrm, why does the article stat that this happened in 2002? A murder trial that takes so long is suspicious, isn't it?
Is murder a crime? Who can really judge ones acts as immoral, righteous, hypocrite, murder-ish; Not I. Believing a video came can brain wash ones mind into a murderous state is down right wrong. Who here has not murdered anyone? I have, and I'm proud of it. No longer will I be forced to pay for child support due to a car "accident". How do we know the producers of counter strike did not base their 2 characters off these 2 murders? Did the 2 murders even play counter strike? These are all questions I would love to have asked before I judge them as murders
...I better go play a mindless game of CS. Cya!
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
because you don't get points/money for shooting hostages! :)
Does someone still have the link for the picture explaining CS hand language (with things like "Finish my sandwich and reload" or "can't move my cat is sleeping"
Can't find it anywhere...
"news.com.au are reporting an Australian court has been told that two men dressed armed with weapons shot and killed a man during a Sydney home invasion in 2002. Let the blaming begin......"
If you ask me, this is just fodder for tabloid news and doesn't bother to dig deeper for the real motivations. One thing that's always disturbed me about USA is the general toleration of loads of ultra-violence in movies and video games combined with a puritanical, almost childish and repressive attitude towards sex. In contrast, don't European nations have lax laws regarding smut/porn, yet are more apt to censor or legislate against firearms and the depiction of violence? It seems like a recipe for disaster to repress a natural urge, and then provide ample opportunities to purchase firearms while practically glorifying the use of them in movies and video games. Then again, there's nothing like a few rounds of CS to blow off some steam and stress, and if the Japanese and Canadians can have the same violent games and movies and still not have much violent crime, what is the deal with USA? You take the point.
What kind of word is that? Some sort of newspeak? It's not a word where I come from, nor a legal concept.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Some guys dressed up like characters from America's Army flew halfway around the world and killed several thousand Iraqi's.
Oh wait...
I often see video games come up in studies that find "evidence" that video games increase aggressive tendancies in children. What about football, soccer, and sports in general? People tend to get pretty worked up and violent over those things.
(Bart and Milhouse turn on game console)
(Hockey playing kid in video game scores a goal)
Dad 1: Your kid sucks!
Dad 2: Bring - it - on!
Hockey Game Voice: It's HOCKEY DAD! Nooo one's fiighting!
Bart: Hockey Dad rules! Feel the awesome wrath of Chuck Stadowski!
(Dads start fighting and each other)
Kid: Dad! Stop! It's only assault! Don't make it murder.
(Dad 1 kills Dad 2 and police arrest him while he celebrates)
Hockey Game Voice: You are a big man! BIG MAN!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
The Flemington Markets (where the victim worked) have always attracted a criminal element, as silly as it sounds more than a few of the produce stall vendors there have a connection to organised crime (note that in this city "organised" crime is way down the ladder in severity from the American Mob.)
I live in out in the midst of all this, and have seen first hand the way these guys operate. Make eye contact and they will literally go berserker on you. I watched three carloads of these guys stomp the living shit out of a scrawny 19 or 20 year old guy because he told them to "fuck off" after they threw fireworks at his girlfriend. I've seen brawls outside my apartment that could be called small riots and I've been attacked myself after one of these macho dickheads sexually assaulted my girlfriend in front of me. One new years eve I was in a crowd at Darling Harbor counting down at midnight, right on the stroke of midnight a gang of these guys linked arms, charged the crowd and just started wailing on anyone they could catch. Minutes later they'd fled. It's not politically correct to identify a gang by it's ethnicity but a large degree of their behavior arises out of environmental factors, especially their treatment of women and their gang-culture of machismo-on-steroids violence. Drive by shootings are a new phenomenon in this country and nearly all of them in this city are internecine warfare between rival groups of Lebanese and Arab young men, typically over the drug trade. In 1998 a police station was shot up with a fully automatic weapon.
Which brings me to my point that if they were dressed in paramilitary gear it was probably more to do with that than any exposure to Counterstrike. This wasn't some random assault by kids "corrupted" by some computer game, it was more than likely a gang reprisal where the assailants were known to the victim.
