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Jack Thompson Weighs in on Oblivion
Robotron23 writes "Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows. A press release announcing his availability speaks of Take Two not having 'learned its lesson' over the Hot Coffee scandal, before continuing to detail the issues surrounding Oblivion's re-rating, in particular regarding nudity - concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee."
Does he not realize that no one likes him, not even his own mother?
"If you have legs and are flammable, you are never blocking a fire exit." -- Mitch Hedberg
Subject line says it all.
Video games don't make me fell violent, morons do.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
That's the responsibility of the developer, not the publisher. But then again it's Jackass Thompson, of course he's only talking out of his rear end without bothering to do any research. How did that man manage to become a lawyer?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If I understand correctly, it was a 3rd party mod applied to Oblivion that caused the nudity fuss, not a 3rd party unlocking of existing content a la Hot Coffee.
As people have said already, you might as well rate every single game ever made as Mature, since any game can be hacked independently to show nudity or sex or clones of Jack Thompson for that matter.
Argh.
I think that there should be a new rating introduced. How about "TM", or maybe "T-M". It would stand for "Teen-Moddable", and underneath it it would say: "This game can be modified by the players. This means that there can be boobies and heavy sexual innuendo."
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
who knew take-two and bethesda were the same entity. bad bad bethesda, changing your name won't fool jack thompson. :P
He likes to instigate things. He likes attention. Everyone knows his stance, which you either agree with or don't (hopefully it is the latter). Can we just be done with him now? Honestly, the best course of action is to ignore him.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Can't be pissed off at Thompson for being a wanker...He was born that way, I doubt he could help it. I guess you could blame his parents for not slapping the stupid out of him...
All that being said, W. T. F. was the ESRB thinking giving that game a goddamn Teen rating? DIABLO II got a goddamn M rating. Any moron would know that a first person game with fricking SWORDS is going to rate an M. Didn't Morrowind rate an M?
Really, does it weight that heavily on the sales if it ends up rated M?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Gah, this is nothing but Troll bait.....We can't stop Jack Thompson from talking to the press. We can't stop the press from listening to him...so why do we even bother to post these. All we get are comments ranging from the useless to the insane (yes threating JAck with violence is an excellent way of proving he's wrong *sigh*). This post included ;)
Lets me tag stores like this with "asshole attentionwhore bullshit esrb fud"
/offtopic
Even if it doesn't accomplish anything it makes me feel better
From the article:
and received ACLU's "Top Ten Censors of the Year Award" (1992).
Well, that's something to be proud of. Of course Thompson just likes getting his name in the news, but you'd think that someone with his drive could put it to better use, say fighting poverty or finding a cure for AIDS.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
You have to be kidding me. I hope this guy appears on a few call-in shows. I'd love to ask him some questions.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Jack Thompson: the Dvorak of the gaming world.
Jack Thompson makes me laugh.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
so we need to regulate newspapers and make sure that only adults can see them since they can be modified to show porn, right?
The skin was a nude skin used to render clothing. It was technical nudity. It was unlocked via a third party modification. There was no intended nudity or a fellatio minigame, just a skinning component detached and refactored. Not nearly as severe, but still hot-coffee-esque.
Clearly, Mr. Thompson does not understand the technical nature of the problems he addresses with his hellfire and brimstone approach. In both the Hot Coffee and this new Oblivion case, the consumer must have the desire to modify the game in order to access content which the developers did not intend for the consumer to see. Sure, in the Hot Coffee case, the "questionable" content was there but inaccessable in any way through normal operation of them game. In the Oblivion case, the "questionable" content isn't even in the data of the game!
Mr. Thompson should turn his efforts elsewhere. My suggestion would be the consumer instead of the manufacturers, because they are far more likely to listen.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I know what you're all thinking:
"I'd sure like that Jack Thompson to not do that anymore!"
This is just ridiculous. If you're going to make an accurate model of a human character, of course you're going to have to start with a naked form and build up from there.
I can understand people getting offended at "Hot Coffee", which was explicitly sexual, but this is just silly. People are naked beneath their clothing. It's true! Take-Two showed more no skin than you'd see in the world normally, but they made the horrible sin of starting from anatomically correct base. You might as well ban mannequins.
FTA:
During your interview, Thompson also gives antidotes from his new book, "Out of Harm's Way" (Tyndale House Publishers).
I wish someone would give me an antidote to Jack Thompson...
Your fifteen minutes of ill-gotten fame are up. You owe us for twenty more, now. Oblivion is going to be a blip on the radar-- its install base is a fraction of GTA's, at best, and while there may be code in there for nudity, the hoops that you have to go through to get to it are hardly worthy of spectacle. Polygon nipples vs. a full-blown sexual mini-game, there's a broad difference of degree, there. One makes for great action shots on Fox News, the other just supports arguments about virtual violence against women (since one can only strip corpses, unless using the editor or stripping a player character); one is spectacular news, the other is sadly hashed over.
Oops, that should be Bethesda, not Take-Two. I made the mistake of assuming Thompson at least knew which company he was railing against.
Even *I* as a republican cannot stand this guy. WTF is wrong with him, was he dropped on his head too many times as a baby or something? Or was he denied a magical sword in some MMORPG?
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
OK, as nuts as this guy is, are you kidding me?
A little bit of topless-ness in a game rated T which was sold to kids of all ages is worse that a full sex mini-game, complete with sounds and visuals which was in a game rated MA which was sold to kids of all ages?
Remember kids: Jack Thompson says sex mini-games are better than topless-ness. Just make sure the female isn't topless.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
How can user mods be prevented, also how can a developer be held resposable for a non-sanctioned mod (something that would void any warenty on the product)? That is the real question.
The "Lesson" is that Hillary Clinton is a stooge or at least bottom feeding to get conservative votes and people like Jack Thompson have declared war on an entertanment industy accusing it of erodeing our morals. Media reflects our culture not the other way around, "fix" our culture and the desire for simulated violence will go away on it's own.
Just my 2 cents...
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
To stop Jack Thomspon, one-two-three,
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free.
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
(Guarantee void in Tennessee.)
Just don't look. Just don't look.
Only when we all stop paying attention will he go away.
First, get a bunch of gamers together. Give half of them the most violent video game you can think of, and give the other half a bunch of articles/rants by Jack Thompson, and tell each group to play/read for an hour. At the end of that hour, administer a few tests to see how violent each group is.
I guarantee you that the Thompson group will be much more prone to start bashing in heads, particularly Mr. Thompson's.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
If you RTFA he's 'currently seeking talkshow appearances'. We've established that Jack won't listen to reason, and refuses to do anything but wave his personal flag to anyone who will look in his direction.
At this point WHY are we continuing to provide him with free publicity? Since we now know how he reacts to critism from the hot coffee incident and that he obviously loves being in the spotlight why give him that satisfaction?
Ignore Jack and let him try to get his own media coverage. Don't encourage the crappy behavior.
The sheer stupidity of the "controversy" around this game makes me want to cry.
... get a gun and go shoot him."]
You hear that? I said "cry", not "get a gun and go shoot him".
[and my quote will appear as such in the media because they're morons too: "This game makes me want to
Rating, my butt.
Read radical news here
To be honest, I'm not listening to the guy anymore. It used to be that my blood would boil at the sight of his name but he's made a complete arse of himself in the last year or so. Although people still print what he says I'm quite sure it's just because he's one of those publicity train wreaks you can't help but watch.
Most people on the conservative side of the game violence argument have relaised he's a nut and don't want him representing their opinions any more than we want to listen to his lunatic rantings.
Time for a new hobby Jack!
How much Rockstar screwed us over.
I WANT to call this guy an idiot (which he is) and say that there's NO WAY that the publisher should be held responsible for a user-made mod. But last time I did that, it turned out Rockstar actual HAD included the "offending" content, and HAD lied about it. All us gamer types were calling Jack a moron for confusing "official" content with user mods, but he turned out to be right.
So thanks, Rockstar, for being idiots and forgetting to delete the mini-game you had to disable at the last minute to keep your "M" rating. And thanks even MORE for lying about it, making US look like jerks for defending you.
Just why is this news? This man would find Pong offensive and dangerous because a modder could change the ball into a CGI testicle. Even worse, the modder could turn the launch sites in Missile Command into big 36DDs that shoot milk at the incoming targets!
Give up on him on Jack. He's a kook and won't change.
You know the whole "Hot Coffee" thing is so rediculous.......I mean in a rated r movie, its ok to show full frontal nudity and sex.....but two pixely characters having sex, not to mention like an imposible amount of work and reserch has to be put in to even figure out how to do the cheat isnt ok. Did it really deserve to attention it got. Last time I checked a R rated movie is for 18 and over and so are M rated games.....Another example of old conservative congress men, being complete duchbags
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ti cket_to_hell
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
"Last summer the video game industry was rocked by revelations that Take-Two Interactive, the makers of the hyper-violent Grand Theft Auto games, had illegally embedded in GTA: San Andreas graphic interactive adult sexual material."
Illegally imbedded? Since when is depicting nuidity in a work of art/literature/film/video game illegal? Pretty sure we can do that given the first amendment. The rating system is not law either, so not showing the ESRB all content is no more illegal. Seems his attitude is a bit skewed.
"It is also clear that Take-Two corporately and its senior officers, including CEO Paul Eibeler, individually, must now be prosecuted criminally for the knowing distribution of "sexual material harmful to minors" which is a felony in most states and nationally. The undersigned intends to work toward that end immediately"
Again, the ratings system is not law. Because a game is rated teen does not mean it is intended to be marketed towards kids. If anything, get on the ESRB for misrepresenting the game. Why not sue every publisher who puts out sexually explicit books. It's not the publisher's responsibility to dictate who should buy their material. His statements are outrageous.
Fuck you, Jack Thompson!
Man. What a wanker. This is really a case of 'The loudest guy says the most truth,' where JT get's to define this issue to the nation just because he's the most hyperbolically outspoken amongst the critics. And then he gets to cash in on the controversy by also heading the lawsuit against the company. Mmmmm... I hear laughter in the rain, walking hand in hand with my CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Won't somebody think of the money^Wchildren?
I would LOVE to see this guy accepted as a guest on the Daily Show. To watch Mr. Stewart tear him a new one, or at the very least let him talk and let himself look like the total douche he is.
Guh.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
Mmmmmm....sprinkles!
I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.
Those games should get a new rating of BT, for boner time! ha ha. Seriously, though, how is this different than kids who watch the scrambled Playboy channel, etc.? If you're going through that trouble to hack the game, you know what you're going to get. The fact that the content doesn't show up during regular game play means that you have to look for it to get it. Any kid with access to the internet can likewise type one word into a search engine and produce dirty pictures. So what's the point? You can't stop it from happening, so block what you must, but moreover, educate the kids.
stuff |
I notice in the article it says, "In Thompson's engrossing memoir...Thompson explains the moral, legal, ethical, and racial implications of this battle" (i.e. the battle against Satan's own game industry) - but Racial implications? Don't suppose anyone's actually read the memoir and can explain what on earth he claims the racial implications might be?
Of course, I wouldn't claim his damn ass if I could help it...
But what does Take-Two have to do with Oblivion? I thought Oblivion was published by 2K Games and Bethesda Softworks. How does Take-Two factor into this one?
Listed among Jack Thompson's accolades in the article:
So . . . Jack Thompson doesn't know what the ACLU is? *scratches head*
Do you think Hillary is a prissy little tight-ass because Bill won't give her any, or is it that Bill won't give her any because she's a prissy little tight-ass?
Am I the only one who hopes the ACLU's "Top Ten Censors of the Year Award" mentioned in the article are handed out sarcastically? Otherwise, I'm slightly concerned.
