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Student Arrested for Making Videogame Map of School
tanman writes "A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes."
This royally pisses me off. I always wanted to build Quake levels for my high school, because it would have been the perfect multiplayer map. Two or more routes to any given place, wide halways, two floors, balconies, stairs at the end of every hallway...it would have been awesome.
But I never went through with it, because Columbine was still fresh in everyone's memory, and I was afraid that exactly this sort of thing would happen.
It's not a fear of terrorism that drives this sort of thing, or even a fear for our children. It's a fear of our children. We're so scared of the little guys that the instant they bring school into their video game hobby, we freak out.
This kid doesn't deserve to be arrested. He doesn't deserve to be thrust into "Alternative Education". He deserves to have someone ask him why he built the school in a video game. Let a psychologist evaluate him, and then either medicate the kid or let him go back to class.
(And someone should offer him constructive criticism on his level building techniques.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
we had it coming, haven't we?
Oh, that's right: never.
I'd read the article, but it's been Slashdotted.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
When I was a young'un, I created a Quake map of the local Laser Tag joint. I even was working on a mod that changed the weapons to behave more along the rules of the game. Even worse, my mod gibbed you if you tried to illegally cross the center barrier. (*gasp!*) Should I have been arrested as a terrorist? Maybe I was planning to run in with a Phazer pistol and start shooting the place up?!? Actually, I suppose it's worse than that, because I did actually run in and start shooting the place up with a Phazer pistol. Oh noes!
I'm sorry, but the idea of creating a school map for you and your friends to play is something that goes back as far as Doom. Kids create these environments because they're familiar, not because they want to go shooting up the place. Only Jack Thompson believes that unbalanced people "train" for killing on these games. The truth of the matter is that ole' Jack is full of sh*t. His claim on Fox news that a previous shooter had created maps of his school turned out to be bunk. He had created maps for Counter Strike, but nothing even vaguely related.
If this map disturbed parents (which is an understandable concern given recent events), then the school's action should have been to evaluate the individual, not immediately kick him out of school. Pretty much all of the shooters in recent history were known to be mentally unbalanced prior to the shootings. An evaluation of the individual's mental state and school records would clarify if he was a threat or not. If not (which it doesn't sound like in this case), you ask them to discontinue the behavior, delete the maps, and go about school as usual. But instead, we give these kids a real reason to hate the faculty. Way to go guys.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I can't help but be overwhelmed by the terrific amount of stupid going on just down the street from my place. It's amazing. It's a rare story where you can root against everyone equally and perfectly.
I died a little on the inside when I read this. :(
~Vexed and loving it!
So where can I download this map? I'm certain it'll be pretty popular within the next few days, so I want my copy now...
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
As someone who made maps of campus for Doom back in college, I can attest that students have been doing this for years without ill-effect. It's a natural reaction to want to create a game map of places you know, especially somewhere you spend hours on a daily basis. This is purely reactionary BS on their part due to the current environment surrounding violent video games in our country. I doubt they bothered to check if he was troubled or someone to be concerned about, and simply jumped to conclusions.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I wonder what the reaction would be if someone (non-student) released a map pack for a popular game that contained maps based on many major schools and universities around the country. I think it's not technicly illegal, although I'm sure they would do there best to try and toss some sort of charge against you.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Oh, wait it's not Russia, it's HERE. Christ, this is scary.
When I was going to high school, we had war games. Not simulated, but real - in person, on campus. And it was not the idea of some demented student, it was organized by the PE coaches.
The gym was one fort, the bleachers on the eastern side of the football field were the other. Each structure had a hose nearby. The gave us a bunch of balloons, and we had water balloon wars.
To the best of my knowledge, none of my classmates has committed any mass murders in the several decades since then.
I worry that policies as mentioned in TFA may actually increase violent incidents like Va tech. We were allowed - even encouraged - to burn off frustrations in acts of simulated violence. Then we dried off, went back to class, and were rather good students.
Today, young men are being denied symbolic outlets for violence. It come as no surprise to me that Chu did what he did. I worry that there will be more.
He made a mod of his school because it's an environment he wanted to play in. FPS games are like cops and robbers meets paintball. He wanted to play his game in an environment he's familiar with.
I'd absolutely love to make a mod for a racing game of my neighborhood, the Bay Area. If hundreds of people uploaded photos of their houses and nearby buildings, that would be a start for modeling the environment. Then people could speed through the streets safely, without actually endangering anyone or breaking the law.
Wow, this is really frightening. They've taken a kid who had the knowledge and initiative to build a 3D map of his school, who hasn't done a single illegal thing, and kicked him out of school based on the fact that someone in his family owns a hammer. A hammer. Who among us doesn't own a hammer? I own three. One's kind of small for hanging pictures. Another one is a normal sized hammer that I've had for a long time, and the third is one that replaced my normal hammer when my neighbor borrowed it for 2 months. Am I a criminal because of my hammer collection?
This is so ridiculous that it hurts. There's been no scientific evidence that gamers--even gamers who enjoy violent video games--are any more likely to be violent people. And there's certainly been no evidence that game developers or game modders are any more likely to be violent people. Where do authorities get off assuming that someone with an active imagination, who enjoys the fantasy of games, is a terrorist? I hope he sues the school board, and wins.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
"If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom."
Condoleezza Rice, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outposts_of_tyranny
I have heard of cops falsifying search records, but that notwithstanding how can anyone justify classifying a hammer as a potential terrorist weapon? I hope this kid's parents have a lot of money so that they can get some justice for their son.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I see a lawsuit in the future... and I hope, for his sake, that he wins. This is the most ridiculous thing that I have seen in a long time.
TFA is currently unavailable (the server is currently unavailable). Hopefully the summary in this case is misleading or wrong.
The main article is /.ed. Here is a link to a story at the Houston Chronicle, which might be available.
e ws/4766843.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/fortbend/n
Every average house contains a hammer!
If he didn't have a hammer in his house would they say the knife he eats with is also a weapon?
This school is ridiculous and this boy doesn't need to finish his school their Since he got nothing to learn from them!.
Ridiculous
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
I remember back when 100% of my free time was spent playing 4-person Goldeneye on the N64, I wished there was a level for every single interesting building or structure I went into. I would have LOVED a map of my school, or even better a major international airport, as in Die Hard 2.
Oops. Brought up airports and level design in the same topic. My name just moved up a few spaces on the govt. list. Better leave some extra time next time I fly. After all, these games are only functional as "simulators", right?
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
... has "school district police"? Has the USA completely lost its sanity?
Jedi Knight 2 had a map of the Raven offices. Same for Blood and Monolith.
FTA: "Speakers at the FBISD Board's April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior's punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people."
In which video games *WERE NOT INVOLVED*. But that clearly doesn't matter. Something bad happened involving people under the age of 21, and as such video games must be at the heart of it.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
As the original link is slashdotted, here is a couple more for the same story
o /4766843.htmld =5263782
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metr
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=local&i
I'd scream at the ridiculousness of it all, but, then I'd probably be arrested for practising some sort of arcane terrorist warcry.