The rise of Lebanese gangs in Sydney
Sydney police besieged in their own station by Lebanese gang
Serial gang rapes in Sydney
Bilal Skaf, the leader of the rapists converted to radical Islam in jail and has openly avowed his support of Al Qaeda and sent death threats to the judge and witnesses at his trial.
So what we obviously need is the next medium so we have something new to blame all violence on. I suggest iPods: All that music all the time, the glare of the white headphones, and now the thousands and thousands of pornographic images that teenagers carry around with them everywhere just have to have a bad influence. When will Australia finally live up to its moral responsibilty and ban them? And now that Bush has been reelected, shouldn't Ashcroft finally do something to save American's children from Apple's murderous grip?
I always thought Steve Jobs is smiling just a little to brightly when he holds up those things...
If they ban Counterstrike, then the terrorists have won, literally!!
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Absolutely true on the logic point. I admit that the point does sort of masquerade as a logical argument when it's really not.
I just found it equally deceptive that the parent poster was using the emotional nature of the Port Arthur event to elicit an illogical anti-gun response.
Some days ago two men, one of them wearing a G.W. Bush mask, held up a taxi here in Norway. The other guy was wearing a Saddam mask :)
naturally, this people died because of a video game, not because of FREELY AVAILABLE FIREARMS...
"Gun's don't kill people, people kill people" Well, people WITH guns kill a great deal more people than people without guns - the only logical conclusion to be inferred from the statistic is that gun owners are bad people..
besides which, how did they decide to blame it on Counter-Strike, rather than on, say, that S.W.A.T. movie that came out a while back? Was there an animated grafitti tag sprayed across the corpse?
Like army suits???
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Is it Bush's fault if I dress up as Bush and rob a bank? I just want to idolize my hero.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
Let me give you an example. Suppose some japanese game had its screens translated to english with bad grammar. Would you have geeks start spouting that bad grammar? I don't think.....oh wait...
I've heard of guerilla advertising, but isn't this going a bit far for the Half Life sequel?
:)
At least it will force CS off the radar for a change.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
In court? Were they wallhacking or something?
They're right! Video games *are* brainwashing your kids! Why, I have this sudden urge to run around in a darkened room and munch lots of little white pills while listening to repetitive electronic music!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
This should mean that every murder that cannot be linked to a specific game could be linked to "The Sims", then. So instead of banning GTA, CS and so on th prevent the few murders committed because of those games, we'd only have to ban "The Sims", and every other murder would not happen, since noone is playing "The Sims" anymore.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
You know those bank robbers dressed as presidents? Well ... let's blame the presidents too!
Does anyone else find it ironic that the ad displayed in the article (for me at least) was for a Playstation 2?
"The most common element isn't hydrogen. It's stupidity." - Frank Zappa
I remember a big flap a little while back over the rise in sword attacks down under; IIRC there was serious talk of legislation to ban swords, something along the lines of "there's no place for people just being able to go out there and buy these things" - sure, GUN crime might be down, but if Oz is such a non-violent utopia, why so people even need to discuss laws like that one? Lord knows if I tried running amuck with my katana here in PA, it's pretty good odds somebody would whip out a legally concealed handgun and stop me pretty fast.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
but people who kill people sure do seem to like guns a lot...
I have no sig yet I must scream.
nt
In a strange twist, it was reported that the man killed was dressed like Gordon Freeman.
... according to a recent (clearly ficitonal) report, over 90% of *all* of last year's crimes, including murder, rape, petty larceny, and letting your dog poop in the park were committed by people dressed up like those in the (not so) popular video game The Sims (tm)
On an odd side note, I shudder to ask, but is there a Sims Jail Edition coming out?
---
wwjd? jwrtfm!
When I went to the site, there was a PS2 advert in the article!
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
> they think that violence can be blamed on videogames
>as if before videogames, there were no violence
Just because some violence can be explained by violent video games, doesn't mean that video games is the root of all violence. I don't know how you came up with that logic, it's like saying "You can't blame deaths on smoking, as if people weren't dying before there were smokes."
It's not about personal accountability, noone's even suggesting they aren't accountable for this. It's all about influences and getting used to violence.
Scientific studies have shown that people watching a lot of television violence before the age of 18 are more prone to be violent against their surroundings as an adult. Is there causality ?