You don't want to give these people any MORE ideas, do you?!
There are topless males in the game. By applying the MALE texture to the FEMALE model, you get boobies. Sort of.
Jack is an incurable attention whore. Enough said.
For someone that's (as I understand it) employed by the public and for the public, he sure must spend a shitload of time playing computer games. Is that really what he's hired to do - play computer games and dream up the most insane ideas on ways to waste taxpayers money on lawsuits?
Sure, he's funny to watch for a while (like a puppy trying to open a swing door, or a cat hunting a laser pointer), but c'mon - this is getting boring.
Perhaps someone should just have him committed, as this person (if it really is a person - for all I know it could be an ELIZA experiment gone south) clearly isn't currently fit to cooexist with "normal" humans. Perhaps bring him out for display every now and then, just to bring up the occasional laugh but more importantly remind people of what happens when you breed too closely related mammals - but besides those occasions I think this experiment should be kept away from humanity, for the good of it.
For those who dont know, all the Mod did is:
It changes the male bare chest texture for the female bare chest (which has a bra)
Theres no "hot coffee" no hidden sex scenes, games, or anything, just some kid who realized in our culture is ok to show male breasts not female breasts you can do this "MOD" in ANY game.
Case closed.
Is there a way to send this info to ALL the talk shows this moron is presenting hilself on? (seriously)
p.s. IMO Oblivion does desserve an M rating theres quite a bit of blood, realistic violence, you can create an "evil" character, and theres some innuendo here and there, worst of all Oblivion (the land) does look a lot like hell. I have no idea why the ESRB didnt rated it "M" in the first place. My guess is they didnt played it at all. ( in which case is the ESRB the one who should be sued)
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
He should see what kids do with GI Joe and Barbie.
Nasty, dirty, horrible things. And that ho Barbie likes it. Poor Ken.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Big difference....in one game you get oral sex, in the other, you see plain breasts. Oblivion's problem should not be compared to Hot Coffee
Jack Thompson's such an anti-progressive twit that he actually considers this an HONOR of some kind. It's just like the stereotypical princess insulting the Evil Overlord.
that Jack Thompson froths at the mouth with insanity when he speaks, otherwise people might take him more seriously. As much as I hate his perversion of the facts in the incident, he's not wrong that the ESRB totally screwed this one up, and not because of the nudity. The game is way more violent than any other Teen game that I can think of and without a doubt deserved an M rating from the beginning. If some other, more stable and respectable critic of game violence and ESRB ineffectiveness latches on to this to "prove" that the ESRB is broken, they could do so without even mentioning the nudity. That part is basically a non-issue for anyone wishing to bring down the ESRB. Also, is it just me, or does it seem like Jack hates game nudity even more than game violence? Hmm...
1. Jack is the only disaster I'm seeing.
2. I already know what Jack thinks about video games, I don't need to read his bull**** to figure it out. We all saw this coming.
3. Damn the media for not ignoring him like all the smart people are.
Woot. I'm buying it. Thanks for the tip, Jackie boy.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
Let's get serious here. In the same (or less) time, couldn't the kid just Google for and download actual porn instead of getting a mod to let your character run around topless?
Also, there isn't much exactly that's 'erotic' or 'pornographic' about your character running around topless anymore than them seeing a statue in a muesum.
Any has anyone considered that to be able to view ANYTHING at a decent quality in this game, you need a really expensive computer and videocard, or really expensive Xbox360 which most kids who would be 'harmed' by this can't afford? I know I can't afford them. However, I can afford google....
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Didn't take long after Neverwinter Nights was released before someone made the first nude hak/override. Heck, they probably figured it out before the game was released...
It spawned an, ahem, incredible mod content industry (to put it in modest terms), all the way to detailed counter-points (module obviously NSFW, though if you intend to play NWN during the W, that's probably NS also). Yet I saw no one crying to get its ESRB T rating pushed upward.
Being a non-American I wondered a bit what the heck the stunningly obvious "game experience may change during online play" comment meant - well, duh, single player games are controlled environments, and going online means they aren't. Maybe ESRB will be demanding "game experience may change in custom modifications" warning next, otherwise they'll be rating every game AO soon.
To be fair, the nude skin is included in the product they sell you. On the other hand, nobody's going to go postal just from seeing some pixelated boobies.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I was only a teenager when I played Daggerfall and you couldn't turn a corner without running smack into a square pixel nipple in that game. Didn't have the slightest effMURDERMYPARENTSect on me at all.
Jack isnt doing this out of his "immorality" stance! He is doing this because he is sexually frustrated! He is tired of others getting what he never could! C'mon, sympathy...
seriously, this guy is a "Jack"-ass. Needs to rot in hell with Lieberman. Or at least attack all other types of accessable entertainment:the porn industry, victoria's secret commercials, mannequins in the mall, barbies (as said somewhere else here), one's own genitals, etc.
Lets face it. One part of most boys development is to make liberal use of our adrenaline & testosterone. Some people play sports, some play video games, some get in fights, some go on murderous rampages, some break things, some hike, et al. The point is that it happens. Now, if there's a better outlet to fast-paced violent video games, then lets find it. IMHO if it means that some bored teenager wants to do -something- I'd rather it be beating the crap out of some virtual enemy than against a real person.
i ldren.cfm?from=sids
I think the real issue with the 'older' audience is that they've forgotten these key periods in a young boy's life. I say boys because in general people aren't afraid about girls morals being eroded. Its like there's a magical shield around girls that say they can't be violent offenders or mass murderers. Thats another flaw in their logic.
Not only that, they've mistakenly attributed the realism in video games as an increased threat to our childrens morals than the 'harmless' nature of games in the old days, like double dragon (The sole activity of the game is killing people).
If Jack really wanted to solve the problem, he'd come up with a new teenage pass-time that they actually want to do more than games.
Just to end this thought:
"Part of the research challenge is to try to learn what positive changes affecting children born most recently are associated with the reductions in both victimization and offending"
Quote relates to the severe decrease in crime from teenagers recently.
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/new/releases/americas_ch
Bye!
Armed with newfound knowledge of Oblivion, and it's direct relationship with his ass, Jack Thompson has decided to shut his pie-hole for awhile.
And ignore him. He's just out for attention, and when lawmakers start to listen to him, I tell them the same thing: ignore him, or you lose my vote (yes, I actually write/email to congresscritters, and participate in drives to do it in masses).
Just leave the troll be - after all, if a troll shouts in a vacuum, can anyone hear him?
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Cartoon boobies!
..don't panic
First of all, yes, there is blood in Oblivion and occasionally blood skidmarks as the corpse is thrown back by the Havok engine.
But also try stuff like this:
- decayed corpses in cages, corpses hanged over a flame, corpses hanged from ropes (sometimes with a kicked chair underneath, meaning the bugger was alive when he got hanged), a burning corpse looking like he tried crawling out of a lava pool right in the very first oblivion gate. Skeletons in spiked cages. I'm told there's even one with a tiny skeleton inside it, presumably a pregnant woman was left to die in that cage. People or corpses in cages whose bottom you can open and let them fall on some spikes below. Etc.
- the end of the Dark Brotherhood quest arc was already mentioned, so lemme detail a bit more: they hanged the bugger upside down and gutted him like sardine. Alive. Literally. The fresh corpse is basically hollowed. They'll even talk about it.
- towards the end of the Figher's Guild quest arc you get to experience getting drugged out of your mind, and in that hallucinating state going and slaughtering a whole village of innocents, including going in each and every single house and slaughtering every single villager.
- heck, if blood was bad, you can also set people on fire and watch them running around burning. (Try enchanting your bow for maximum fire damage, for example, watch people bursting in bright flames every time they get hit by an arrow. Or make a potion of fire damage and "poison" your arrow with it, same effect.)
- torturing people. Spoiler warning, btw. In one quest along the main line you get to explore a madman's "paradise". In fact, it's closer to our idea of "hell", and one section has people in cages in or over lava. And you can play with the levers to lower them into the lava, or raise them out of it. In the previous section you get to watch people be hunted by demons for sport, and you get one quest to free an even nastier demon and sic it on them.
That's just off the top of my head. Basically I'd say it's a _very_ gruesome game at times, not a super happy fun escapade through flower-filled meadows where deer bounce around.
So _if_ violence is considered a reason to keep kids from playing a game, then, yes, I fail to see why this game wasn't M to start with.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And nudity is bad because...?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
DRTFA
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Actually only the sex minigame was, the nude skins were included in a later version of the mod. And there was never any genitalia shown anyway.
the nude mona model in max payne 2.
I work at a radio station that received the press release. I'm going to interview him. Any suggestions? As of now, I plan on doing it 'Daily Show'-style then ambushing him in the end.
Pixelated boobies make Baby Jesus cry...
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Please ignore Jack Whoever. It's the only way he'll go away. He thrives on every flame, every personal attack, every long rant. I wouldn't be surprised if he masturbated to /. every time something about him is posted. He's an attention whore and that's that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A little Jack edit for you.
"even slasdot agrees. A comment by Durinthal oberserved that the game made him want to go [get a gun and go shoot him].
Clearly this game's influence is making geeks grow up killers.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I really liked your comments. It reminds me of when I was in highschool. I played football so I lifted weights and some kids on our team took steroids to get bigger, faster, stronger. Which people do you think were more violent in our age group? The kids pumping weights and steroids (or take this out if it offends you) or the kids attached to their computer monitors? Answer that question, Jack Thompson!
"No one will really be free until nerd persecution ends."
The best thing to do is just let him keep on ranting publicly, in the press and in court rooms. He does a great enough job making an ass out of himself, much better than anyone else could do to him. For added effect, maybe he can piss off another judge and get a contempt charge.
When you buy a Barbie doll at the store, it is fully-clothed, giving parents the impression that it is a wholesome, kid-friendly toy. But, if your child has a seedy, unscrupulous friend that can show him or her the way to unlock the clothing content and strip the doll naked, your child will be exposed to boobies, which, as we all know, will turn him or her into a gun-spreeing, drug-abusing sex fiend in a matter of seconds.
The solution is obvious! Paint all male models with a bra on. That way, if some kid swaps the male texture for the female one, they'll be foiled. Of course, then someone's 4 ft wide barbarian with a huge beard will also wear a bra, but that's a small price to pay to keep kids safe from, god forbid, seeing a female breast.
Yes, I know, I've just single-handedly saved the industry. All in a day's work.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
no offense, but I doubt "the media" will troll /. boards for sound bites ...
Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
That's what the game needs. Watch everybody join the campaign just to get a wack at him: stab, slice, gouge, gore, garrote, immolate, and yes, impale.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
...pr0n in Utah?
Otherwise, game developers will just keep doing this sort of thing to end around the rating system. They want to sell their product by any means neccesary. People do it all the time. Like the people who sold illegal descramblers, breakin tools, cell phone eavesdropping equipment, etc. They sold them with everything but a certain (cheap) item or simple process the user must do to make it usable (and illegal). They knew *exactly* what their customers were doing with them (in most cases, they would include handy step-by-step instructions!), but they didn't care if it was breaking the law. It was selling widgets, and that was good enough for them.
Its not surprisng that Game companies don't want harsh ratings - they *want* to sell this stuff to kids and teens! They want it prominently displayed at Walmart. They don't want concerned parents who actually pay attention to the ratings to know about it. So they include this stuff, but require a 3rd party whatever to "unlock" it. Now in this specific Oblivion case, it doesn't seem that terrible, nor that the company is really at fault. But as far as the issue of hidden content itself, I think its a slippery slope. IMHO, its good that someone (even that guy) is calling people out about these issues. "Keeping them honest", so to speak.