Since we ./'ed the heck out of the origonal link. There are some alternates here.. some are slow heh.
& ncl=1115957401
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8
Bang! Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer Came down upon her head. Bang!Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer Made sure that she was dead.
Only terrorists use maps!
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Since this is slashdotted from here to kalamazoo:
Chinese Community Rallies Behind Student Removed From Clements
by Bob Dunn, Apr 30, 2007, 11 57 am
Members of the area Chinese community have rallied behind a Clements High School senior who was removed from the campus and sent to M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center after parents complained he'd created a computer game map of Clements.
About 70 people attended the Fort Bend Independent School District's April 23 meeting to show support for the Clements senior and his mother, Jean Lin, who spoke to FBISD Board trustees in a closed session.
While an agenda document does not specify details, the board is holding a special meeting tonight to address the boy's actions and the discipline that was meted out as a result, sources close to the matter say. The boy's name was not identified last week, and the district has declined to discuss his case.
Richard Chen, president of the Fort Bend Chinese-American Voters League and a acquaintance of the boy's family, said he is a talented student who enjoys computer games and learned how to create maps (also sometimes known as "mods"), which provide new environments in which games may be played.
The map the boy designed mimicked Clements High School. And, sources said, it was uploaded either to the boy's home computer or to a computer server where he and his friends could access and play on it. Two parents apparently learned from their children about the existence of the game, and complained to FBISD administrators, who investigated.
"They arrested him," Chen said of FBISD police, "and also went to the house to search." The Lin family consented to the search, and a hammer was found in the boy's room, which he used to fix his bed, because it wasn't in good shape, Chen said. He indicated police seized the hammer as a potential weapon.
"They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.
Sources said that although no charges were filed against the boy, he was removed from Clements, sent to the district's alternate education school and won't be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies with classmates.
"All he did was create a map and put it on a web site to allow students to play," Chen said. "The mother thinks this is too harsh."
FBISD officials declined to comment on the matter Monday. "Our challenge is, people in the community have freedom of speech and can say what they want, but we have laws" covering privacy issues, especially involving minors, that the district has to respect, said spokeswoman Nancy Porter.
Speakers at the FBISD Board's April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior's punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people.
The Asian community "faces new pressures" as a result of the shootings, William Sun told board members. "We urge the school and community not to label our Asian students as terrorists."
"We should teach our children not to judge others harshly" and not to target people as being a threat because of their race, said Peter Woo, adding that the school district should lead the way in such efforts.
But Chen said Monday he and other community members don't consider FBISD's actions in the case to be racially motivated, and don't think they blew the incident out of proportion.
"They all think the principal has to do something - but how much? We do understand with the Virginia Tech incident...something has to be done," Chen said. "Someone just made a mistake, and we think the principal should understand that."
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I made a map based on my home and started one based on my church. I guess I'm using them to train for when I shoot up the places.
Google Text Cache
So a Hammer is a potential weapon? What's next, UnrealED declared a WMD?
Sadly, it probably can.
He made a game map that emulates his school, so what? If he was also designing mobs to represent other students, teachers, and other school officials, then there might be cause for concern. But labeling him a terrorist? Please. They found a hammer at his house, huh? Better send everyone who owns a hammer to Gitmo.
Laws and law enforcement in this country are out of control.
TFA already /.ed
It sounds to me as if half the school board members and police need psychological councelling. The kid is fine, but he will probably do better in a different school with normal people.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
He could have made a map of the White House, or perhaps the Pentagon? As it is, he made a map of the place he is most familiar with that also happens to have some very nice architectural features to it for playing the FPS game.
Wonder if he would be getting funding from DARPA if he had used one of the former palace grounds of Baghdad? This sort of outrage is totally out of control.... IMO, and should be stopped yesterday, not next century when common sense is the rule of the day.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This is, in most other circumstances harmless. I used to do photography a lot- I worked with what I knew. I worked with my cat, I worked with the local National Park, I worked, yes, with my high school. I took hundreds of shots of the angles off the hallways, because I thought it looked cool. I took an absolute ton of the clock tower on campus. Nothing ever came of it. I wasn't doing recon for a terrorist strike, or looking for hiding places to shoot the place up. Now I suspect the kid was doing the same, he knows the school so wanted to build it. Last time I checked doing art (which a level design clearly is) is still legal.
In Soviet Russia levels design you
I did this with my high school. I showed it to my teacher in CAD class. He loved it. We converted it to a Doom II map. we played it. No one died, no one cared. in fact, I was given an award from my school for my "excellent achievements", partly due to that.
I also remember a group called the POCD made a DoomII mapset with school layouts. The maps turned out to be a hit in deathmatch, especially on "Last man standing" mode that was added in a recent Doom port, Skulltag.
Now you can be arrested for...... this? What I got.. this plaque for?
*a tear falls down his cheek*
America, what is wrong with you?
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." I think that sums it up nicely. Oh and thats John Lennon.
Please take heart. Not all of us adults are such utter fucking morons.
Not that you'd know it from the comments on the article, where a depressing number of people say they hope he has learned from his "mistake."
I bet he has. He's learned to keep his activities secret from the authorities if he values his freedom. He's learned a little bit about what it's like to live in an increasingly paranoid, authoritarian society, where innocuous activities that harm nobody can get one declared an enemy of the people. He's learned that politicians have no compunctions about advancing their own careers by ruining the lives of the people they supposedly serve.
His mistake wasn't making the map. If FPSes had been around when I was in high school I would have loved to play on a map of the school; unlike a bunch of adults, it seems, I understood and understand the difference between video games and reality. His mistake was not being sufficiently clandestine when he shared it with his friends. Hopefully he will take this as a valuable lesson about the value of covering his tracks thoroughly in his daily life.
At the university of South Australia they've made a whole virtual world based on their campus where people go round in VR headsets on the campus groups shooting each other. It's understood that these people are not just training to switch to real weapons.
w /
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/ww
... seriously ...
words fail me...
~
The school mods the student
What am I talking about? They do it here too, the schools want to push their agenda down every kid's throat in order to make one big ultra-tolerant (where screwing goats is a "lifestyle choice" that should be not only accepted, but promoted by all), revisionist (where whites were solely responsible for the African slave trade), metrosexual (can't let boys be boys) world. Okay, the first example was over the top, but that's the direction we're going.
BTW, remember the movie Gotcha!? I can't imagine that being done these days without students going to jail.
But I have one question for the school board. Did they bother to make sure that he weighs as much as a duck before they took action against him?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
So now this kid knows what it is like to be picked on for no good reason.
There's nothing he can do about it. The powers that be are using him as a puching bag for thier own purposes. Purposes that are political and ignorant. There is nothing he can do about it...
Except take revenge....lol
I think it was called "Gotcha", and starred Anthony Edwards. He and his friends played paint ball tag around campus. Participants were given information on how to find and "kill" their targets. This was back in the 80's. Raise your hand if you think that movie could be made now.