Is it so hard to imagine that watching violence for hours day in and day out, year in year out would affect you ? If you've seen a Trekkie convention you know that too much TV can alter a person's view of reality.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
The problem with almost all of these tests is that they generally only catch sociopaths, not psychopaths owing to that most of them can be gamed fairly readily and the nature of psychopathology is such that they're well suited to fooling evaluators. But nevertheless, we always want to feel that there's some foolproof way to detect menaces to our life and health, so we'll always want to believe in such tests. Just witness the recent email forward that contained a quick psycho test.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike'
They're called Special Forces in some countries and Terrorists in others, unless they're talking about the Chickens, then thats just bizzar.
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
This crap happens because it's easier to blame video games than kids.
Take the legal drinking age for your locality, that's set in place because it's easy to test and find out if someone is of a certain age, just math. In an ideal world, a persons habits and character would determine if they should drink. If someone will drink responsibly at age 16, why make them wait till 18 or 21? Likewise, there are people that are over the legal drinking age that are still too immature and let alcohol run their lives but by law, they can still buy alcohol. All anyone can do is give them an AA flyer and ask them to take time out of their schedule to remember the next meeting, physically drive to the meeting and suffer through the awkwardness of admitting you're an alcoholic.
The legal system blames the video games because it's easy to convince parents video games are bad because parents aren't going to blame their own kids for violence they may create, they'd rather blame something or someone that cannot defend themselves. To make headway in hedging violent video games to kids, it's easy to slap a violence rating on a game and make every retailer ask for ID to anyone buying the game than it is to perform intense psychological tests to see if that person understands the difference between reality and fantasy, and if they will or will not take cues from videogames.
When I'm a parent, I know my kid is going to be exposed to things I wouldn't, but I'm going to make sure they can put the things into the right perspective and let them make good decisions for themselves.
seeing a Doom3 ad below this story...
Cs is so..... 2002ish...
when will we see shooters dressed as imps and demons?
I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
^_^ That said, psychologists have to make a living somehow, so I'm sure it's profitable to make sure they keep finding problems. So long as they "solve" the old ones, they can probably get away with it...
Lastly, as to your assertation of psychologists having more mental problems, I do seem to remember seeing some study along those lines. From personal anecdote, I know at least two people who went into psychology because they learned they were not psychologically normal and wanted to find out why and what can be done for it. Too, they may simply be more self-aware of the problems in their makeup (or blind to them and able to rationalize them away) due to their training. However, I'd wager that most of them have come to terms with their problems and are handling them constructively.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I'm not so much worried about the government as industry. Alcoholism and depression are already coinsidered valid reasons to not hire / release a person. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that homosexuality was considered a valid mental health issue to fire a person over. Lastly, there's still a great social stigma associated with mental health problems, so people would probably be unwilling to fight the firing.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
They were dressed as either the Navy Seals, French GIGN, German GSG or UK SAS. All are well established government agencies of high esteem. Wouldn't it be possible that these guys were wannabes? Don't those crazy (and not crazy) militia guys try hard to get thier gear cause it's good? I'd think there would be cheap similar looking knockoffs too.
Or, did these guys tag the walls with a "NO CAMPING" stencil on the way out?
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Should everyone in every movie, TV show, poster, book and billboard who used a gun be blamed for giving them the idea to use guns in their crime?
Forget the game manufacturers; forget the gun companies; let's go after the screenwriters!
In the police report, the victims family commented that one of the suspects started firing at the victim through a wall, as if they could see through it. while the other suspect just sat behind a crate in the living room.
I thought they pretty much made all guns illegal in that country.
Its nice to see more proof that when you ban guns, you only effect honest and responsible citizens.
Criminals don't really care.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
is there a chapter of "mothers against videogame addiction and violence" over there?
http://www.mavav.org/
This story must be bogus. Australia has Gun Control now, and is perfectly safe.
I am not a crook.
-Nixon
Come on. Many certifiable people (Unabomber?) are very intelligent. It is not difficult to pass one of these tests.