Now if you oppose "censorship" in any form, for any young age, you probably won't agree. If you are "Joe Slashdot", the liberal pagan/atheist/agnostic/spiritual/wannabe lawyer/pirate college student without children, you probably won't agree. Its not a religious issue to me though, its about established standards and truth in advertsing. If you, as a commercial vendor, don't like it, then get the rating system changed, or convince people to modify their vision of decency standards for kids - but don't be dishonest and try to end around the system.
Pixelated boobies make Baby Jesus...
cut his gums and tongue on the sharp edges.
What, you thought Mary fed Baby Jesus formula?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
...14:58...14:59...
Someone should create a nude character representing him. It cant be too hard.
Thompson, a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School, where he was a classmate of former Vice President Al Gore, shares with your audience how violent videos have a brain-altering effect that can lead to deadly results.
I guess the fact that he went to school with Al Gore does come closer to making him relevent than his belief that seeing a computer-rendered ladychest is going to have deadly results for our sons and daughters.
I be willing to bet good money that sales of a game actually increase when Jack Thompson attacks the game in his usual frothing-at-the-mouth style... perhaps he is secretly on the payroll of the game industry? Planting a nut-case in the opposition to make it look like the entire opposition is composed of nut-cases is an age old tactic.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Jack Thompson is really working in some kind of weird advertising capacity for the games publishers. Before this article, I wasn't that interested in the game; now I might check it out.
MORTAR COMBAT!
First Morrowind was only rated Teen. I have seen a few post stating that it was Mature, but that is incorrect.
I would like to bring a game into discussion that has been modded especially for nudity and has never been rerated. Tomb Raider!!! This game has been modded so that there are even websites to bring attention to the nude factor. It sound like Jackass Thompson just has a hard-on for Take-Two and has to falsify press releases just to get attention. And to think there are jackasses out there who believe the shit that spews from his and Hillary Dildo Clinton's ass.
The video game industry needs someone John Denver like to bat for them. (the John Denver reference relates to when McCollum's parents filed suit against Ozzy for their son committing suicide) Someone that will make politicians wake up and say... hmm... I guess we are responsible for our own actions.
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
This gives gr8 psychological(Fredudian) insight regarding the sexlifes or the lack of it of both the game desingers and JackThompson:
The game designers include the code to get their Daily JerkOff
Jack Thompson abhors anything mature,surely even in his bedroom
You know, EVERY game is moddable. This should just be standard boilerplate language on the ratings system.
"Game is rated as unmodified by 3rd parties...", etc.
Hell, I could rent a PG DVD and re-edit it in my computer to add some boobie scenes - does that then make it an 'R' rated film for everyone else? Just sheer stupidity!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I really wish Slashdot would prefix this guy with "Obscure American lawyer, Jack Thompson" so as not to cause confusion with the veteran Australian actor of the same name, whose long 75+ film career stretches all the way back to the 1960s.
I believe there are quite a few sims mods out there, I'm sure some are done the same way this one is--using the male skin as a "Suite" for the female.
I bet they are following this case with a pretty extreme interest.
If Jack really wanted to solve the problem, he'd come up with a new teenage pass-time that they actually want to do more than games.
It's called masturbation.
Suggested Interview Questions for Jack Thompson, author of "Out of Harm's Way"
I like how they're even giving you straw men to set up for him to attack. If I were in a position to make programming choices for GamesFirst, I'd get some real questions from audience members or something instead.
Well?
...for paying attention to him.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
I'm still trying to figure this guy out! Is Jack Thompson just stupid? Or is he just plain nuts? Either way, I really don't think this guy deserves to be a lawyer. You know, it really helps to know what it is that you're talking about...else your argument is moot at best! What a moron!
Jeff Whitfield jeffwhitfield@gmail.com "I can learn to resist anything but temptation..."
There's a religious talk show called steve brown etc., and Jack was on there last week. A caller called in though and challenged him on whether video games cause violence when statistically violence is going down (at least in the us). Thompson said something about how the caller was wrong about violence going down and talked about some news study that showed it was going up. The caller then said something like "I can't believe you'd be calling a news story more accurate than crime statistics from the US govt." It was pretty funny...thompson basically conceded and then made some lame statement that violence would be down even more if there weren't violent video games, which is obviously bs. So anyway, why don't all of us arm ourselves with statistics like that guy and call into every show he's on?
3
Oh and that show has an mp3, here's the link for it: http://media.gospelcom.net/kln/sbetc/050606sbe.mp
"If Jack really wanted to solve the problem, he'd come up with a new teenage pass-time that they actually want to do more than games." He can't re-invent drinking, sex, and shopping at the mall. It's already been done.. Duh. :-)
Jack Thompson is an attention whore plain and simple, he WANTS people to call him an idiot and give him hell. If we would just stop listening to him at all and acting as though he didnt exist he would finally give up and go away. So I hate to beat a very dead horse but "theres nothing to see here"
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
Someone ought to invite him to a talk show and "accidentally" introduce him as Yack Thompson... imagine the look on his face, and the hilarity that could ensue!
...Hieronymus?
hey anonymous asshole, I am a liberal pagan/atheist/agnostic/spiritual/wannabe lawyer/pirate without children.
I happen to think that not all games are for all age groups.
there is such a thing as adult games.
you are part of the problem. wake up.
They're using their grammar skills there.
A little from coulmn A, a little from column B. --Abe Simpson
>I think the real issue with the 'older' audience is that they've forgotten these key periods in a young boy's life.
I disagree: I think most people remember *exactly* how they were when they were younger and, now that they're older and more mature, are appalled by their own behavior and want to prevent other people from making the mistakes they made. It's just like stage mothers. One of my best friends is a hardcore Christian who is against drugs, homosexuality, and sex before marriage. Know why? Because when we were in college together she was spending every weekend drunk and coked out of her skull, screwing other girls. I keep pointing out to her that she wouldn't be where she is now if she hadn't done those things -- in fact, if she hadn't she'd probably be more like me, raised low-key liberal Christian with no particular urge to bust loose during college, and now as an adult completely permissive towards other people's rights to do whatever they want and vaguely agnostic, rather than who she became: right-wing Christian woman. Needless to say, she does not agree with me at all, because she, like Jack Thompson, thinks she has the right to tell other people how to live their lives. Which is, fundamentally, what this is all about: people who don't think you should know or live what they know or have lived. Santimonious bastards.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
No, the best thing to do would be to stop giving him coverage on /. and other intarweb sites.
Please, someone, where is the nudity in this game? I've been playing it off and on for a few weeks now and have yet to see any. All of these claims of nudity are making me wonder if I missed the special 'hooters quest' or something!
;-)
Some one needs to tell the press that Mr. Thompson is making this crap up. If there is a download to add nudity to the game I bet Mr. Thompson probably is the one who bankrolled it so he could continue his 15 minutes!
PS someone send me the link for the DL
Guess now that Gamepolitics decided to "perm ban"(as in screen all comments), he actually is getting off his ass and doing something.
I still say it was, and still is, in our best interest to keep him posting his sewage online. The darned nut really lets the stuff get to him, he spends a bunch of his time obsessing over it(despite his claims not to, and his banned 50+ LiveJournal accounts), and his online antics do such a good job of defeating himself.
Seriously, stream news coverage seems to take him seriously and what he says as the truth. It is too bad they don't see him how he really is or how full of it(FUD, lies, counter dictions, etc). But I guess they wouldn't since it would make them/him look stupid, like the CBS interview where he compared "Douglas Lowenstein of the Entertainment Software Association to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels." And he is even worse online.
Funny enough, CBS removed that part and it is now missing from the wiki(humm, and who had threatened legal action & forced it to be redone?)....
Name says it all
Tonight, on "Eye on Springfield": just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of teenage boys are playing videogames where they are given weapons and trained to kill. The town calls it an "arcade", but a more alarmist name would be "The Killbot Factory."
This "putting a male torso texture on a female torso model" should make it clear that nearly *any* content can be sliced and diced until it's offensive to someone.
/. Bullying is not real leadership.
From Jack Thompson's July 2005 "Open Letter to the Members of the Entertainment Software Association", for example:
It has been my privilege, as a lifelong Republican, to provide / misogyny and violence against women/. I am / a thug who demonizes / your industry.
My fervent prayer as a Christian is / Lord, give me more / pornography and violence.
I am happy to help / when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks / "loosely educated" about the United States Constitution Today, United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton / embarrasses each and every one of you
Parents just have to be better parents. / Instead of acting like a responsible adult by trying to / be better parents / I, as a lifelong Republican, am going to / engage in ad hominem jihads / This is not courage. This is cowardice. It is the cowardice that all bullies display.
---
This is fun, but not quite "wildfire meme" material. If someone with a little more time wanted to start modding the audio/video of Thompson's TV interviews, on the other hand...
Please do not compare Jack Thomposn to Adolph Hitler. They are nothing alike. After all, Adolph helped build the autobahns. What sort of worthwile contribution to the world has Jack made?
Ok bad joke, but really comparing a guy who is considered the embodyment of evil and insanity with a two bit shyster? I make posting from time to time on/. about hysterical demonization of people and groups that are the antithesis of the average slashdot reader. Jack T will be dead within another fifty years, and completely forgotten in twice that time. He might make idiotic aggrandizing claims about his 'opponents', but don't fall into the same trap.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I agree, Hillary is pandering to conservative voters with her anti-violence-in-the-media stance, and it alienates her potential core audience (folks who value their dwindling civil liberties). Doesn't she remember how Tipper Gore's music censorship crusade hurt Al Gore's progressive image? I voted for Bill Clinton twice, and I even supported Hillary for NY Senator, but she won't be getting my vote again. And this B.S. issue is the main reason why. It shows that she is just another Washington pol who has no convictions beyond the ones that garner votes. Go, Spitzer, Go! Now, THERE's a guy who proves every day that he has my interests at heart. Taking on SONY, et al, for their truly illegal anti-consumer business practices, not just for their "moral" transgressions.
OK I"m pretty close to Aunt Betty Mae's age.
1) She knows the media likes to hype nonsense. She's been around a lot of controversy
2) She know the television media does a terrible job of covering censorship issues since they are so censorious themselves yet preach free speech so that everything ends up confused. So the net result is she knows there is a controversy but knows she doesn't have the facts.
3) She has no idea what Oblivion is. The story on TV is the first time she's heard the term.
4) She mostly is not interested enough in the story to find out the facts, though she knows who to talk to if she actually cared
5) She is going to take the action by the ESRB seriously.
"One part of most boys development is to make liberal use of our adrenaline & testosterone." I think for any man to be considered a man this liberal use of adrenaline and testosterone continues on into adulthood and by this statement I don't mean he must be violent just aggressive, competitive and driven.
I think the headline from the article you linked says it all: "Teen Birth Rate Down, Youth Less Likely to Be Involved In Violent Crimes; Kids More Likely To Be Overweight" Obviously, kids are spending so much time in front of their PCs, IMing and MySpacing and gaming, that they are getting too fat to go out and commit crimes or even go on a date.
Wanted: Mod to replace all in game npc with Jack Thompson models (not nude please).
Rob
The terrorists (game raters) are trying to censur the world. I hope they keep hiding stuff in the games. IT'S THEIR GAMES. Don't give in, no man should control how other people think.
The most important part is deciding who to sue(press next)
Indeed the issue of females is a giant flaw in their logic.
Girls are VICIOUS, and I'm not simply referring to their treatment of many males, they're incredibly vicious to each other. Psychologically and physically they'll happily tear up girls who don't conform partly to assert their position, partly because they can. How many girls have been driven to suicide because of this?