Might as well outsource our fight against terrorism. Let's go with the low bidder. Big Government can't handle this issue. We must look to Ayn Rand and use personal and private sector solutions. First our kids hammers. Next our guns. Vote for Republican L. Ron Paul of Texas for President !
I can remember when I was in high school we had a team of four guys that made maps of our high school for different games. We had maps of all kinds, HL, WC3, Q3A... you name it. I think we even did an old SC map too.
I didn't realize then that I was a terrorist. Of course, most of our FPS maps had regular gameplay modes (I.E. no special "kill the principal" boss levels or whatever). Our RTS maps were mostly just easter egg maps. I can remember in our WC3 map we had different heroes for like 30 different people in our school (which, at a school of 280 is quite a few).
Anyways, I hope there are no serious repercussions for this kid. Posting AC for obvious reasons...
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro /4766843.html
The kid is Chinese,which gives the story a bit of a racist [er..I can't type the word].
Is that what they are calling brainwashing now, "alternative education"? Maybe Scientology should incorporate this phrase into their lexicon. "No, sir. This is not a brainwashing camp. This is an alternative education center." And people wonder why kids hate school so much. All it is anymore is a place where they strip you of your individuality and train you to be a good consumer ... er, I mean citizen.
... when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Same goes for my screwdriver, pliers, and monkey wrench.
This article provides some more information on this story: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4 766843.html
On another note I believe it is legal for anyone to be voted onto the school board. There is no age limit in this state (WI). Even a high school student could get elected.
~Vexed and loving it!
Back in the days, I built a 3D model of my high school's library as a school project and got a top grade in that class. Guess I'd be arrested for that today. Yes, I own a hammer.
I would bet that the vast majority of all high-schools in the U.S. have been turned into FPS maps.... probably 90% or more. My school sure was, several times, independently. So have several places I've lived... so have many offices. I don't know, but I'm sure there's Microsoft and Google maps out there. I'll bet there's even a White House map.
We're raising a generation of terrorists!
The problem I always had back in the day with the maps I tried to make of our high school was that it took so long for the Quake 1 BSP tools to complete the Viz stage. Our school had very large open areas, which I always assumed would make great places for attractive powerups like the megahealth or the quad damage, since there would be no where to hide upon picking them up.
Political Correctness evolves into PC Nazism
IF you can't be famous be infamous. But for GODS sake be something
Most of my favorite quake/unreal style maps are based on office buildings, houses...etc. My alltime favorite is Bedroom ][
/w ten forward, a shuttle bay, holodecks and jeffries tubes is still burnt into my head so many years later.
:)
An old quake level of the starship enterprise
I've always thought about building a map of my house or school but never did because I was too lazy to mess with the tools to build them.
I don't believe anyone should be able to hurt a student by yanking them from school for taking the initiative to build a computer model of their school. After all who doesn't want to be in Mr Pinky's class!!
Whoever did this to this poor student needs to be fired and never again employed by a tax payer funded public school.
I just can't help lovifying my wordiness!
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
So what if the kids want to play this game from SJGames http://www.sjgames.com/killer/
I remember playing it when I was in college with dart guns I imagine today I would be sitting in a jail cell as a terrorist.
WTF is "terroristic"? I guess that is like Bob the "Electronical Engineer" who comes to fix my TV.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
only in America... cheers
Or else 13256278887989457651018865901401704640 concerned school board members will run after you.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
I made a quake map of my middle school, though I only got as far as making the Gym..
who didn't?
* I want to create something
* Hey look, a tool to create something
* Crap, what do I make?
* Well, I'm in school all day, so I'm pretty familiar with that.
* Arrested.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Does anybody know if the kid was playing the game on computers at school? If he was playing the game out of school then this is a free speech issue and the ACLU or a similar organization should help this kid sue the school.
Ok, I usually like to play Devil's advocate. Generally speaking, a school has good reason when they discipline students. There was a case reviewed by ABC regarding a student who was suspended for bringing a nail clipper to school despite rules that clearly stated weapons were not to be brought to school. Yes, it seems very absurd, but do you honestly think any teacher would take notice if he wasn't using the knife like attachment to threaten other students?
HOWEVER. In this case... It sounds like someone got scared (and who can blame them) and over-reacted. Then again, I would prefer to have one hundred thousand over reactions as depicted in the article than one more university or high school massacre.
I think it's fairly clear that the officials involved should just be be locked up forever. They are an incredible danger to the citizens of Houston.
(Just because I hate coming in to Slashdot and watching everybody post "Boy, they must be morons!" over and over).
Building a map of the school is obviously harmless. But think of how the map is used in the video game: you wander the halls shooting at things. I think you can understand how, immediately after Virginia Tech, this is going to make people a little bit nervous. If I'd discovered this, I would at least want to have a talk with the kid.
It's also obvious that they've massively overreacted. The hammer is an object of no interest; he had a reasonable alibi for having it. Although it's a cause for concern, it's also clear that it's fun to imagine shooting up monsters (not students) in a video game.
(I should note, however, that in a high school I am associated with, a student was brained by another student in broad daylight DURING CLASS with a hammer. His only disguise was a sweat shirt hood, but everybody recognized him and he was immediately arrested. He was, clearly, an idiot.)
So I'm not going to defend the overreaction, but I'd really like to see people admit that there was reasonable cause for at least a little concern here. They should have talked with him, figured out that he was no trouble, and dropped it. But completely ignoring the situation wouldn't have been right, either.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Won't somebody please think of the children!
My Visual Arts teacher gave me an "Incomplete" for the course. I shouldn't have made my map for Duke Nukem Forever.
Yank your kids from public school. Homeschool or send them to a private school of your choice. If enough people do this the whole public education system would collapse and implode. Then we can figure out how to best spend those property tax revenues.
Normally, I would oppose such a suggestion. Were the US run like typical European democratic-socialists the schools would probably be responsibly managed. But with one political party fighting to destroy public education, and the other party in the pocket of the public school bureaucracy, there's no voice left for the kids being ruined by these bullshit political non-events.
I honestly think government can do a good job of providing basic public services. But right now, the US government cannot. At least not until the leaders of our political parties come to some basic consensus on the role of government. Until then, it will be one crazy situation after another as they duke it out. All while citizens and their kids get fucked by the very public institutions that were ostensibly created for their benefit.
I de-tiled two showers and demo'd a deck w/that thing.
instant backgound checks - coming soon to a Lowe's near you...
everyone can rest easy though - in three weeks it will have been 20 yrs since I saw the inside of a HS...
Soon we will be seeing children in kindergarten being arrested for playing 'Cops and Robbers' or 'Cowboys and Indians' on school grounds. They must be troubled youths practicing for an all-out raid on our schools and overbearing society! Really, I find all of this ridiculous. I've played maps of local locations and I would have made them if I had the time or talent. The simple fact is that it's fun to play in areas with which you are familiar. It has nothing to do with a desire to enter said area and proceed to shoot everyone there! I am very afraid for our countries future as we continue to sacrifice our freedoms for this ridiculous view of "security". The authorities are only exacerbating the matter by giving in to these narrow-minded fools.