I have a friend who is VERY bright. He got his civil engineering degree and worked in oil fields for several years. He decided he wanted to make more money, so he went back to school. He is currently getting his law degree. I think he is concentrating on Intellectual Property. If I had to pick one person that I know who would do something insane, it would be him. He has the intelligence for truly scary things. He made meth just to see if he could do it. I know he has made several types of small bombs. He has always just been very inquisitive, and as far as I know he has never hurt anyone. But he once told me that if he wanted to kill someone, he was sure he could do it and get away with it without anyone finding out.
But on the other hand, he is one of those people that could do something totally brilliant to help society. I just can't figure him out, but I think that deep down he is a good guy, just too smart for his own good. He is someone who could end up in jail, or extremely successful in life. No test is going to be able to tell which.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
1) Was it Howard or Richard Alston who paid these two to do it, and ;-)
2) How much were they paid?
The problem with almost all of these tests is that they generally only catch sociopaths, not psychopaths...
The problem with this distinction (which I had always made as well), is that apparently sociopath is synonymous with psychopath. Apparently sociopath is just a new term to distance the medical condition from the nasty 'psycho' slang. IANAP, however.
The difference between a game and news, which is always brought up by opponents to this kind of comparison, is that the news is passive. Something bad happened to someone else, no matter how gory or evil it may be. A game, though, requires that the player carry out the action themselves.
That is the key point here. People always try to make unfair comparisons to make whatever point they feel like.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
There's an online Hartman Value Profile test/calculator at:
http://www.qis.net/~jschmitz/hvp/test1.html
I suppose if I dressed up as George Bush and shot a few minoritied in the US they would point the finger at Bush, ya think? very irrational logic.
1001100 1100101 1100001 1110110 1100101 1001101 1111001 1000010 1101001 1110100 1110011 1000001 1101100 1101111 110111
you have to kill somebody first.
I go to work dressed like "Patriot" from Quake III Arena and no one has a problem with it. Just because you're dressed like a particular type of person doesn't mean you have to do that type of work. Just ask any Fry's Electronics employee! :-D
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
I'll admit to not being entirely in tune with what the current terminology is. A lot of my base work was done with older psychology books, wherein I always saw the distinction being made that sociopaths understood the human condition and could feel remorse, but chose shouldered past such crippling emotions to wreak havoc. In comparison, a psychopath genuinely cannot comprehend emotions like remorse and compassion except as an outside observer. {cocks head off to one side} Although even within the distinction of psychopath, they sometimes distinguished from psychopaths who committed anti-social acts because they simply saw nothing wrong with it (killing a parent to hasten an inheritance or drowning a fellow child playmate to see what a drowning victim looks like) and those who claim to commit them because they feel alienated from society due to their condition.
And I seem to remember they're using yet another term for psychopaths these days to distance themself from the use of "psychopath" in the media to depict everything from an abusive husband to serial killers. Heck if I can remember what it is though. *shrug* Basically, they wanted to change the term because the word psychopath is associated with "cold-blooded murderer" in our society whereas psychopaths sometimes cause their damage in areas such as love and finances, never resorting to violence. And, for that matter, psychopaths are useful in some situations, such as covert agents. Someone able to lie, cheat, and kill without remorse is handy if they're loyal to you. And psychopaths are generally very rational people who will be loyal so long as the situation benefits them.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I hope they used a good gun. Nothing angers me more than newbies killin people with a Mac-10.
'Computer characters' shot man November 4, 2004 A COURT has been told two men dressed as characters from a computer game shot a man dead in front of his family during a home invasion in Sydney. Twenty-one-year-old Sophear Em is standing trial in the New South Wales Supreme Court charged with the shooting murder of Josef Logozzo at his Cecil Hills home on January 7, 2002. He has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting Mr Logozzo, a wholesale fruit distributor at Flemington markets, and shooting his wife, Marianne. Crown Prosecutor James Bennett SC, told the court Mr Em and another man invaded the Logozzos' home shortly after midnight, dressed as characters from the computer game Counter Strike. During the invasion, Mr Logozzo was shot in the chest and his wife in the hand. oh come on.. seeing as how the counter-strike characters are modeled after real people. IE SAS, GIGN, ETC. how can you say 'computer character' hello... retard.. also.. given the abundant lack of anything aside from circumstantial evidance. how can you say that they were dressed up specificly to resemble counter-strike models? they could have decided to dress up as a member of the SAS GIGN, or some terrorist faction that just happens to be featured in several games. that's just as stupid as if someone were to dress up in a trench coat and sunglasses and shoot someone. next thing you know the media will be like "holy shit the matrix is a bad influence." come on, these people are profoundly distrubed in the first place. I'm really sick of the media placing blame where it doesn't belong and causing more trouble than needed.