It's appalling some of the things I see occur at a neighbour school of mine, an all girls grammar school. So much spite and hatred. My all male earlier education seemed much tamer and more civilised, with no real fight in recorded history. Setting fire to years worth of work and beating none grouped girls to a fine paste seems to occur regularly.
Girls often use this shield, they know it exists. They can taunt, attack, steal, and mug guys to any extent because they know if they retaliate they will be the ones in any sort of trouble. The girls will fake sorrow and assault, the Police will think of the male as despicable, the community as a whole thinks it's tragic how girls will get picked on just because they're weaker.
Since the
Charge was assault on the girl, and she faked and lied about the incident, and of course all her friends backed her up. Stereotypes abound everyone thought he was the evil-doer. Girls couldn't be violent like that, what a liar. Every middle class parent I talked to thought he was AWFUL until they finally got the CCTV footage. Even then some people, mostly mothers, refused to believe he was innocent.
Young males may get all the blame, but the masterminds and manipulators tend to come without the Y chromosome.
``Ragnarok
(All evidence based on years of patching up and consoling the odder/geekier girls as well as experience of friends, co-workers, and self.)
Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows.
In later news, several talk shows have been pretending "they're not home."
To: Take Two Interactive, Bethesda Softworks
Cc: The Gaming Industry
As a frequent user of your products, I respectfully request that you cease with the vague blandishments of press releases that stand in place of a vigorous defense. Your entire industry is under frontal assault, and it appears that the only response you have yet to offer is to negotiate on minor terms of your surrender. As a show of good faith toward your customers, I respectfully submit the following two suggestions for your Public Relations and Corporate Communications department:
1) Please stress that the ESRB is voluntary, and the complete lack of legislative authority to make it otherwise. Even the current supreme court would likely not allow it to stand a first amendment challenge should lawmakers attempt to make the case otherwise.
2) Please dispense with verbal restraint when referring to Jack Thompson. An official public statement that refers to Thompson as an "unbalanced nutcase" or "bottom feeding shyster" will only serve to garner a net gain of good will. In plain language, you're not here to please Jack Thompson, and he's not going to hate you any more or less anyway.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
When will the blue-nosed morons understand that the solution is ultra simple? If you want the game mfgrs to stop _making_ games that have hidden hacks for nudity-- stop BUYING them!
idiots.
Yeah but it's much easier for society to ignore girls problems (as most internalize the pain) rather than boys who externalize it. Hurting girls are far more likely to act out with eating disorders, abusive males, and other behaviors that while quite damaging for them, don't impact others beyond family and close friends. Hurting guys are more likely to break stuff, which generally gets society more excited about their antics. Us society is generally based on if you don't impact me I don't care (unless its a juicy rumor in which case I'd love to know).
The few girls (and women) who continue to react with agression are typically shunned by society as pariahs very quickly.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
It was not a MALE torso model/texture. The game actually shipped with a NUDE female torso model, which was not used. Its exactly equivalent to the regular female torso model, but it has the bra removed. Yes it had nipples (which Bethesda removed in the first patch, pandering to the "Hot Coffee!" whiners).
I agree with the total harmlessness of all this (except that the politicians and Jack Thompsons of the world will all jump on it). Here are some facts:
(1) Bethesda shipped on the game disk a female_upperbody.nif (which was used in the game) and a female_upperbody_nude.nif (which was NOT used in the game by default). [filenames are from memory, may not be exact]. In the original version this included nippes on the texture (even though using the game without mods, you would never see them). In the 1.1.425 patch Bethesda *removed the nipples* making it Barbie-like.
(1a) These model files are packed inside game archives (BSA files) which you can't even extract or look inside of, without a reverse-engineered 3rd party tool that was written by modders in the first week of Oblivion's sales.
(2) Bethesda also gave away for free download (but did NOT ship on the game disk) "The Elder Scrolls Construction Set" with which a knowlegeable modder can make a topless mod using the female_upperbody_nude.nif in about 10 minutes. It only involves changing one string property (I made a topless mod about an hour after installing the game, it wasn't too hard if you already have some Morrowind modding skills).
(3) Most people would have to download a 3rd-party mod plugin and run with it in order to experience topless (living) women in-game. (Of course there were lots of burned, rotting corpses which had unclothed anatomically-correct torsos, but that's disgusting enough not to turn most people on, so the ESRB doesn't have to worry about the sex-crazed teenagers jerking off to that, do they?)
(4) There is no "sex" in game, with or without the topless mod. Of course someone with enough skill can eventually produce mods for Oblivion that allow kinky stuff (like the exotic dancers mod for Morrowind did). That's hardly Bethesda's fault.
(5) As noted by other posters, the level of violence, gore and disgusting stuff (e.g. torture, mutilated corpses, dead babies, butchering innocent civilians in "evil" quest lines, etc) is high enough that the game probably should have got an M rating in the first place and the ESRB is just correcting a failure on their part.
I think the "topless" stuff is just a weak attempt by the ESRB to make this seem more Hot Coffee-like and thereby deflect the blame from themselves for initially rating a game Teen when it had so much violence and gore and disturbing stuff in it.
Honestly, isn't it about time somone put a muzzle on this senile bulldog once and for all? I mean, what does he have against nudity to begin with? Where does he think he came from? hasn't anyone given him the birds-and-the-bees talk? Seriously, i live in switzerland and they put more explicit content on 15foot high billboards than Mr Thomson seems to think should be allowed in 16+ rated games. I certainly go with the feeling: "Video games don't make gamers violent, Jack Thomson makes gamers violent."
Come to europe guys, it's better here.
"Video games don't make me fell violent, morons do."
Oh, the irony...
I can say this with all honesty:
Looking at a breast has never, EVER made me want to shoot someone, slash someone, burn someone, etc.
Listening to Jack Thompson talk and knowing he's allowed to breath the same air as actual human beings, however, has. Well, only him, really, but...
So I say we ban Jack Thompson from this plane of reality. Won't somebody think of the children?!
Allow me to throw my hat in with the rest of the "Why wasn't this already M" crowd. Not because of the blood or violence, actually, but because the game's livestock has realistic asshole textures. The amount of detail that they go into on the horses in particular is, frankly, disturbing.
The model meshes\characters\_male\femaleupperbodynude.nif refers to the texture textures\characters\imperial\female\UpperBodyFemal e.dds, which has distinctly female breasts with fully bump-mapped nipples.
I'd love to know how this whole "male texture overlayed on the female mesh" business got started, because it's complete rubbish. Yes, you COULD do that, but that's not what's going on.
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
At least they will come with a preset kill limit so we can just throw wave after wave of men at them until they shut down.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
... its even worse than "Animal Crossing"?
Here is another list of characteristics of a hypothetical Aunt Bettie Mae:
1. Doesn't think much of kids today and their MTV and their video games
2. Thinks the world of Larry King and Andy Rooney, and that nice boy Anderson Cooper is alright, too.
How do you think she will feel when she sees some newscaster she trusts interviewing someone who confirms her preconceived ideas?
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Bethesda's views on user mods are just the opposite...They want an active mod community, and they opened up the API hooks to help the mod community make better mods.
Almost all good RPGs are doing this these days, because it drives interest and gets new content for free. Look at Neverwinter Nights...The mod community there is huge, and that game is still popular well past the point where a lot of similar games stalled.
Sure, every now and then you're going to get boobies. It's a hard life. It should be common sense that mods can add to the game and change the rating. Mind I think the game was rated too low, but I think that based on the out-of-the-box content, not the mods.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This guy is a real world troll. The more attention he gets on sites like this and the linked sites, the more he'll go around saying stupid things. Why humor him? He is best left ignored.
Because now, thanks to this publicity, I'm interested in the game, and I'm going to buy a copy, and I don't want the plot spoiled.
Please add nudity to the following games, so they'll get rerated, and then pulled from shelves after the subsequent controversy:
Curious George Reads, Writes & Spells for Grades 1&2
UNO
Puppy Luv
Paws and Claws: Pet Vet
Wordthello
Nancy Drew: Danger by Design
Babar - To The Rescue
Bob the Builder
AMF Xtreme Bowling 2006
Dance Factory
and last but not least:
Barbie Horse Adventures
Double Dragon was about rescuing your girlfriend from a street gang. You could just be beating the thugs into submission, not killing. It's never explicitly stated that they're dead...
No, he need to be confronted and exposed publically, otherwise people will continue to believe him. He's a self-agrandizing moron, but people think because he's a lawyer he knows what he's talking about. More people need to show up and confront him with the fact that he's been disbarred in two states and is for lack of a better words, a nutcase and a leech on society.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
just as the depiction of women as whores in GTA will have a greater impact than the large breasts in Tomb Raider.
That is because women like Lara Croft are fiction, but women like the whores in GTA are fact. You would be suprised at how well children can tell the difference between real and make believe.
Dude! They fall down! And they start blinking.. BLINKING for christ sake then they vanish! If that isn't a sure fire proof then I.. ermm.. THEY BLINK.. then VANISH!!
Bye!
The issue regarding third party mods can be resolved with this simple analogy: Let's say I buy a children's book from a major Publisher, say Scholastic. Let's now say that I paste pictures of naked ladies over a few pictures in the book. Then let's say I donate this book to my local library, and it gets put on the shelf without being every page reviewed by the library staff. When a child checks out the book, and the parents see the pr0n inside, does anyone think that Scholastic should be held responsible for "porn" in their children's book? Obviously not, yet this is the exact situation that Bethseda finds themselves in.
...is at 30 year lows.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/cv04pr.htm
Hope I'm not getting in the way of Jack's truthiness.
Video games don't make me fell [the] violent, morons do.
Thy words speak true, good sir!
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I probably shouldn't bring this up, but it's entirely possible to make a completely nude character for City of Heroes. You can even make the boobs huge. No nipples or genitals of course, but it can be done. I imagine if I screwed around with the character creator more I could make a pretty realistic one, my goal yesterday was just to make a cat girl, which was quite a success. Since the camera view is always behind the character anyway, they may as well be nude if you make their outfit skin-tight and skin-colored.
Hopefully nobody notices.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
"The Wolf and the Lamb" A wolf noticed a lamb drinking just downstream. He thought she would be an easy supper. If he could trick her, he would not even have to run after her. Then he called out, ""We can drink from the same stream, friend, but you are making my water muddy." The lamb said, "Nay, master wolf. If your water is muddy, I can't be the cause if it. You see, the water goes past you then it comes to me." The wolf changed the subject. He must make the lamb feel bad and helpless. He said, "Why did you call me bad names this time last year?" The lamb said, "That could not have been me. I am only six months old." Then the wolf said, "I don't care. If it was not you, it was your father!" He pounced upon the poor lamb, and ate her.
The moral of the story is that the evil will always find a way to justify their deeds.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I wonder if you could apply a 3rd party mod to the Sims to do something similar?
No, the best thing to do would be to give him coverage on /. and other intarweb sites.
Where else would we get such gems as:
"What the Japanese are doing to our kids is insensitive and racist. The Japanese have for a very long time dumped pornography into this country in a fashion they would not tolerate in their own country. It is another version of Pearl Harbor."
And:
"...Don't lecture me about how I'm somehow akin to Hitler. Gamers are akin to the Hitler Youth. Pixelantes are vigilantes. You put threats ahead of arguments, extortion ahead of enlightenment.
You all are the new book burners. Heil PS2! Heil Halo! Heil GTA!
Put down the controllers and get a life, you lost souls. Jack Thompson"
Considering his activities online and his degrading mental state, the guy needs more attention.
disagree: I think most people remember *exactly* how they were when they were younger and, now that they're older and more mature, are appalled by their own behavior and want to prevent other people from making the mistakes they made.