Forecast for tomorrow: A few sprinklings of genius with a chance of DOOM!
The Spiderman 3 game has a realistic map of New York City.
Are the devs terrorists?
Mod it up.
Add to this a mix of fascist officials and craven lawmakers who choose to ignore rights in search of appearing to address the security problem (insert Ben Franklin quote here).
You're right, it's a culture of fear, but it goes beyond our children. It's the technology and to a large extent, a media-inspired culture of fear... of EVERYTHING.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You know your country is _totally_ screwed when:
a) You can get arrested for "acting suspicious" and owning "potential weapons"
Feel free to add items to this list.
Damn those weapons of thumb destruction!
But I believe there was a mistake during copyediting: they actually found McHammer at his home. The only logical step was to arrest him.
In other news, the producers of Tool Time were raided this morning, looking for more evidence.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
My friend and I started working on a Quake map of our High Sschool when we were in HS as a school project. The main reasoning was an interest in WorldCraft style design, the school having a digital camera,and the easily avilable textures that could be gotten using said digital camera, with the added bonus of everyone who played (we did play Quake a lot in our computer class, heh) being familiar with the level, elminating some of the learning curve. Then Columbine happened and we came back to find all of our work had been deleted, with no mention of anything to us. I guess we were fortunate that they weren't worried about copycats back in those days. It's too bad, too. We were doing a pretty decent job and learning a lot in the process, while getting a number of people who wouldn't normally have been involved in something so 'geeky' to contribute in whatever manners they felt they could.
An overreaction is when you lock up someone for life when they stole a loaf of bread. This doesn't even accomplish their stated goal - to protect their school from an unbalanced and violent individual.
Let's assume for a second that they are right. The guy is violent, mentally unstable and is using his home grown CS map to practice his planned killing spree (which was apparently to be carried out with a hammer). What do they do? They merely transfer him to a different school. In no way, shape or form do any of the school's actions prevent him from entering the school again and carrying out his assumed plans. At best, they've moved the problem to a different place, and put others at risk that hadn't been at risk before. At worst, it really pisses him off, and he escalates his planned violence (pipe bombs really aren't hard to make). Any which way you look at it, the actions of the school and the police were completely irresponsible.
Factor in that the guy had none of these plans to begin with, and you're looking at a massively incompetent school administration, board and police whose only goal is to cover their ass. They don't care whether what they did solved any issues; all they wanted was to have something to point to if the student does go apeshit and the inevitable question of "who's to blame?" rolls around.
The US is going down the shitter, and attitudes like these towards kids and education are the reason why. Way to ruin your future generation.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
...taking this story so seriously. Have so few people ever experienced how an event in the real world is reported in the media? Nobody does this just because someone made a video game map. When I was a kid I created D&D scenarios based around my school that were full of violence and so did plenty of other kids. This is entirely normal behavior. (Normal modulo being a D&D player, that is.) Almost certainly this guy had a history and the video game aspect has been brought to the foreground by journalists for some other reason. Over the years I've been involved in many stories that have been reported in the news and not a single time has the report been accurate. The job of a journalist is to get paid for telling stories. The less imaginative ones borrow some of the story elements from real world events. Don't they teach people how to read the media?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
when you have the masses demanding that the government protect them from EVERYTHING, fomented by the scare-mongering media, and legions of lawyers to sue them into doing it.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
For years, people have been braying about the effects that continually playing violent videogames has on children. How repeated exposure to fictional violence in videogames desensitizes children. An effect which makes real world violence more tolerable and less revolting, in effect training our children to be killers ready to kill for any reason at a moment's notice. Some might argue that that's the very point of these so called "murder simulators".
But did any one think for second what the effect of continually treating children like criminals is? How repeated persecution for fictional crimes desensitizes children. An effect which makes real world incarceration more tolerable and less revolting, in effect training our children to be inmates ready to submit to authority for any reason at a moment's notice. Some might argue that that's the very point of these so called "nanny states".
Perhaps it was given a lot thought, indeed.
Dear America,
Stop sucking.
Your pals,
Voters
+0 Meh
Give him an A in computer class.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
He made a map of his school for a video game?
Excuse me, but I've been making maps of schools for Hello Kitty's Sunny Summer Adventure for years now.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Simpson said that on April 17, the day after the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 dead, Clements High School officials learned a student had been playing Counterstrike, an Internet-based shooting game. The locale of the shootings depicted on this student's game were the hallways of Clements High School.
School district police investigated the report and questioned the student at school and then visited his home. The student's parents gave police permission to search the 12th-grader's room and computer. Simpson said police determined no criminal charges were warranted but that disciplinary action was.
Simpson said because of the violent nature of the game and because the actions had taken place in a computer-generated rendition of the high school, official consider the matter to be very serious.
"This was nothing to kid around about," she said.
Simpson said the student was transferred to an alternative school for the remainder of the school term.
This is EVERYTHING to kid around. The kid made a 3D map and shot some videogame characters in it, this is called A GAME. This 'Simpson' fucker needs to remember how he might have (probably) played some games in his previous life as a human teenager, not as a borg that he is now.
You can't handle the truth.
because frankly a game map which you play with an on-screen 'gun' and the possession of a hammer don't add up to 'major al-qaeda cell'. They add up to normal teenager - I certainly had a hammer in my room as a teenager and an angle grinder, and a set of very sharp chisels.
And if the chance that he's actually a terrorist is negligible (which it seems to be), could they PLEASE stop bandying the word about, it cheapens the meaning.
Oh, and please, please, please stop using the word 'terroristic'. It doesn't exist.
Of course, the other lesson here is: 'I've got nothing to hide' is rubbish - they'll always find something that you should have hidden, like a hammer. NEVER consent to a search without a warrant.
FGD 135
Can anyone start some petition to help the kid and get those fucking authority figures fired? It'd be awesome to create a media circus over this if only to end this irrational fear on public tv.
Hmmm... Pie...
During the early 90ies, I went to the principle and requested blue prints of my high school so I could make a Doom map. I asked teachers to pose so I could take pictures of them and turned them into sprites and used their voices. One teacher pushed a desk into a misbehaving student so he replaced the Cyberdemon and instead of shooting rockets, he shot desks at you.
No one cared. Most thought it was an interesting idea and one teacher had fun shooting himself.
All this on top of the fact that I was a violent kid in high school, constantly got into trouble, and was essentially a troublemaker.
The last place I worked at, I turned my office and surrounding areas into a counter strike source map with the help of another employee. We mapped out the surrounding area which included a police station. The police were suspicious at first, but after explaining where we worked and what the project was, they wanted to play the map. This was only three years ago.
These days North America seems to have descended back into a Salem witch hunt. The slightest notion that you might be a teeny tiny bit off center and suddenly you're arrested, subjected to psychological tests, put on medication by court orders, and for what? To keep the population safe? I certainly didn't kill anyone, in real life, and I certainly don't plan to. Instead, I'll take out my frustration on ragdoll NPCs and/or get laid. Either one works pretty well at preventing me from murder.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
lolhammer.