Here's another article:
Sophear Em was so fascinated with the game Counter-Strike that he and an accomplice dressed in black fatigues, balaclava and ski goggles to emulate characters from the game.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
I must know whether to make an amusing "Terrorists win" or "Counter-Terrorists win" post.
Everyone's putting down the notion of blaming video games as a kneejerk reaction, which is fine.
But hypothetically speaking, what would you think if something like this happened, and they really DID dress like characters in the game. I mean not "happen to be the same" dressed as, but "we dressed the same on purpose" dressed as.
That's the more interesting conversation.
The legal system doesn't blame video games. Politicians blame video games. Society blames video games. Murderers blame video games. The legal system generally says, you did the crime, you're going to do the time. In a court of law, it's utterly irrelevant that someone plays video games or dressed up like pikachu before going on a six-state killing spree.
What matters is what did the defendant do, and what was his or her mental state at the time.
--AC
The next time one of you freaks decides to go on a shooting spree killing a few people (and lets hope you don't), please do it in a rented Pac-Man suit.
This way, when religious groups make the video game connection, people will finally stop listening to them.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
I mean, no it doesn't absolve them of one ounce of being freaks, but to say media has no effect on the way we think is a massive and dangerous understatement.
Think about it, your brain only contains the stuff you fill it with. (well "duh" right) Like in Supersize Me, you reap the rammifications of what you decide (emphasis on "you decide") to take into your body. Its that whole garbage-in-garbage-out scenereo played out on a biological host.
Even so, who decided what went in to their deranged little minds to start with? They did! So again, even on that level, they are still responsible.
All in all, not a good scapegoat. For my screwups, I'll stick to blaming cosmic rays!
-- Just another unsolicited opinion... from the Peanut Gallery.
> Until you KNOW someone who has been convicted of manslaughter and has become a ward of the state in a juvenile detention facility, you DO NOT KNOW how violent video games can affect a young person.
/., so no actual expertise or experience is needed to wax philosophical...
And oddly, even after seeing it, you don't either. Why do you think no scientist who cares a bit about reputation bases a study or theory on one case? It's because it's not a good sample. There could be a thousand other pieces of the puzzle that you don't know about your friend's brother, and in opposition to him I can present a dozen of my college friends who spent countless hours fragging and never a single one of them did anything violent either as kids or as adults.
> At one point in time I would have agreed with your theory, but after seeing my best friend's little brother be convicted, it kind of changes your view on these things.
Perhaps it changes your view, but that's because you're allowing personal bias to stand in your way. If violent video games had a strong causative effect on juvenile violence, and the number of kids playing violent games has gone up, then there'd be a rise in juvenile violence. But the FBI, the department charged with maintaining statistics on such things, has reported that the number of incidents of juvenile violence in the U.S. has fallen every year for the last thirty years, which more than covers the "violent video games" era. Your best friend's brother is an outlier, or something else contributed to his fall.
> Of course, this is
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Virg
I can only wonder what the house looked like. It could have been a nice 2 story house with a basement and a hole exposing the sewer tunnel that leads to the street outside of the bricked in front yard... Maybe like this house :)
Why do we get so upset about violence and murder? If we believe evolution is true, then it is all survival of the fittest. Seriously, if evolution is true, then morality is an illusion (albeit one that has evolved to help ensure our survival as a specie). These men were obviously more fit in this circumstance, thus they deserve to live. They are helping preserve our specie by weeding out the weak. Their offspring will now dominate and the future will be held by the strong. Reality itself commends them for their actions.
You're spot on with the Bobo doll study comments, but I'd like to add one thing about the catharsis: One of the big reasons that catharsis is not recommended any more in the treatment of people with anger problems (for example, something like: "if you get angry, instead of hitting your kids, go hit a pillow until you don't feel angry anymore") is that people become habituated to that stimulus - they require something a little more to have the same effect (so the pillow becomes something harder, or they hit the pillow more, and pretty soon they'll escalate up from there to stabbing someone to a knife. Maybe an exaggeration, but you get the idea).