So now looking for boobies is a mistake? I think they're still in denial about how teenage boys are.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It's from the same group and its the only entry in my journal. Ironically enough it's from December and it has almost the exact same suggested questions.
Shots: A Populist Parable
Masturbation makes me want to shoot someone.
Ew.
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
No, just send in a friendly NPC to tell them that the enemy is over in Iran.
Although, most FPS players probably wouldn't know what to do with a "plot".
He didn't even have the names of the video games correct. Bulletproof true crime is not a game. Neither is New York City Bully. He broke up the name of the game "True Crime New York City" and applied the name to Bulletproof and Bully. What an idiot.
What is funny is that 10ish years ago, Daggerfall came out... and there was a 'nudity' checkbox (IIRC there was a password, too, for parental aspects. Enabling the nudity (Surprise!) enabled highly pixilated nips to be shown in the character panel, should you decide to strip your char naked.
And I recall a major scandel completely failing to occur.
Just remember to write your states-persons on a regular basis. It really does help... a little.
I think it would help if somebaody would post a before and after so people will see how rediculous this is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They're NIPPLES. Is this guy gay and really scared of females, or did his dad never give him the old talk?
Honestly, this is just part of a large problem in the USA. The idea that nudity is this horrible thing that will ruin children and make people go to hell.
IT'S ON OUR BODIES. If you don't want your children seeing other people's genitalia or titties, might as well cut them off your kids, 'cuz they're gonna see their own.
To be brutally honest, the man is his own most fearsome adversary. I think that if anyone's going to champion bad ideas, it should be the feeble-minded, so all power to him.
It would do us more good to talk to him in order to dismantle the FUD and misinformation he is spreading on such shows. He feeds on media attention, and they don't question or check much of what he claims.
I remember reading somewhere that a gamer caused him to somewhat breakdown on a recent book-related radio interview, so it would be in our interest to call him up and show how little credibility he has.
"[+] idiot, jackthompson, stupid, fud, esrb (tagging beta)"
It's great to see the Slashdot tagging system, still in beta, hits the mark so completely.
When you're a 45 year old parent, you probably can convince yourself that looking for boobies is a mistake and that nobody should be looking and certainly nobody should be finding. That's what's wrong with middle-aged people. (And what's wrong with kids? That they're ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BOOBIES. It's a cyclic system.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Can I get that woman's number?
I couldn't agree more. I'm the rare exception to the rule. I never really looked for boobs as a teen (correction: Real boobs. As in, in person. Pr0n is unrelated, and I never really looked for much of that, either).
/.er avoids social situations? Alert the authorities!) Sure, I WANTED some female companionship, but I found the girls near me to have little to nothing in common so I just stuck to my Internets and video games.
In general, as a teen, I was rather disgusted by/afraid of/confused by/etc. my peers at school. Thus, I avoided social scenes as much as possible. (A
What I can tell you now is that that was a terrible mistake. Sure, it was fun, but I'm in college now and my lack os social skills has been a great handicap. Boys need to chase boobs. Silly and immature, maybe, but you need to crawl before you can walk. If you don't look for girls, learn to talk to them when you're young, when will you learn to have a realistic and mature relationship with one? If you don't make your mistakes when you're young, you just end up making them later.
Okay, this isn't perfect. Problems can arise. If a boy ends up too successful in this pursuit of girls, he could end up a father early. Or a number of other bad scenarios. But that's just a fact of life: If you want to get anything, you need to take risks. Bad things can and will happen, sometimes terrible, life altering things. But who are we to deny teen boys their awkward and confusing, but important social development because a small minority may get hurt?
Sorry to rant, but perhaps South Park put it best (paraphrased). You can't just keep your kids away from other kids and love because bad things can happen. You can't just hide a boy from girls until he's 18 and expect him to know how to get a girl and treat her properly. Mistakes are painful, but they're a part of growing up. When you try to deny kids the chance to make mistakes, you deny them the chance to learn and mature.
Jack thompson makes it seem like a small amount of censorship of video games is a moderate position. This is dangerous.
OK good one... I did not see the typo untill just now.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
I'm 32 and I STILL always look at boobies.
They're nice.
Yes I am happily married.
Boobies are still nice.
there is such a thing as adult games.
I agree with Mr. Pagan. I see no reason why adults can't enjoy whatever they want, provided it violates no existing laws. What I can't deal with is the lieing sacks of feces who market their violent, gory, or pornographic games to children and then deny it.
Um. User mods are encouraged by Bethesda, as they should be in all games IMHO. Seriously the ESRB should stop rating games by their usermods.
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
"Now, like all great plans, my strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it. On my command all ships will line up and file directly into the alien death cannons, clogging them with wreckage."
Being a Christian isn't about telling people how to live their lives. It's telling people the truth about who we are and our condition.
You're hardly an agnostic regarding telling others how to live their lives. In fact, your entire post comes across as very condemning of "right-wing Christian" attitudes. Isn't that doing the very thing that you condemn? Telling others how to live their lives? The truth is that there are ways we ought and ought not to live - from the simplistic "don't do anything that affects someone else" right through to the specific "don't have sex with people of the same gender".
We *all* know that there are ways we ought and ought not to live. Even the atheist claims some values (and justifies them as useful socio-biologically evolved norms) that we ought to live by. None of us would feel any problem with telling a mass murderer that they are not living how they ought to. So, if we can think of one action that deserves condemnation, then it seems highly probable there are others. You can't condemn a Christian with a philosophy of being "completely permissive towards other people's rights to do whatever they want" - because you don't really believe that. So don't condemn us Christians for what you do yourself.
There are certain things we ought and ought not to do. Some people will tell you what they are, and some don't have a clue what they are.
....When you try to deny kids the chance to make mistakes, you deny them the chance to learn and mature......
The problem is that some mistakes that can make a complete mess of a young person's lives and they should be protected from that, preferably by their parents. Like fire, sex is a great thing in its place, but extremely destructive, often irrevocable in its effects. If both the boy and the girl understand that sex in the shelter of marriage is like fire in the fireplace, but outside thereof it will destroy their lives and burn the house down, then playing a video game or going out on dates should not make any difference in their good behavior. The problem with many things is that in and of themselves they are either good or neutral, but if wrongly used become extremely hurtful and damaging. It is the job of parents, not the state, to teach their children about the good and bad applications of video games, cars, sex, alcohol, medicines, movies etc. and so many of the other things in life, that can be either rewarding or terribly destructive. Unfortunately, many parents have not met their responsibility toward their children, and so the state is forced to step in to protect society.
All theory is gray
Yes, you are right. I in fact don't believe that GTA causes harm. The comment was semi-tonge in cheek pushing the idea that prostitutes are not prostitutes because GTA exists, but in fact that GTA exists because prostitutes are prostitutes. People that have sex with prostitues because they exists, where as people don't watch Lara Croft types swinging from cave walls, because they don't exist. So, your right, the statement is self invalidating.
There is no objective evidence other than poorly-interpreted excerpts from the Bible that having sex with someone of the same gender is "what we ought not to do."
The same cannot be said for, say, murder.
This poor woman has lumped all of the wild indelicacies of her past into one horrible thing to be avoided at all costs. That's not logical or even ethically sound, it's emotional backlashing.
+++ATH0
Free entertainment by jackasses! \o/ I'd been wondering where Jackie-boy had gone. Nothing he ever says or does worries me in the slightest, he's an imbecilic ambulance chasing opportunist. But he sure is damned fun to watch making an ass of himself spewing FUD and bullshit. Besides, if he'd disappeared entirely from the scene, there was always the chance he'd be replaced by someone who isn't so obviously full of shit.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Boys need to chase boobs. Silly and immature, maybe, but you need to crawl before you can walk. If you don't look for girls, learn to talk to them when you're young, when will you learn to have a realistic and mature relationship with one? If you don't make your mistakes when you're young, you just end up making them later.
Couldn't have put it better myself. You win the Internets for today.
Hope you figure your shit out, man.
+++ATH0
And in other news, Sony weighs in on which next-gen video game console people should buy. More at 11.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
You seem to assume there that your reasoning for your friend's change of course is exhaustive. Perhaps the reason for her repentance might be more to do with the fact that she has had a real encounter with the living God? Of course, not everyone believes in God, and hence would not accept that conclusion, but why should I give your diagnosis any more weight than an alternative one? Unless your friend wants to post otherwise, I can't let your reductionism slide "insightfully" by.
More like... nerdular nerdence!
ike fire, sex is a great thing in its place, but extremely destructive, often irrevocable in its effects.
So theach your kids safe sex so they don't make you a Grandpa at 40. The point of making mistakes young is that society accepts (mostly) that kids fuck up a lot, so they cut them some slack. Grab a butt in Jr High and you may get a lecture and a suspension. Do it after college and you could end up a sex offender.
If both the boy and the girl understand that sex in the shelter of marriage is like fire in the fireplace, but outside thereof it will destroy their lives and burn the house down
... then they are messed up indeed. Sex with good precautions is like fire in the fireplace. Sex only in marriage is nearly unheard of (in the US), so teaching that will bring you higher risk of being a grandpa.
Unfortunately, many parents have not met their responsibility toward their children, and so the state is forced to step in to protect society.
Yeah, and then the parents riot because the state tries to teach that gaybashing is wrong and that condoms prevent disease.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
And what's wrong with kids? That they're ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BOOBIES. It's a cyclic system.
Nah, it's that kids think they invented sex. Then they grow up and realize that they didn't and hopefully learn how to do other stuff. Sex is nice, and so are boobies, but beign singleminded about sex makes you boring.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I was eliding a lot in that summary. She was raised in a very conservative, sheltered home in a rural area. I was raised in a permissive (although Christian -- at least one of my parents has been teaching sunday school continuously since the '60's) household. It's simplistic to believe that this is all that drove us to our different approaches, but I really had nothing to rebel against when I was old enough to have the choice, and she did. I had several friends who were children of pastors, and *wow* did they tear things up when they got out on their own. And to be fair I had two friends who were children of pastors who never did *anything* out of line: they were unbelievably well-behaved kids. So it's not simple causality. But, in my own personal sampling, I've only known one person who came from a background like mine and ended up seriously stuck in the sex/drugs/alcohol rut, whereas I know six people from heavily sheltered backgrounds who went *crazy* when they hit college. And I know a lot more people from permissive backgrounds than from sheltered backgrounds. And, to track things forwards, the three people from the sheltered background->CRAAAAAAAZY transition I still know, are now all heavily into exactly what their parents were into: shelter and control.
See, this is the thing. I expect that if I had kids they'd be like me, and I'd probably be right. The two people I'm thinking of, both daughters of pastors, went off to college and spent the next four years trying to figure out how many things they could stick in which orifices at the same time, and now, they both think exactly the same thing I do: that their kids would be like them. So, it's perfectly rational for them to want to prevent that kind of behavior, which, I have to say, should be prevented coz it's potentially deadly, while it's perfectly rational for me to use the same line of reasoning to say that there's no need for laws or legislation of morality. We take the same assumptions, do the same logic, and come up with conflicting conclusions, because our histories are different.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
See comment further down thread for further discussion. *I* don't think people should be able to tell other people what to do, because *I* think the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. However, there are people who have very good reasons to disagree with me.
There certainly are actions that require condemnation. I think it's logical, within my friend's intellectual framework and history, for her to condemn drugs, sex, alcohol, and the like. I've never been drunk, so I have no idea what alcohol's all about. She has a very good idea what it's about, so she probably has a lot better judgment on the subject than I do.
If she heard me call her a sanctimonious bastard, she'd probably agree, and tell me that I'm a naive, unrealistic idiot. And I'd agree with her.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Well, also notice AIDS is at an all-time high, while pirates are at an all-time low. Not only were pirates protecting us from global warming, they also prevented AIDS!