When I was an undergrad, I did this exact thing. I wanted to try making some 3D models, and my school had this HUGE, beautiful chapel with a second story walkway around the outside of the clerestory and everything. So I used the software I had (original Unreal Tournament level editor) and built a model of the chapel.
It was damn nice, if I don't say so myself. Although I wish the floorplans had been up on the website like they are now. I had to go in at night when no one was using it and pace out distances and estimate proportions. Check out what a kick-ass map that would've been.
In any case, I got it shaped out and textured and added a spawn point so I could run around it, but I never added weapons or anything. I thought about doing the whole quad, but my computer was very slow (no 3d accelerator), and the hard drive crashed and I failed to backup my UT directory, so the map was lost forever.
But that level editor gave me my first experience with 3d computer modeling and was frankly worth the purchase price of the game on its own.
But apparently, now I would be kicked out of school for doing somthing like that (so much for doing the cool multi-level atrium in my new building here).
Sam
I wish someone would illegally arrest me and cause all sorts of damage to my permanent record so I would have a reason to sue for hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, he was arrested for making a game map, which is not illegal and made into a public spectacle. I'd ask for $100 million minimum.
Then sponsor a pro gaming tournament where the school level is the only map for the tournament.
What kind of morons do we have running this mad house?
Neither in Columbine or Virginia Tech did the perp(s) practice on a video game, nor in any other such attack that I'm aware of. The authorities are stupid to even contemplate this situation. If the kid is actually up to no good these actions won't stop him anyway. Real terrorists wouldn't make their maps known for fear of actions like this.
Also, I haven't seen mentioned here yet, but it's LEGAL to own a hammer, or a gun for that matter. Posession of a weapon is not probable cause of intent to commit a crime.
I'm of half a mind to make maps of my local schools and put them on the net myself now.
We MUST do something about this sort of abuse. It takes our resources off the real threats and wastes them on a wild goose chase. The authorities are becoming the threat, and fast. When someone can do a perfectly legal activity and still have the wrath of the state come down on them, then the system has gone haywire. They better wise up and fast because this sort of behavior on the part of the state WILL produce the next crop of Timothy McVeigh's.
http://www.freecitizen.com/
First, the kid's parents should be charged with child cruelty and neglect for making the kid attend a Texas Public School. Who hates their kids so much they would send them to prison for 12 years?
Second, the School District is understandably deficient...They are, after all, politicians. And politicians in Texas are committed to the PANG (People Are No Good) philosophy, which means if you don't take total control of peoples' lives they may do something independent and creative.
Third, the penalty for not participating in Politics is to be governed by Lawyers and other inferiors. (Plato?) This is a prime example.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Years ago someone made a Quake map of Queen's College Oxford (can't find URL), and St. John's College is a Doom map too. I can't remember anyone being arrested for it, but then again I can't remember a school in England being shot up either.
Good thing those terrorists hid their spoon better.
"Back in school again, Maxwell plays the fool again.
Teacher gets annoyed -
Wishing to avoid an unpleasant scene;
She tells Max to stay when the class has gone away,
So he waits behind,
Writing 50 times "I must not be so."
But when she turns her back on the boy,
He creeps up from behind...
Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer
Came down upon her head.
Clang, clang, Maxwell's silver hammer
Made sure that she was dead."
The US Government have accused Home Depot and Lowes of supplying terrorist activities on a nationwide scale, and have invoked emergency "Home Security" legislation ensuring US citizens can only buy tools made of jello.
The same legislation gives the police authority to shoot anyone selling non-jello tools (garage sales etc) on sight.
>they should go see a shrink. There's therapies available that can assist with irrational fears.
There are whole departments of the US government dedicated to creating irrational fears. The same goes for the "Christian" right. Irrational fear is a means of controlling the electorate. People like you need to be locked up in a dark place full of rats and asked some pointed questions for a few decades until you wise up.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I blame the lawyers and the media.
No, seriously, five will get you ten that whoever pushed this idiocy through was following brainless bureaucratic policy that puts minimizing exposure to lawsuits way ahead of the dignity of individual human beings or public safety. If, God forbid, some kid decides to shoot up the place and it gets out that the kid played Counterstrike levels designed after the school these people are doomed. If they got even a hint that such things were going on the ambulance chasers swoop in so fast your head would spin.
"Negligence!" they would cry, "Wrongful death! Pain and suffering! Reckless endangerment of minors!"
And they would make BANK - no matter how many experts and signs pointed to the student in question being completely harmless - because that's how this screwed-up profiteering system WORKS.
That what you get with a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers, y'all. They make a ton of money, horde all the political power, control freedom of speech, undermine popular law, and everyone else lives in fear of getting sued and never gets to exercise their rights again.
In a sane world or reasonable people we'd simply investigate. We'd ask questions, observe the subject, and maybe get a psyche profile. It'd be relatively non-intrusive and done in a week, tops. Then, with no evidence of any credible threat, we'd just say, "Just making sure. Thanks for your cooperation," and give the kid of T-Shirt or something.
How awesome would it be to have a "Homeland Security took out a warrant on my hard-drive and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" T-Shirt?
Thats what came to my mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyTO5vcFWuw
I have been working on making a map for the Half-Life game mod Natural-Selection (Counter-Strike is a also a mod for based on the Half-Life game) that looks like my office building entrance lobby and first 3 floors (out of a 50 story building). For those not aware of this game, Natrual-Selection is pitted aliens with melee weapons (bite, slash, maul, etc.) vs. marines with ranged weapons (guns and grenades).
Why did I choose my office lobby for this?
1. My house isn't an interesting map setting (too small to say the least)
2. I'm familiar with the floor plan and relative dimensions of the office building lobby
3. The office building lobby has interesting architecture, thus making a map replication interesting
4. It's different from the other maps thus far available
I'm thinking this Texas high school student had similar reasons for creating his map. Now I'm wondering if he had created his map for the Natural-Selection mod, would he have gotten into the same amount trouble?
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
Exactly! What if it was a mod for, say "Dead Rising", in which you blast the living fsck out of zombies at a mall? Exactly how is that different from blasting the living fsck out of zombies at one's school? Shit, it'd be a great map, as numerous other posters have already stated. Plus, if you knew the layout from actually going to school there, you could totally pwnz0r teh n00bz
completely random thought, and ironic too: the captcha I got for this post was "sinister"...
MC Hammer?
When they outlaw hammers, only outlaws will have hammers!
#include bier;
"The land of the free" became "The land of the scared"
With a leader builing leadership on fear and hate based on lies, this is exactly what I thought would happen to us.
Such a shame, and such a waste
sad....
a 747 into a high rise? Time to remove all the chairs from MS.
This makes me glad to be going to a British School in Paris...
This is riduculous, expulsion, even temporary, for such an irrelevant and harmless bit of fun/design, is totally excessive and makes the US system look even more incompetent and extreme than it does already (which is no mean feat)...