So I guess that the lesson is to learn better ways to handle violence than with violence pointed in another direction.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
For sure they were running aimbots. :)
Obviously not l33t murderers like myself
Sorry I joke even in the worst scenarios.
those who cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
I suppose it's terribly politically incorrect to blame people for their own actions. Where they minorities? Or perhaps they were just poor, or somehow oppressed in another way?
At least with Deer Hunter people don't get in trouble for reenacting that game.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And I don't think she was influence by the Blood Raven console game either.
I also don't belive that these two folks were trying to pretend that they were playing the latest GTA game or involved in any government sanctioned event (wars).
People have bene killing other folks for a long time and will be killing each other for eons to come.
Isn't Sophear a cambodian name?
Blame australia for stripping the citizens of their weapons (firearms).
I've played the game, and I had to look up on the internet what in the world he is saying there. I assumed frag monkey until I did some research. I believe that it is difficult to understand, since that is not a well-known phrase.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
I wouldn't sweat this. Nice read though if your into courtroom and crime drama.
:-)
Fact is that more and more criminals are using disguises to make it difficult to identify them. This is nothing new. Whether it be characters from a movie or TV show, political figures, or from a computer game. I suspect the idea of using famous people as a mask might have originating in a movie or two, but you can't discount the human intellect in the first place.
Lets hope that the paranoid around us don't decide that all computer games, and movies are bad because it makes people do bad things. If thats true, we better end life... period. Sheesh;... Art imitating life... or life imitating art... Which way to go... which way to go.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
I read it in 1984, too.
And George W Bush wants all Americans subjected to psychological assessments and regulation, especially children.
And yet the evangelicals who would normally sand up against this kind of fascism think he's some kind of saint, and they all turn out on election day and put him back in office.
Seriously. What the FUCK?
all we need to do is dress up like a character from the game and do Bad Things?
I guess theres some value in anime 'cosplay' after all...
Now, where can I get a pokemon costume...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
In said computer game every time someone makes an accusation that [person] killed [victim] in [Room] with [weapon], You would get a FMV of that person through the victim's eyes in the darkened room having the instrument of death being used, while flashes of lightning illuminated the scene. (High resolution cgi movies too...)
My wife had to turn off the FMV sequences because she found them too disturbing...I laughed at her the entire time, considering that she is the same person that loves playing Hitman and screwing with the "ragdoll physics" while saying, "die...Die...DIEEEEEEEEEEHAHHAHAHHA!"
if I die before I wake...
That doesn't mean to say there is or isn't a connection, and there are no conclusive studies that some people who are a little socially eclipsed that are affected by continuous and sporting presentation of killing.
r a. htm
except of course albert bandura's respected research and conclusion of the Social Learning Theory which CLEARLY shows a correlated trend between kids who watch violence and kids who become violent.
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/bandu
gamers that play violent video games are pretty quick to jump up against the idea that watching violence correlates to making violence, only because they see themselves as nonviolent people. of course, we must ask the question--do crazy people know theyre crazy? do schizophrenics know the things they audibly and visually hallucinate arent real? do serial killers think that killing is wrong? of course not, if they had apathy they wouldnt do it. its a fact, social environments mold people. they influence how people run through the events in their daily lives. a person that grows up in poverty does not act the same way a president's son would in any given situation. the same way a person that has played violent video games for 10 years doesnt act the same way someone else does who hasnt.
of course there are other variables that factor into these kinds of killings, otherwise every gamer on the street would run around with steak knives stabbing people (or guns, shooting people, if they could get ahold of them), but to say the two dont correlate after the countless studies that have proved it is just igorance.
"During the invasion, Mr Logozzo was shot in the chest and his wife in the hand."
n00bs
...without one of them shooting the other for following too closely.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
THis proves we need more guns.
...
Big bad black fat guns that shoot armour piercing
projectiles at 5000fps.
Whooooooosh !
Got to be prepared.
The neighbours have been playing Counter Strike.