Don't give credit to a non-believer like Mr. Thompson.
Seeing as it was his (keyword there) friend I'd strongly take his view point before a total stranger's (keyword here too) opinion. Now I don't want to go off on a rant here, but any religion or organization that attacks something like Harry Potter, a book that has children reading again is seriously in need of help and a wake up call to the 21st century. We're not in the crusades anymore people, theres no such things as witches, no burning people at the stakes anymore in the name of your false idol, no inbred bigots burning people because of skin color, or purifcation (making a generalization because it seems most of the aforementioned bigots believe themselves devout christians), not to mention the group in where ever that protested a soldier's FUNERAL because they say the goverment/army protects gays and allows them in the armed services. One other thing, the abortion issue... its not an issue, you don't save lives by killing doctors and single mothers! Jesus h-christ! Whens the last time you heard about a Jewish person or a Buddhist that bombed an abortion clinic, or protested at a funeral. Good day. Age of reason
You remember being fifteen? It was, indeed, like sex had just been invented: compare to the awkward danger of the first airplanes or the first cars. I'm so glad I'm not fifteen anymore... but that's because I, too, am sanctimonious and patronizing.
.sig.)
(at least I'm not looking in a tree for a burrow owl. Burrow owls live in HOLES! in the GROUND! that's why they call them BURROW OWLS! yes I like your
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Understood... I suppose I was just testing to see how rigorously you'd thought out what you were saying. Your use of the word "eliding" told me everything I had to know. :-) To be honest, I had to look it up!
For mine, I was also raised in a conservative Christian setting (in a capital city in Australia). Not mega-fundie or anything like that, but I didn't know much of sex, drugs, alcohol etc. until I started seeing it at school as I grew up - certainly I was sheltered from it all by my parents, to a degree. If I'm ever going to be a parent (I'm married now so it's a biological possibility!), I wouldn't do things quite the same as my parents did. I suppose I would like to think that I can put my faith in Christ into practice and advise my kids on what is right/wrong without feeling that I need to coerce them into feeling any particular way. If God is who he says he is, then after I've passed on what I know I should be able to trust him to enable my kids to make the right choices for the right reasons, as I see it. ie. From my perspective as someone with a Christian worldview, I think decisions about morality etc. need to ultimately stem from an understanding of who God is, and what our plight is given our (sinful) position before him. Blackmailing someone, by whatever means (be they emotional, psychological etc.) into behaving a certain way only suppresses the truth, and strips morals of their true context. The result may very well be behaviour like the examples you described, where people scramble to satiate their lust for desires that have always been forbidden them for no apparent reason.
Interesting what you say about there being no need to have "legislation of morality", etc. I do think that whatever ones background might be, that is a very reductionistic argument at best. (Sorry for my overuse of the word "reductionistic" or "reductionism"... I've been reading a lot of DA Carson!) Unless you're trying to advocate anarchy (and I'm sure that you aren't), it seems to me that many of our rules and regulations that may at the surface seem to be amoral, (speed limits, or tax rules for example), actually have an ultimate philosophical grounding in some set of values that has, for some reason, been deemed to be absolute (or at least superior to others). That sounds like morality to me - in at least some vague sense of the word. The other thing to note is that it's very unlikely that the pioneers of what has become today's democracy (the Founding Fathers, for example) would ever have envisioned a democracy that was completely divorced from any supreme, transcendent values. Sure, they recognised that absolute power corrupts even when it is in the hands of those with the best intentions, so they put in place a system of checks and balances to make sure that no one could stay in power indefinitely. But still, the framework was set up with the inherent assumption that it was a system that was derived from a consideration of absolute, transcendent values. Contrast that with today's climate in which the only arbiter of what might be "right" is My Personal Preference.
More like... nerdular nerdence!
My point wasn't that you should necessarily take my alternative explanation of what the OP's friend's motivations might have been over his. My point was simply that he seemed to be offering us an explanation of his friend's behaviour that made assumptions that might not have been true. Maybe they were... but that wasn't the point. A challenge was required, so I gave one, and he clarified.
Now I don't want to go off on a rant here...I don't really have much to say in reply to that, other than you're wasting your effort by setting up straw men and knocking them down. I'm a Christian, and I don't have a problem with Harry Potter. I think the crusades were largely deplorable. Killing abortion advocates/surgeons is as bad as abortion itself. Any Christian with a biblically-sound and sincere faith will agree with me on all those points (with the possible exception of Harry Potter, but even then I'd say that any reasonable people among them would keep it as a private view for their own family, and not enforce it on others). You get the idea... you're not attacking Christianity in any useful sense, only a hackneyed caricature of it.
More like... nerdular nerdence!
Media reflects our culture not the other way around, "fix" our culture and the desire for simulated violence will go away on it's own.
Media reflects culture? That's one way to absolve the media of any responsiblity (agree with their excuse). That must be why TV commercials try to attract a person to buy something that is new on the market and be the first to grab it before all his/her friends do. They are only reflecting....well,something that doesn't exist yet so I guess they aren't reflecting anything at all but instead trying to create/modify the culture. At that point they can call upon your excuse and say "look, we are just doing what the public does." which conveniently forgets which came first- chicken or egg.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Now, if there's a better outlet to fast-paced violent video games, then lets find it. IMHO if it means that some bored teenager wants to do -something- I'd rather it be beating the crap out of some virtual enemy than against a real person.
There is nothign better than a teenage boy using the newest 1st person punching game as a training tool for the real fights at school.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Don't be so sure I'm not advocating anarchy. The Protestant movement was, fundamentally, anarchic: a decision that individuals didn't need intercessories, right? If we had an entire nation of people who lived like *I* believe the Bible says we should, it could be an anarchy of sorts, and function. I think.
I'm not sure there are absolute, transcendent values. But I'm also not sure there aren't. I do know that personal preference is a lousy substitute for ethics and morality, and at least historically it hasn't been successful as a system for personal or community decisions, unless the person in question is a king or something.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
From the press release: "Specifically, the ESRB has now admitted that it rated this game "Teen" without even reviewing the entire game, unlike the movie industry rating system that is based upon a movie seen in its entirety. The ESRB, which is supposed to be the guardian of kids, simply didn't even try to do its job."
... The problem here, is that they are comparing pples and orangutans, and as much as this shows how little insight they have into the workings of modern videogames, and how different they are compared to media such as movies, trying to explain it to them would probably be like trying to explain the rules of chess to an average two-year old.
Obiously, they have no idea how much time it would take to "review the entire game". Oblivion is a huuuuge open-ended RPG game, and if someone should play through the entire game, even if they did it systematicaly in the fastest way possible, it would probably take at least hundreds of hours. And then I'm only thinking about doing every quest and visiting every sqare inch of land, water, dungeons, houses, etc. If one should take into account every possible gaming experience possible with the character-sysem, the radiant AI, the physics system, one could play until the sun goes supernova, and still not be finished with it.
Maybe one day you'll be able to run your own life instead of letting a fictional character run it for you. At the moment, you're losing the battle for sanity.
I think a disclaimer similar to the ESRB notice seen on online-capable games should suffice on the game packaging. Something like "Warning: some or all content within this game is user-modifiable, and game experience may change upon doing so."
Clearly displayed on the outside of the box, like the online warning. The ESRB knows that they can't control what people do with a game after they take it online, why are they trying to control what people do with a game after you purchase it and (legally?) modify it.
The previous question may or may not be rhetorical, I can't decide.
"Or did no one notice that when you first meet Rikku in FFX, she's running around topless? You might not notice it because she has no nipples."
Actually, I thought the same first, but she's actually not topless. She just wears a form-fitting costume with those straps around the breasts, presumably to make sure you notice them.
Still, I see your point. The artist there sure worked hard to make sure she looks almost naked.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wanted to post some nude ascii art, but the slashdot filters also considers nudity junk.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Rockstar North / Take Two got a slap on the wrist and re-published its game with a new rating.
... uhhh, bring it on?
Guess what Jack, the game is still being sold, and there are not OMFG FINES putting the company out of business.
So, with regards to "concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee.", does this mean you're finally going to be de-barred?
Everyone knows you're under scrutiny for your accusations/actions, and you suffered the biggest personal problems out of everyone involved in the "scandal".
So we should be scared of the backlash that a bunch of topless women will bring?
No, seriously, I'm man enough to deal with it. Bring everything it's got!
From TFA:
"VIDEO GAMES TARGETED BY JACK THOMPSON:
All the Grand Theft Auto games
The Warriors
Halo 2
Blitz: The League (Jack was on Anderson Cooper 360 about this game)
Brothers in Arms
Earned in Blood 50 Cent
Bulletproof True Crime
New York City Bully (not yet out)
25 to Life (not yet out)"
Halo2? Does this mean there is some chance of seeing Cortana's 'source-code'?
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
Good point on admitting the uncertainty of absolute transcendent values. I am not sure about this point either - but I am quite sure that such values, should they exist, are not to be found in the oral tradition, later written down, compiled and altered for various political reasons, of some ancient middle-eastern tribes...
This comment does not exist.
Of course FPS players know what to do with a plot:
You have parachuted into Iran. It has been taken over by strange, dark-skinned alien demons who wrap towels around their heads. An evil cyborg leader known as the Tollahbot is racing to develop weapons of awesome destructive potential. Your mission: fight your way into the Tollahbot's lair, and destroy it. Press any key to start...
So now looking for boobies is a mistake? I think they're still in denial about how teenage boys are.
So looking for boobies is supposed to be considered a mistake as one gets older? I think some people are just to arrogant to admit they are organic beings.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Video games don't kill people, gamers do!
(sung to the tune of: Guns don't kill people, rappers do!)
Being a Christian isn't about telling people how to live their lives. It's telling people the truth about who we are and our condition.
No, it's about telling people how to live their lives. Studies and surveys show that Christians (of any stripe) are no more "moral" (crime, divorce, etc.) than anyone else. In fact, these same studies show that atheists and agnostics are consistently more "moral" than theists. Probably because they're also more intelligent (on average) and perhaps think things through a bit more. Christians use blithe excuses like "everyone's a sinner" to excuse their hypocracy, or even worse, designate a few "sins" that they don't like to personally engage in as being "the ultimate evil" and focus on those. Christians are heroin addicts warning people about the dangers of drinking.
You probably live in a country where local youth protection laws DIDN'T force games to have plots like that. I mean, seriously, in C&C Generals you destroy "robots that wear turbans" around here.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The Killbot Factory
/sorry OT
Can I use this as a band name?
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
See what the fuss is about: Topless screenshot
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
indeed. basically the parents should provide the controlled environment for their kids to make mistakes in. And then explain to their kids what the mistakes were and why.
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
And they will be so understanding and grateful to you for this.
Hahaha
Controlled environment, bollocks, that would mean never letting them out of the house while playing real-life role-playing games with them to prepare them for the big bad world until they're 18.
It's not. We already have, within ourselves, an understanding of what in most cases we ought and ought not do. Anyone who cares to measure themselves will find themselves far less than what they ought to be. Someone who claims to have no fault or to do no wrong is a fool, and we recognise them easily as such.
Christianity tells us about our state as creatures that rebelled against their Maker, and it tells us our Maker's plan to redeem us.
I know the reputation we Christians have of being judgmental. I have three things to say to your statements.
First is that it is not a "blithe" excuse to say we are all sinners. Paul states in the Scriptures that those who were chosen by God were the despised and the fools of the world. If one who calls himself a Christian can find himself proud because of his faith, then he is a fool. We of all people should be most acutely aware of our failings - and be humble as a result, not finding pride in anything.
