Jack Thompson Buys Stock in GTA Parent Company

omega9 writes "You're not reading it wrong. From an artice posted as Joystiq, "Jack Thompson has purchased shares in Take-Two interactive - otherwise known as the publisher behind the Grand Theft Auto series of games. So has JT suddenly become a financial supporter of the company he's long campaigned against? Not a chance. JT has purchased stock in the company in order that he might attend Take-Two's shareholder meetings and face up to the company's CEO, Paul Eibeler.""

Comments

Re:Yes he has.

[generic-man]

It's true that you can attend shareholder meetings and cast proxy votes if you own a share of stock, but any information released to shareholders by a publicly-traded company has to be made available to the public, usually by way of an SEC filing of some sort. You can listen to conference calls, get annual reports, etc., on-line too even if you're not a stockholder.

Re:GTA has a parent company?!

[Rude Turnip]

"As a shareholder, doesn't he have the responsibility to do what's best for the company?"

No, and I can prove it. I own some Google stock, now watch this: GOOGLE SUCKS!!! See, nothing happened. Seriously, it is the job of the employees and board of directors to do what's best for the company.

"...can Bill Gates buy up 49% of Red Hat and then deliberatly fuck up the company?"

Once you own more than 5% of a public company, you have to file your "intentions" with the SEC. Owning 49% of a company is far different than Jack Thompson buying a stock certificate from oneshare.com. 49% might get you a number of board seats, depending upon the company. In which case, the other shareholders would sue him for breach of fiduciary duty if he did bad things with the board seats.

Re:makes sense

[Nuskrad]

I don't know. It is rather paradoxical to be investing in a company you don't like -- i.e. handing them the capital to make, well, in this case, more games.

It makes about as much sense as Greenpeace investing in, say, Dow Chemical or ExxonMobil.

But I have to hand it to him for the audacious originality of the idea.

Actually, it's quite common for people who oppose a company to buy shares in order to protest at their shareholder meetings. Infact, I know at least one case where Greenpeace have done this, they bought shares in Amoco to try and block oil drilling in Alaska. See this page for more info on that case.

Re:What a dick

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, I hold every pilot certificate for airplanes that the FAA offers including several type ratings and have given more than 2000 hours of instruction in small aircraft (including over 1000 in Cessnas) and I can tell you that you are FULL OF SHIT. For the record, I've also spent many hundreds if not thousands of hours with MSFS over the years and my name appears in the credits of two (alas no longer with us) other general aviation flight simulators.

While of course there are bound to be differences between a PC and the real thing, the fact is that if your controls are properly calibrated, you most certainly can make MSFS, including using the default aircraft, behave quite plausibly like the real thing. View? Did you even bother changing the view? It's adjustable in many ways in MSFS.

I know that students who come to me having a lot of "PC flying time" under their belt are in general quite well prepared compared to non-flight sim users. (Though the PC flyers often some bad habits, such as instrument fixation). More than that, however, is that once they start their training, I can tell them what to do in MSFS so that they can practice at home and be better prepared for their next lesson. Collectively, my students have saved thousands of dollars by doing this.

"Roll rate is wrong." - 100 hour wonder, stop with the hangar talk already, ok?