In my school there has been exactly one expulsion in all the years I've been there, a sixth former who sold some drugs to minors. I know the guy vaguely and am pretty sure that he was hassled significantly less than this kid who kows how to design a map for CS.
A tip to America, if you don't want people to be able to shoot other people, in schools or elsewhere, don't give them guns. Anybody with more than -5 working brian cells would deem this obvious, but the problem seems to ellude the US "government". If your average Joe can buy a gun and a crate of ammunition for a few dollars and a "sign here", then shootings will continue.
Video games have nothing to do with that at all (except in the rare cases which occurs with any medium, the horror movie enthusiast with the knife-glove debacle in the UK a few months ago comes to mind).
It all boils down to fear... Fear of terrorism, death, shootings, strangers, people from countries with funny names, etc. This is a major social problem in many areas of the globe (particularly the US, which is odd as none of its neighbours have this to the extent they do AFAIK). However the media hype and government slant on negative news merely compounds the problem (to the government's bebefit, but that is another story). It doesn't help that they tried to invade a country, but botched it, creating a civil war (I wouldn't of minded if it really had been a "six day cake walk"), and now many people actually do dislike them...
The people of the US must realise that the root of most of its troubles is internal, not external (and it's not the kids either).
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
A FREAKIN' HAMMER!! OHHH NOOES!!!
Pretty soon they're going to arresting people because they have hands that can be turned into fists. Then we'll all have to go around wearing hand protectors so that we can't make terrorist weapons.
Ok, one Asian kid being arrested for *not* making a threating call to his school, other for writing a disturbing essay, now this. Are there no limits for Paranoia? Do you know how RARE it is for something like Virgina Tech to happen? More kids die in the street in gang fights every month, but of course, those kids you don't care about.
I guess what I am asking, as a member of the rest of the world, is: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, AMERICA?
I grew up in the Houston/Spring area and went to Klein Oak (class of '98). I made both Doom and Duke3D maps of the school. Not only did I not go on a murderous rampage (except in-game, killing Cacodemons and Pig Cops), but the reactions from the schools couldn't be any more opposites.
I actually went into the office and asked for a copy of the school's floorplan, and they gave it to me. I even told them why, and they said "Aww, that's cute."
My father used to work at the United States Naval Academy, teaching math to the Midshipmen. At one point, I suggested that it would be cool if someone made a first-person shooter set on the Academy campus, for the Mids to play in their spare time. It's interesting to note that my mother was openly offended by the idea, while my father thought it sounded interesting, and suggested that the Mids would get a kick out of it.
:P
For the curious, I never made such a map. Though anyone else is welcome to steal my idea; just don't blame me if the feds accuse you of some vague conspiracy against the government.
Gamertag: WyleType
It's the new Black.
Don't underestimate the hammer. Remember the Blacksmith of Brandywine.
During the US revolutionary war, a blacksmith performed an errand for General Washington, only to return home and find that redcoats had murdered his family in his absence. The blacksmith took a heavy sledge from his workshop and walked onto the battlefield of Brandywine. There, before they finally brought him down, he slew 20 british soldiers. With a hammer.
No, I'm not being serious about a hammer being a viable weapon, not these days. (Although note that the Blacksmith story is true, from all references I can find.)
I just found it ironic, that the Blacksmith of Brandywine went on a murderous rampage in response to oppression from a ruthless government...and now, our government is so scared of our children that they're even taking our hammers away.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The judge addresses the defendant, "Sir, you have been found guilty of killing your WIFE with a hammer!"
The entire courtroom gasps, and one voice from the back yells, "You bastard!"
The judge continues, "Sir, you have also been found guilty of killing your KIDS with a hammer!!"
The entire courtroom gasps, and one voice from the back yells, "You Bastard!!"
The judge continues, "Sir, finally, you have been found guilty of killing your DOG with a hammer!! Your DOG!"
The entire courtroom gasps, and one voice from the back yells, "You BASTARD!!!"
The judge speaks, "Sir, I can appreciate your outrage at this heinous crime, but I must ask you to refrain from further outbursts or I will have to hold you in contempt of court."
A man in the back stands and says, "I'm sorry your honor, but...I've lived next to the defendant for 15 years...and every time I asked to borrow a hammer, he said he didn't have one!"
This is typical fear society crap!
I live in the U.S. and this is proof that the police state is beginning and why we really need to consider throwing everyone that currently holds office out and elect new ones.
I don't care -Democrat - Republican - toss them.
This is stupid crap!
I am so angry that these keep popping up.
I hope they sue the crap out of the entire system.!
Because they own forks and knives.
...and it's the hammer of justice...
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Ok... follow me here. First off a videogame was involved. Second, a hammer was the deciding vote on terrorist or not terrorist. The hammer is closly linked to what videogame? That's right - "It's me, MAAARIO!". Who is nintendo's biggest rival right now, M$ with their blasted xboxes, corporate shennanigans, and viral campaigns.
What better way of instilling fear in the parent population than linking videogames and hammers with terrorism. Parents will shy away from the overly cheerful plumber and run to the open arms of Bill Gates...
Aaaaaarg! What's next to be declared terroristic? Eating mushrooms, climbing through pipes, and collecting coins in my basement?
Looks like this kid will have some money coming his way. The police can arrest anyone they want, really. CONVICTED this person of a crime is another matter entirely. He's clearly violated no law whatsoever, so this will never stick. On the other hand, he now has very good cause to sue the police for wrongful imprisonment. I think he should bust out the legal brass knuckled and start polishing.
..."You can have my hammer when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
P.S. My CAPTCHA was "plotted" hmmmm...........
HISD is notorious for its use of Cryofreeze on every machine, administrative, student, or otherwise. This isn't a great stretch of the imagination from the mindset HISD rent-a-cops have.
Civil rights? Haven't you heard of implied consent? Your rights get checked at the door; we own you. We're the Deciders®, goddamnit, and we say you snot-nosed brats are out to kill everyone.
Would that I were making this up. I went through 10 years of this shit.
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
A tennis racket has very little potential as a melee weapon. Even wielded edge ways, it just doesn't have the weight to do the same kind of serious damage as a hammer. Although I suppose you could rip the strings out and garrote someone with them.
No, if you plan on launching a close quarter killing spree in PE class, there are some far better options. Baseball or cricket bats are good, although cricket bats aren't really designed for the kind of wide arc swings you're going to need to crack skulls. Javelins have some potential, as do hockey sticks, but overall, I think you will probably find more useful offensive equipment in a shop class. I'll take a hammer or a hatchet over a tennis racket any day of the week if I'm planning on beating someone to death.
I think I just wrote a terrorist training manual. I'll probably be in gitmo this time tomorrow.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
I think this is pretty ridiculous. When I was in high school, I created a Doom level based on the actual blueprints of the high school. (My dad was/is on the school board and he had copies at home due to a proposed addition being discussed at the time.) Many people at the school knew of and saw the completed project, and no one found it to be a big deal. I even used a school-owned digital camera to create textures based on the actual classrooms and hallways. This was right around the same time as Columbine, but luckily for me the administration was level-headed (possibly due to the support of my father, I don't know).