Second is that we all find hypocricy sickening and loathesome. Jesus said to take the plank out of our own eye before we try to remove the speck from our brother's. No Christian should accuse others when he himself suffers from the same thing.
Third, is that Christians were only ever commanded to judge each other. The ministry of Jesus involved calling and preaching to those who were outside the faith. He taught and loved them. Those who claimed to be the religious leaders at the time were judged and condemned by Him. You will see that theme throughout Scriptures. Paul said that he told the believers not to eat with someone who was a sinner. He wrote back a correction, saying that he had meant that they should not eat with someone named a brother who is sinning - but that they should certainly still eat with those outside the faith who were sinners. Paul also says at another part that we should judge those inside the faith, but those outside the faith God will judge. And in yet another it says that God will judge His church first in this age, and those outside will be judged afterwards.
The fact that those who are called Christians have, according to you, the same crime and divorce rates is a very saddening thing. But it doesn't change anything about the truth. It would be a very rare person who I would consider beyond redemption. Every single human alive is a creation of God, and has within him a great potential. None is beyond God's redemptive hand, and I personally have no idea who will and will not be redeemed. Therefore I will condemn none, and consider all as someone who could be a brother or sister in the next life.
The fact is that there are things that we ought not to do. We all have a rough idea what those things are. However, just like our physical senses and perceptions of the physical world can be wrong and misguided, so can our senses of the moral laws of the universe. Thus there is not a universal understanding among humans of right and wrong - but there are common threads, and most people share understanding on the basics. And from this, we are all aware we fail.
How can an atheist be more "moral"? Morality isn't just about actions, but also a state of mind and an attitude. The atheist must believe that all morality is just socio-biological evolved mores that are mere conventions. They are neutral actions that hold no inherent value
I suppose someone has already pointed out the obvious: Oblivion is not published by Take-Two Interactive, and Take-Two has nothing to do with the game. Jack Thompson IV: Oblivious.
In this corner: Jack Thompson and coked-out-lesbian-turned-born-again (and Prez Bush?) And in this corner: Everyone else
Exactly, If I (the user/consumer) write an extra chapter to a book, or an extra scene in a movie, that should have no effect whatsoever on the commercial/stock version of whatever I'm changing. Mods are one of the best things to happen to software. With out them we wouldn't have the ingenious people working on the things we love (CS).
I woulda bet on the 'everyone else' corner until you said Prez Bush, and I think he's pretty clearly in the Jack Thompson corner, and unfortunately, as a result, that's probably a better gamble. Bah humbug.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
.....that condoms prevent disease......
The problem with that statement is that it is not completely true. AIDS viruses go right though the pores of most, if not all condoms. They are not 100% protection against other STDs either. Condoms are better than nothing, but having such "protected" sex is like playing Russian Roulette with one live round loaded into a revolver. The ONLY 100% sure way to prevent STDs is the old rule: "One man, one woman, one lifetime". Using a condom is like having the fire in the fireplace, but neglecting to put the mesh fire curtain in front. A spark or ember may jump out and catch the house on fire. We know of some folks that this exact thing happened to. It is precisely because many, if not most people, not only in the US, but in other nations, don't abstain from sex, until married, that millions, world wide, die or get very sick from uncontrolled sex. Gay bashing is most certainly wrong, but the rampant homosexual practices are included in this raging world wide epidemic and resultant suffering.
All theory is gray
.....basically the parents should provide the controlled environment for their kids to make mistakes in.......
Not so much a controlled environment, but moral education and values, outlining how to avoid certain mistakes and what the consequences of said mistakes can be. They don't have to be in a 100mph car crash in order learn not to speed. Unfortunately, human nature makes it far too likely that the mistake gets made despite warnings. After that, we can only hope that the results of the mistake won't be too severe.
All theory is gray
The problem with that statement is that it is not completely true. AIDS viruses go right though the pores of most, if not all condoms. They are not 100% protection against other STDs either.
So what? They lower the incidence so dramatically that it's stupid not to use them (unless you're married and don't mind having kids.
The ONLY 100% sure way to prevent STDs is the old rule: "One man, one woman, one lifetime".
Irrelevant.
Using a condom is like having the fire in the fireplace, but neglecting to put the mesh fire curtain in front. A spark or ember may jump out and catch the house on fire.
No, it's like having the mesh curtain in front. There's a 2% chance of failure per year when used properly.
It is precisely because many, if not most people, not only in the US, but in other nations, don't abstain from sex, until married, that millions, world wide, die or get very sick from uncontrolled sex.
Your agenda is showing. People die from sex for a lot of reasons. In Africa, not teaching people about condoms and telling that raping a virgin cures AIDS may have something to do with the problems there. Then again, who cares about AIDS when you have people running around hacking women's boobs off so they can't nurse their kids?
Gay bashing is most certainly wrong, but the rampant homosexual practices are included in this raging world wide epidemic and resultant suffering.
Piss off. Gays aren't the problem, and trying to label them as such is just a distraction.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Christianity tells us about our state as creatures that rebelled against their Maker, and it tells us our Maker's plan to redeem us.
Things which simply did not happen. This is a fantasy, or more properly, a myth. Genesis is a collection of myths, many of which have moral instructions, but myths just the same. The Garden of Eden did not exist. Adam and Eve did not exist. "Original sin" does not exist. These are simple facts, as much as Jews/Christians/Muslims might not like it to be so.
The Christian fixation on guilt is simply a method of social control. By telling people they are worthless and "fallen", and that the only way to be happy/prosperous/immortal/etc. is through following THEM and doing what THEY say, you can control them.
First is that it is not a "blithe" excuse to say we are all sinners. Paul states in the Scriptures that those who were chosen by God were the despised and the fools of the world. If one who calls himself a Christian can find himself proud because of his faith, then he is a fool. We of all people should be most acutely aware of our failings - and be humble as a result, not finding pride in anything.
I consider it pretty damn blithe to quote a crazed 1st Century Roman tax collector as an authority on anything, let alone the fundamental nature of the universe. Paul might have been pretty eloquent at times, but a poet does not a physicist make. And Paul was proud. He considered himself important enough to tell other Christians how to live, didn't he?
The fact that those who are called Christians have, according to you, the same crime and divorce rates is a very saddening thing. But it doesn't change anything about the truth.
The truth being that "Christian morality" doesn't make people any more moral, and it's based on fiction, which makes it pointless. Well, there is one purpose. Christians can use it as a weapon against others to make themselves feel better. Righteousness feels good. Getting a bit back on topic, it feels much better to whine about how video games are somehow responsible for teens wanting to have sex. It's much easier than facing the hard reality that the whiners are just jealous.
The fact is that there are things that we ought not to do. We all have a rough idea what those things are. However, just like our physical senses and perceptions of the physical world can be wrong and misguided, so can our senses of the moral laws of the universe. Thus there is not a universal understanding among humans of right and wrong - but there are common threads, and most people share understanding on the basics.
If you've ever studied ethics, you know it's a lot harder to get from "vague moral sense" to a concrete system of morality than you seem to think. And they're not "moral laws of the universe". Do the "moral laws of the universe" apply to viruses and bacteria? What youre reffering to is called "human social instinct" and is a product of our wonderfully complex brains.
Though the atheist may condemn these activities as painful, a hindrance to society, etc, he has no objective grounds on which to call them wrong. Perhaps the atheist sees altruism as his chance to aid humans in evolution - but ultimately that is a worthless goal. It has no meaning, and no "good" about it. It, quite simply, just is.
And Christians, though in denial, are in exactly the same position. In theory (again, this is a hypothetical) Christians follow an omnipotent deity who created the universe and then created humanity. Why did he do this? No fucking clue. Genesis only hints that god might have been lonely, which makes no sense because he would have had no basis for comparison. So are we entertainment? Pets? Christianity answers this as follows:
"Why are we here?"
"To serve God."
"Why should I serve God?"
"Because he loves you."
"Why should I care if God loves me?"
"Because if he doesn't love you, very bad things will happen."
"But if he loves me, why would he le
Thought I'd start with the end. I hope you don't mind discussing this - I assume by your reply that you don't.
If there is no reason to being external to this universe, then all we have is subjectivity. And if all that remains is subjectivity, then nothing is of any value beyond how it relates to something else.
To say it's up to us to find our own reason for being is not really accurate. If the universe is all that there is, then the truth is that there is no reason for being.
People yearn to know why, and they ask the somewhat vague question of "what is the meaning of existence?" If you say it's up to us to find our own reason for being, then you are trying to give an answer to that appeal which doesn't really satisfy. You make it sound like there is an answer (within ourselves) when in fact you believe that there is no reason, there is no meaning.
Yet if there is a God, then we suddenly have grounds for a reason for being. Not only that, but that reason for being is external to us, and external to the universe itself. As a consequence, then, it is not up to us to find our own reason for being. That reason exists external to us.
Back to the beginning, literally...
Rather than getting into a debate about origins, which is destined to go nowhere, there is a much more basic question here which can be answered - is there a God? If that can be satisfied, then most or all of the other points you are making (about our reason for being, about the nature of morality, etc) will be addressed.
Well, that's certainly one theory. Obviously if there is no God, then a case like that could be made. But another equally compelling argument is that we evolved to have a sense of an archetypal entity that doesn't really exist - and that social control was just a nice side effect.
Or perhaps we feel guilt naturally, and religion was designed to explain why we feel guilt, rather than being the cause. Or perhaps any number of other things that ultimately lack any meaning in a godless universe.
It's very hard to predict or justify any ulterior motives, that were unrecorded, of men long dead.
Guilt is a feeling we get when we know we have done something we ought not to have done. Do you have a problem with guilt? Or do you merely believe that Christians "cause" people to feel guilt about things of which they shouldn't?
Perhaps to help you understand the Christian "fixation" on guilt it would help you to consider the existence of our Maker. For example, I find a $20 note on the ground, and pick it up - and am asked 2 minutes later by someone if I happened to find their $20 note they dropped around the corner. I tell them no, and keep it.
If I compare my actions to those of others around me, I might consider it wrong, but not that bad. I may remember the time my friend did the same when he found $10. Or how another friend took home a computer mouse from work. I may still judge these actions as wrong (including my own), but I won't lose much sleep over it.
If, however, I lived in a society where everyone was always honest, then my actions would seem that much worse. I would have no friend with whom to co
To say it's up to us to find our own reason for being is not really accurate. If the universe is all that there is, then the truth is that there is no reason for being.
By definition, the universe is everything including any hypothetical god(s). To say one can't find meaning in the universe is to say that there is no meaning in anything because the universe is EVERYTHING.
People yearn to know why, and they ask the somewhat vague question of "what is the meaning of existence?" If you say it's up to us to find our own reason for being, then you are trying to give an answer to that appeal which doesn't really satisfy. You make it sound like there is an answer (within ourselves) when in fact you believe that there is no reason, there is no meaning.
You're confusing issues of "What is The Truth?", as in the absolute truth for anyone, with issues of motivation "Why should I keep going?". I'm talking about the latter. A "reason for being" is a reason not to jump off the nearest cliff, not "the truth".
Rather than getting into a debate about origins, which is destined to go nowhere, there is a much more basic question here which can be answered - is there a God? If that can be satisfied, then most or all of the other points you are making (about our reason for being, about the nature of morality, etc) will be addressed.
Climb out of your denial and actually read the text of Genesis. ALL early Jews, Christians, prophets, etc. believed that Genesis was either entirely or mostly factual and ALL of their religious teachings are based on this. Abrhamic religious make absolutely no sense whatever if you remove the "fall" since they're all about punishment. The fundamental point of Abrahamic religions is that humanity is "sinful" and needs to be "redeemed" by God and that any punishments humanity may suffer from him or (very important) his followers are justified. Christians also seem to miss the point of the Abraham and Isac story (Jews and Muslims get it), which is that the ONLY morality and the ONLY virtue is "obedience to God".