Oh , no , they wont fool me, as long as I have my GUNS !
And the pastor has been looking at me funny
He might be posessed by a demon from DooooooooM.
Killlllll them alll
Guns will solve all those voices talking to me.
Bud, would you like to look down the barrel of MY GUN ?
no text here, move along preeze
Why is it that if someone invaded a home and shot someone to death claiming they did it because God told them to does not prompt those god damned evangelists to scream 'ban religion'
NT (not twisted)
Note well how the mainstream media only ever focuses on the BAD game-related new items (no matter how loosely they can relate them). What about the GOOD counter-strike worshipping stories, like those guys in france who dress up as the characters from the game and raid real terrorists on real airlines etc? Honestly, who throws a shoe?
Two men dressed as international terrorists shoot and kill two residents of 'Sim'burbia.
terrorists win!
OKay... they're a couple of criminal thugs that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They certainly took it upon themselves to make the wrong choices in life that led to them being criminals. These criminals are solely to blame for their crime.
There is no such thing as an accurate and unchangeable psychological test. Thankfully, people aren't that simple.
:-) . Don't put that past an eight year old - especially the sort they want to identify and "catch".
First, a negative may very obviously later turn into a positive. People go crazy, they aren't generally born crazy (though they sometimes are with some conditions). A lot can happen to you after you're eight, and it's far from impossible that your core ideas, thinking patterns and values could be affected in adverse ways.
Second, a positive may sometimes turn in to a negative in later life. I don't accept that if you have psychological problems they can not be addressed. Sometimes (usually) this will require professional treatment, but there are going to be cases where it does not. There are also going to be cases where you simply "get better".
Third, almost no test of something not directly observable is perfectly accurate. Psychological tests are renowned for being difficult to design and carry out accurately. They're also renowned for people's tendency to want to belive them despite known inaccuracies and problems. IQ tests (which actually measure one thing: your IQ, a number that describes how good you are at an IQ test, not your intelligence) are a great example of this problem in action.
Fourth, many (even most) psychological tests are easily gamed if you understand what the test is for and how it works. Doing so is also a lot of fun
Finally, I think it is ethically unacceptable to write somebody off based on a test that can not be 100% accurate, on results that may change in future, and for a condition that may be correctable anyway.
It looks to me like the Hartman Value Profile has entered the realm of pop psychology. It's something poeople want to have, so they'll believe it. Pop psychology is dangerous, though, because people tend to belive in these things in very black and white terms, with little room for considerations of the issues and inaccuracies involved.
Of course, none of this in any way argues that the test doesn't work - I know too little about it for that, and the chances are it's as effective as any other psychological test - somewhat, if the results are interpreted and explained by someone who understands the test and all the issues involved. My argument is merely that it'd be very stupid to rely on it for anything important.
If some company wants to use it to select sales people, that seems reasonable enough. They're no doubt willing to simply accept the risks of being gamed, and the risks of inaccuracies and misinterpretations. Of course, it's also very likely they just don't understand how psychological testing works and have been "sold" it as some sort of magic selection tool. *sigh*. Business is full of that sort of thing - just read any management book from your local bookshop to get an idea of how full.
I will research this particular test further, as I'm now interested in determining what the full situation is. Unfortunately, Google appears to be flooded with information from firms offering services based upon these ideas, and I don't have access to any online journal services from home.
In closing, simply let me caution you against believing any psychological test to be accurate as a stand-alone evaluation. Many are useful as guides, and many can when properly conducted produce information that can be interpreted in informative ways, but it's not likely that a given test will really be able to tell you some aspect of someone's personality "out of the box". People aren't that simple, and neither is psychology.
(NOTE: I am not a trained psychologist, though I have completed some formal and casual study in the area. It's a fascinating area, and well worth reading about - but make sure you get proper study materials, not the reams of pop psych crap.)
I've now had a very quick look at some of the tests offered online.
.
My god.
At least as interpreted by the online services (rarely known for good test design and conduct - *lol*) it's so full of social context as to be downright scary.
"A uniform"
What the fuck. How many different meanings can "a uniform" have to someone? To have authority, to have authority force something upon you, to have power, to have someone in power use it on you, to be restricted or restrained in choice, a role or task, to be performing a role or task, menial labour, low paying employment, etc etc etc
It is possible that the test takes that into account, or that the question is there as a dummy / control, etc. I'm going to hope so.