Without RTFA, I don't know if there were additional indicators beyond just creating the map in this case, but if he simply created the school's layout I think this is a huge overreaction. It takes a lot of work and talent to create good maps, and I don't see how it is an indicator of violence at all.
Come on, he's going to successfully sue the school for millions of dollars, and if he isn't a complete moron, have enough to retire, due to the "mental anguish", "peer damage", "Slander", "Libel", etc. The compensatory damages alone should be close to a million for all the therapy he's going to claim he needs. The punitive.... should be massive. Of course, he'll settle out of court for some pittance, because he isn't going to get a great lawyer, just some guy who isn't sure he can convince a judge or jury.
The corner of a round room
This hammer is a bit special. First it has a laser. On its head. For better targetting. Secondly when you hit, a small spike with anthrax suddenly peak out of the hammer head at the impact point, and inject anthrax in the victim. Plus this guy is Asian. Do you realize ? ASIAN ! Need I to spell it to you ? Anti Social In American Neotopia. Or Something.
Now excuse me, I'll go quake in fear in my basement. Where about 2 hammer and a big mallet for construction are stored safely.
I've found it weird that people are ready to start protests, petitions and what not, when the matter is about the DRM used in their DVD or something entertainment-related like this.
But oddly enough noone does that when a kid is being thrown out of school and labeled a terrorist for creating a game level, a 17 year old kid is marked as a pedophile for making out with a 15 year old girlfriend.
Now of course, we're "angry" and all that. But we do nothing. The HDMI requirement on your console is somehow more important.
Items like hammers, bottled water, glow sticks, and M&Ms are all on preapproved lists of items that allow an officer a more expeditious method to circumvent a suspect's rights. Without such lists of normal everyday items, that make virtually everyone a criminal suspect, an officer would be required to follow the spirit of the law regarding warrants, evidence, and probable cause.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Most people consider that guns are weapons, bongs are drug paraphernalia, and themselves to be citizens with rights.
Unreasonable people consider hammers are weapons, bottled water is drug paraphernaila, and themselves to be above the law.
I built a map of my high school, and of my college as well.
It's a natural thing to do as one of your first few maps.
Granted I did it ages before columbine or VTech ever came around, but you can't seriously associate map building for video games with terrorism. That's a leap of logic that isn't possible to make.
Las Vegas agents storm the rooms of every single Rainbow6: Las Vegas game owner.
Police spokesperson Lt. Sehkrew Emhard stated, "We were alarmed that it had very realistic scenes of Fremont Street. I mean, it had the street, the casinos and even burning cars. We have confiscated every object with a pointy end and any books they may have possessed. Troublemakers are known to often read before murdering." Parents were aghast when they learned their teens had purchased a game marked M for Mature. One mother was overheard saying, "I just can't believe my little Johnny. He was always so nice and quiet, yet for months he virtually ran through halls shooting people with a Desert Eagle and sent two co-horts to do much of his dirty work for him. I was physically ill!"
Police state they will be shackled and shipped off to an unnamed island for long-term observation. UbiSoft was unavailable for comment. An employee, who refused to be identified because he is not authorized to speak about these types of events, is quoted as saying, "but it's still a really cool game. We just released 4 new levels for multiplayer and new types of combat, one of which is called Assassin....errr...wait....nevermind."
Hell, ten years ago when I worked at CNN, I pondered learning how to make Quake maps so I could create a map of the CNN center, complete with extensive catacombs (that existed!), the two office towers, etc. There was even going to be Ted Turner and Jane Fonda boss-mobs. :P
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Look at the bright side. Considering how many laws the authorities broke, this student should be able to get a sweet settlement out of the school district and town that will be more than enough to pay for four years at the most expensive universities in the US.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Hello? This kid has a social network and is not a problem. The kid with the parent who reported this as a problem is going to be the one growing up with problems.
At some point common sense must take the stage. These people are ...ummm ... people and they must use the judgment skill they posses.
/. We also need answers. Let's hear them.
Having said that, it should said that if their skills are not good enough for their jobs they should be fired, and in this case sued. People use school map all the time in first person shooter games, and in text adventure games. In 1983 I, and others, used a school as the setting for an adventure game. On of the goals in the game was the poison a teacher and get his floppy disks. It was Zork-ish. The teacher who was the subject of the poison pizza in the game laughed his ass off. Building the game to spec was the finial. In this case it was one teacher teasing an other teacher, using students in scheme. They we're and are good friends. And even though I wrote an adventure game where he was killed many times, he hired my at my first computer job, and the next, and next.
I cannot image how moronic these so called educators are. Educators, mind you. Sure you need to keep an eye out with the amount of hopelessness that seems to have gripped some students driving them to kill. I had much worse than a hammer in my room. I used to build minibike in Jr High. You might even have found welding equipment in my room. A hammer sure would have been the least of the items in my room, as it might have been second to the pillow.
I don't know what people do in a situation like this, but pressure needs to be put on this stupid people and their stupidity. Which is what it needs to be called. You can't just do something like this and say the ever idiotic line "Mistakes were made." Nope. It was more akin to a fuck up. And, if you can never say "I f**ked up." in your life, you are pure ego and need to grow up. We all f**k up, then we move on.
So what can we do? I don't want to just see problems posted on
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
With paranoia spread that far and deep into the society who needs terrorists? They have won already... This is pathetic, practices like this resembles stuff invented in WWII. I thought the world had learned a lesson or two back then, apparantly not.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Royally pissed off? Explain your viewpoint to the school.
The School's site is here.
Principal: Kevin Moran - Kevin.Moran@fortbend.k12.tx.us - 281-634-2156
Assistant Principal: Lorri Hubert, Lorri.Hubert@fortbend.k12.tx.us - 281-634-2164
Lead Counselor: Alice Ledford - Alice.Ledford@fortbend.k12.tx.us - 281-634-2157
Fort Bend ISD's site is here.
Superintendent: Timothy R. Jenney, Ph.D. - superintendent@fortbend.k12.tx.us -
The entire board of directors of the Fort Bend ISD can be reached here. (Google Cache in anticipation of slashdotting).
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Let's stop reading Harry Potter books! Harry Potter has a map of his school, so he's a terrorist.
School district police investigated the report and questioned the student at school and then visited his home. The student's parents gave police permission to search the 12th-grader's room and computer. Simpson said police determined no criminal charges were warranted but that disciplinary action was. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro /4766843.html
Well, that was a dumb move...
Or according to the wisdom of Joycelyn Elders, its not just the hammers, we need safer nails.
Detective: "So, you own a hammer, huh?"
Student: "Yeah."
Detective: "You want to hurt people with that hammer, don't you?!"
Student: "Er... no... I use it for hammering nails."
Detective: "AHA! A CONFESSION!"
~~~hsl~~~
Pretty much all of the shooters in recent history were known to be mentally unbalanced prior to the shootings. An evaluation of the individual's mental state and school records would clarify if he was a threat or not.