The crap I get from modern Christians is that Genesis is an allegory, or mythical. That's fine, but a allegory of what? What events? We know that nothing even remotely like the events of the Garden of Eden ever happened in reality. As for myth, that's the same as saying it's fiction.
I hate to keep harping on this, but Christianity (and Judism and Islam) are based WHOLLY on Genesis. If Genesis is fictional, these religions are clearly nonsense. And Genesis is clearly fictional.
It's very hard to predict or justify any ulterior motives, that were unrecorded, of men long dead.
Not as hard as you think. All we have to do is look at modern day "prophets" like Sun Yung Moon, David Koresh, Matarishi Yogi, Mary Baker Eddy, etc. Based on the fact that ALL of these guys are liars, crazy, or con artists (frequently all three) one can infer that past "prophets" were much the same.
Though in the case of Christianity you don't have to infer this because, despite the best efforts of the church, we still have fragments of contemporary criticism of early Christians by Roman skeptics. And, funny enough, they say EXACTLY the same things skeptics of modern "prophets" do today.
Paul was, however, a heavily educated man. You could hardly say he is ignorant on spiritual and religious matters at the least. He would almost certainly be well versed in philosophy as well. He wasn't a tax collector - he was a Pharisee -
Shows what happens when you post too quickly. For some reason I briefly confused Paul and Matthew. Be that as it may, my point stands.
Saul/Paul was educated in Jewish law, literate, and well-read by contemporary standards. This makes his education somewhat inferior to that of a 19th century junior high school student. Get some perspective. Why do you consider a heretical 1st century Jew's opinions of morality and spirituality definitive? Do you follow 1st century medicine? When was the last
Anyway...
My understanding is that philosophers talk about "possible worlds". And these "possible worlds" includes the universe.
When I refer to universe, I refer to that spacial/temporal realm in which we humans are confined. Anything that is outside of space and time (for example, I contend, numbers) is not contained purely within the universe. A timeless and spaceless creator would be outside the universe.
God, as defined as timeless and spaceless, is within a "possible world" but is outside our universe.
I knew you were talking about motivations. What I am saying is that ultimately a reason for not jumping of a cliff is no different for a reason to jump off the cliff. Ultimately, in a godless universe, these reasons are subjective, and can never truly satisfactoraly answer the question "why should I not jump?".
Sure, people have motivations and justifications for their reasons - but not good justifications. Just subjective ones that fail if put up to a different subjective standard.
I never said that I believe Genesis is not fictional, I just said that any such debate is destined to go nowhere. Especially on a public forum like slashdot. I agree with you wholeheartedly that if Genesis is just an allegory for events that never occurred, that it loses all meaning.
You and I differ on a much more fundamental point - is there a God? We can discuss that without getting into the questions of whether the Christian God is the true God, or whether we should offer praise to Zeus instead. Let us first establish whether there is a God.
I would very much like to read these documents, if you can recall what they are (esp. if you have weblinks).
Regarding motivations - Paul, and all the Apostles, had little to gain from Christianity. Paul lived out his days under house arrest, and other apostles met horrible deaths as Martyrs. If I was creating a new religion for fun and profit, I would hardly be willing to die for its cause. That to me says, at least, that Paul believed what he wrote.
So, your argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past?
I'm sorry, I'm not seeing what you see. Obviously our understanding of medicine has changed - b
My overriding thought at this moment is that for us to discuss further, we are going to branch wider and wider. There's a lot here for us to discuss, so I'm going to be short on some points. It may even be worth us leaving this discussion alone - slashdot I find it a poor medium for these discussions
Meh. Pretty off-topic tho. I supposed I could bump it to one of the mailing lists like atheist-talkhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/atheist- talk/.
My understanding is that philosophers talk about "possible worlds". And these "possible worlds" includes the universe.
When I refer to universe, I refer to that spacial/temporal realm in which we humans are confined. Anything that is outside of space and time (for example, I contend, numbers) is not contained purely within the universe. A timeless and spaceless creator would be outside the universe.
God, as defined as timeless and spaceless, is within a "possible world" but is outside our universe.
Actually, in philosophy the term "universe" is generally used to refer to "all possible universes". You don't seem to understand how this blows your argument of a 'causeless cause'. If God exists in a universe outside of the "mainstream" universe this begs the question of the creation of THAT universe.
Sure, people have motivations and justifications for their reasons - but not good justifications. Just subjective ones that fail if put up to a different subjective standard.
Exactly.
You and I differ on a much more fundamental point - is there a God? We can discuss that without getting into the questions of whether the Christian God is the true God, or whether we should offer praise to Zeus instead. Let us first establish whether there is a God.
I'm perfectly willing to concede this point, as long as we strictly limit said God to those attributes that can be inferred by logical arguments (created the "mainstream" universe, really powerful, really knowledgeable) as opposed to evidence. I don't personally buy these arguments, but I'm willing to concede them. But this really doesn't get you anywhere. Let's call this diety Creator.
The problem that we now come to is you would probably like to add more attributes to Creator. The most important is called "interventionism". The idea that Creator mucked about with the "mainstream" universe after it's creation. This isn't something that can be logically inferred. You have to rely on evidence, and this is where the idea of proving the Christian god by logical argument begins to crumble.
I would very much like to read these documents, if you can recall what they are (esp. if you have weblinks).
The two most famous are Prophyry's "Against the Christians" and Celsus' "On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians". Both are obscure academic publications, though you can get translations on Amazon. Both are basically reconstructions based on Christian counter-arguments. Celsus' is more readable.
Regarding motivations - Paul, and all the Apostles, had little to gain from Christianity. Paul lived out his days under house arrest, and other apostles met horrible deaths as Martyrs. If I was creating a new religion for fun and profit, I would hardly be willing to die for its cause. That to me says, at least, that Paul believed what he wrote.
You don't clearly understand the personal motivations that come with being a cult leader, and the fact that most of them end up buying into their own hype. Or Paul could have just been crazy. And the motivations certainly could have been confused. Many people questioned David Koresh's motivations, but in the end he died for his beliefs.
So, your argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past?
Of course it is, mainly because modern philosophers have READ the earlier philosophers and know what they knew. Plato, Aristotle, Augustin
Actually, the cosmological argument answers that question. It might be worth me repeating it here so you can see:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause
As you can see, only those things which begin to exist have a cause. Traditionally, atheists argued that the universe had no beginning, and therefore it had no cause. However, modern science (and other philosophical objections) make the belief in a universe that had no beginning very unreasonable. So what we are left with is a universe that had a beginning, and the need for a cause for that beginning. No longer is the universe the "uncaused cause", but instead something else.
Add to that one thing that modern science tells us - that time itself began with the big bang. That leads us to conclude that the cause of the universe was itself timeless.
That means that the cause itself had no beginning, and therefore no cause. God needs no cause, because He exists outside of time. Only those things which have a beginning require a cause.
Atheists understood this - and their causeless entity was an infinitely old universe. Now that we know the universe had a beginning, the causeless entity must be God - that timeless, spaceless cause that is outside this spacio-temporal relam.
What I meant when I said "our argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past" - was the philosophical meaning of the word 'knowledge'. We certainly possess more knowledge of the writings of philosophers than our ancestors. But do we have more 'knowledge' in the sense of justified true beliefs?
For example, we certainly have the knowledge that "Augustine taught that God existed", knowledge which Aristotle lacked (he lacked knowledge of Augustine's teachings). However, do we have now knowledge that "God exists"? Or "God does not exist"?.
Because it seems to me that we humans differ in our beliefs as much as we ever have. If philosophy had advanced since the times of our ancients, we should abound in more knowledge. And we still disagree even on the basics (is there a God?).
Very briefly, you mention the fact that a "rational discussion" was unknown before the Enlightenment. In the medieval ages and such, I certainly agree this is true. But rational discussions were had in times more ancient to that. These things have come and gone, depending on the culture and the age.
I agree they can be functionally identical - but this is not a necessary state. I can also conceive of circumstances where a lack of knowledge about something does not mean that the "something" lacks power. For example, not knowing God's reasons for creating us does not mean that those reasons lack power. Not knowing the motives of your leader in a battle does not mean that his motives lack power.
skipping pride discussion
My point was, simply, that if his reasons are aesthetic then we who cannot understand why our neighbour likes a specific painting will be even far less able to understand why God created this universe.
Though if God created the universe for aesthetic value, that does not answer the qu
On first cause:
Think about your logic for a minute. Here's your premises:
P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
P2. The universe began to exist
C1. Therefore, the universe has a cause
I could stop right here and attack the premises, like why you use the odd phrasing "begins to exist". But let's move on to the next part of your argument.
P1. The universe has a cause.
P2. The cause of the universe is timeless and nonspatial.
P3. God is timeless and nonspatial.
C2. Therefore, God is the cause of the universe.
Looking at this structure the obvious flaw should leap out at you. Even if we accept all the premises, P3 is not exclusionary. In other words, the argument does not put forward why God should be the "cause" as opposed to any other abstract concept (the attributes timeless and nonspatial cover a lot of groud).
What I meant when I said "our argument here is that the knowledge of philosophers today is much greater than that of those in the past" - was the philosophical meaning of the word 'knowledge'. We certainly possess more knowledge of the writings of philosophers than our ancestors. But do we have more 'knowledge' in the sense of justified true beliefs?
There is no such thing. Either rational argument is a method of aquiring knowledge, or it isn't. Many logical fallacies date back thousands of years, should philosophers have to reinvent the wheel every time they put forward an argument? Either logic works, or it doesn't. And long experience has shown that logic works.
Because it seems to me that we humans differ in our beliefs as much as we ever have. If philosophy had advanced since the times of our ancients, we should abound in more knowledge. And we still disagree even on the basics (is there a God?).
You're quite wrong about that. For example, rational philosophy has given Western thinkers a solid foundation on which to base what would eventually become modern science. Nobody seriously questions Kepler's laws of motion, Newton's physics, calculus, plate tectonics, atomic theory, germ theory, DNA, Big Bang cosmology, evolution, etc.
Most reasonably well-educated people (West and East) hold to a consensous view based on Western materialism. Those that don't almost always lack Western-style education.
I can also conceive of circumstances where a lack of knowledge about something does not mean that the "something" lacks power. For example, not knowing God's reasons for creating us does not mean that those reasons lack power. Not knowing the motives of your leader in a battle does not mean that his motives lack power.
I do not know what you mean by "lacks power". What I said is that is literally lacks meaning. If you don't know what the motivations are, it doesn't matter what they are from YOUR perspective. Your leader might have a good reason for not telling you the reason for battle, but that doesn't help you fight it very much.
Common sense also factors in here. Why should you follow a leader who won't telly you what his plans are? Following "mysterious leaders" tends to lead to disaster.
Christianity teaches that humans were created to worship and mimick our Creator.
Christianity does NOT teach that, at least not orthodox Christianity. Christianity teaches that we should obey God, as embodied in Jesus Christ on Earth, by attempting to follow the example set by Jesus during his time on Earth. "Worship" per se is of no particular importance in Christianity. Humans can't "mimick" God, the very notion is blasphemy (death penalty blasphemy in Judism and Islam).
I'm sure that you can imagine the practical outcomes of the belief that we were created to worship and mimick our Creator.
You mean concentration camps, witch hunts, crusades, etc? Sorry, cheap shot.
But again, I think this discussion is less important until you and I have established, first of all, that there even is a God that exists.
I'm happily willing