This sort of issue is also very common in IQ tests. Most are packed full of cultural and social context, as well as requiring significant language skills. They test language, education, and cultural knowledge much more than intelligence. If you understand this, they're still useful, but most people don't and treat them as intelligence tests.
IQ is just a number, but there are areas of intelligence. Spatial, logical, mathematical, and verbal intelligence are all areas addressed by a reasonable IQ test. There is also the question of speed. Some people take longer but get to the same (or better) answer for problems. All of these are factors and not easily addressed by the shorthand of a single number.
Not just answers, the correct questions.
A response from gaming journos.
Usually they get auto-kicked after killing 2 hosties, now the whole team has no money! N00bz!
Indeed. Most decent intellgence tests (well, decent as far as intellgence tests go, anyway) do produce a set of scores for different areas. Most also provide a single "big number" because that is, in the end, what people want. Recent events have shown just how interested people are in thinking about subtle issues with no single clear answer.
The desire for a single number reflects the rather interesting fallacy that people have some single attribute, "intelligence". There really isn't any such single, clearly defined thing - there are many different sorts of intelligence, and they no more distill down to one thing in a person than they do in a test.
Just the facts ma'am.
it's my understanding that many crazy people, even those who have never played cs are dressed like characters from counter strike
Get your torrents...
Perhaps the Australian police tactical response group are Counterstrike fans too as well as "Cops" fans.
Australian members of the legal bar are dressed just as the characters of "Rumpole of the Bailey". It would be therefore safe to assume, that the entire Australian legal system is based upon the BBC series.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
They banned EVERY firearm in the country. Even the olympic teams firearms were banned.
In Melbourne, we just have psycho's dressed up as police officers doing the shooting, and killing. I want to see a picture of their counter strike outfits. I hope they spent some money and got their stuff from a surplus/disposal shop and didn't try to make it themselves. What kind of guns did they use? Reminds me of the quote - "Guns don't kill people, video games do" - Max Payne 2
Crown Prosecutor James Bennett SC, told the court Mr Em and another man invaded the Logozzos' home shortly after midnight, dressed as characters from the computer game Counter Strike.
So ... got screenshot?
Wait, I thought all guns were banned in Australia? That didn't fix this problem? Guess they better make like the EU and Germany and start banning simulations of shooting people such as Counter-Strike and Lasertag!
Left is the right side, else you would end up flaying alive all the pedestrians with your whip.
Just because London had the first decent road system for horse drawn carriages.
The taxi-cab was coined after the cabriolet carraige released in Paris 1800.
And that is irrelevant I know, but GTA london was on the left... and I actually got more confused playing GTA between left and right that driving in Germany, which I had a few close calls.
Now I drive on the right, which they say make syou more calm (our chemical-sided imbalance probably) but I do not see evidence of that in Brussels drivers.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Terrorists win.
Remember children, all generalizations are wrong.
From most reports, they're actually fans of the Scorsese crime films and The Sopranos. Think we'll see those banned instead?
deus does not exist but if he does
Not all psychopaths are clean, methodical, and rational. The basic disorder is simply a lack of ability to relate to others. A psychopath might be the methodical hitman. It might be the truck driver who carves up prostitutes at his stops. It can be the child who drowns his playmate to find out what drowning looks like. The only way in which a certain methodicalness is a characteristic is that, to learn to blend in with humanity, they generally have to learn how to appear normal on a rule-based system.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
There must be a joke here somewhere about Marathon, Half-Life, and Have Blue, but I have no idea what it is. Or maybe it's just an ironic situation.
Marathon = Game which Half-Life basically copied/cloned (in a good way).
Have Blue = Administrator of the biggest Marathon forum.
How do you dress up as a character from CS? Unless it was the Elite Krew, of course.
Is that true? The GWB bit?
A kid walks into a gun shop, and starts stepping back and forth in an odd pattern. After being stopped by a puzzled clerk, the frustrated kid complains, "dammit, I looked up this cheat code for unlimited weapons but its not working! Maybe I'm doing something wrong...up up down down left right left right...."