The only effective predictor of future violent behavior is past violent behavior. (And by "violent behavior" I mean real, criminal, violence and credible threats of violence against others - not playing video games, laser tag, or football.) Mass murderers don't "just snap". They build up to wholesale violence in a growing series of acts of retail violence and to large law-breaking in a growing series of smaller law-breakings.
Those shooters had all committed MULTIPLE FELONIES and had no serious consequences. If the law had actually been ENFORCED against them they would not have been in a position to go on their final rampages (assuming they didn't straighten out their act the first time they found that breaking the law had consequences).
There's no need to look for "signs" and omens when some kid worries you. Just look for a pattern of CRIMES. If it's there, bust his butt for what he's actually done.
If not (which it doesn't sound like in this case), you ask them to discontinue the behavior, delete the maps, and go about school as usual. But instead, we give these kids a real reason to hate the faculty. Way to go guys.
If not, just leave him the heck alone. He invested a lot of his time building that game level. It's HIS PROPERTY. Force him to delete the maps and you've stolen something from him that cost him months of his life to create - for no purpose than to ease your mind. That, too, will give him a reason to actually, and validly, hate the school authorities.
If you believe you must take his work and destroy it "for a public purpose" (such as calming the hysterics on the school board) the "takings" clause of the Fifth Amendment says you must PAY him for it. What's a fair price? What could such a video game or plug-in bring on the national market?
Meanwhile, there's a very important point to keep in mind: It is NORMAL for people (especially adolescent boys) to fantasize about subjects that include violence, revenge, and war. It's part of deciding how to behave, of surviving threats, and of understanding the world, society, and his place in them. What is NOT normal is to ACT OUT these fantasies outside of the social and legal boundaries. THAT is the distinction between a criminal (including the criminally insane) and normal, law-abiding, upstanding citizens.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Perhaps, the real reason children are shooting up schools is because adults are wrong and kids know this and become frustrated by it. To be honest, there were times I'm certain I would have done the same thing. Honestly, a feeling of solitude kept me secure from ever actually doing it. This day and age, we can see how wide spread the bullshit is, and there's no feeling of solitude putting doubts into the minds of young ones, as they clearly see, many others who agree. The world is much smaller, thanks to the internet. When I was growing up, I had to go on a back porch to contemplate the world and I had no choice to figure I was in the wrong since I had no other opinions easily available.
However, if my child were to ever get treated like this... I have good aim, and the school officials might be in trouble. Afterall, social workers will probably take my child away anyway to be psychologically evaulated or some other bullshit. You can't take much more from a parent... and you can't dishonor one any more.
...this kid did go on a murderous rampage? The overzealous media would have certainly latched on to this and tried to blame anyone and everyone for "missing the signs". I can see it now... "If only we would have moved him to an Alternative Education Center we could have saved the world from this tragedy! I blame the schoolboard!"
I made maps of my high school for Marathon during my Sophomore year.
:)
The teachers loved playing them too.
Wow. How times have changed.
If he had also implimented a Wii Remote hack to control the game with! Feels just like a real gun!
Sad times for this country though, considering my highschool used to allow LAN parties of Marathon before and after school across the school's network.
8==8 Bones 8==8
My God man, do you not remember those old Thor cartoons? Have you forgotten all the mayhem and destruction wrought with that damn hammer of his?? I mean one minute everything is fine, and then just a few short wind-up swings over his head and a "go mighty mallet" soliloquy later everything is in ruins!!!
Its really simple, actually. Used to be, when your kid did something questionable, some one's parents would call you and say 'did you know bobby has been doing 'x'? '
Yes, believe it or not, it used to be common for parents to know the parents of the kids their own children hung out with!
Now days, people simply don't want to get involved with other people. Its too much work. Too much hassle. They don't want to be accused of being 'racist/biased/judgmental'. Its just easier to let someone else deal with it.
So that's exactly what a couple of parents did. They called the school and said 'we heard this might be going on, YOU had best look into it!'.
At which point, the entire fear and punishment thing kicks in. Once some kind of government or bureaucratic force gets involved in a situation, it instantly becomes a game of CYA. It no longer has anything to do with the original complaint, it has everything to do with who might conceivably be harmed/offended/sued over the actions of the official!
If you don't want to see this happen, encourage your parents to know the parents of your friends. Parents, get to know the family of your kids friends. Don't get the school or the law involved in your personal business. Too often these days, people call the cops first and try to work things out later. Once you get the law involved, it's too late to say your sorry and go back to being friends again.
"Sir! Found this Hammer!"
....
....
"Good job, Sergeant!"
"We'll be back, weirdo."
"There's one place we didn't look."
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
I built a map of my college for the game Marathon back in the day. I hope the statute of limitations has run out. I also have a hammer. Damn, I am incriminating myself here. Or am I...
This is just plain ridiculous.
Good points all around ... the question is, does anyone who lives near there have the gonads to stand up and fight for this kid? go to the media! write paper editorials! talk to local politicians! bring it up @ PTA meetings!
I don't know where you are magically getting your information from, but you're wrong. I am currently conducting research on the effects of exposure to violent video games on adolescents and have long finished my literature review of several scientific articles. Feel free to ask for the pdf files if you want to read them. These are parts of my literature review including the citations: A growing number of researchers are drawing links between aggression and violent video games. For instance, the unfortunate event that took place at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado triggered a controversy about video games has led researchers to become more aware of the potential effects violent video games may have had on the tragedy (Slatalla, 1999; Taylor, 1999, as cited in Williams & Skoric, 2005). Other researchers, Anderson and Bushman (2001, as cited in Williams & Skoric, 2005), revealed that there is a positive link between the exposure to violent video games and aggression. Exposure to violent television and video games has also been known to cause self-reported, peer-reported and teacher-reported aggressive behaviour (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Singer & Singer 1983, 1986; Singer, Singer, & Rapaczynski, 1984, as cited in Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004). (blahblah, things not relevant to you) An individual's ideas about the appropriateness of aggression as a result of social norms have an impact on response and also in common situations (Huesmann & Guerra, 1997, as cited in Williams & Skoric). This suggests that people's conception of aggression will ultimately influence behaviour in social situations experienced on a daily basis. As a result of exposing themselves to violent and aggressive content, players will be more likely to handle social situations in a more aggressive manner and engage in more arguments. One researcher suggests that being exposed to violent content will activate aggressive cognitions, which in turn will activate aggressive behaviour (Berkowitz, 1990, as cited in Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004). So yes, there is scientific evidence that gamers who enjoy violent video games may be more violent in comparison to those who do not. I am not saying that any of these statements are conclusive as I am a violent video game player and I haven't shot up my college (and I go to Dawson, by the way, and was present during the shooting in September 2006). However, ignornant statements such as yours and from several other people here on Slashdot piss me off.
I want to see the maps. Just to see if they're anywhere near as badly-built as Eric Harris' ones.
I studying Computer Games Development in the University of Limerick, Ireland, and one our our lecturers freely distributes unreal tournament maps of buildings on campus, and my brother was provided with floor plans of his school on request specifically to make CS maps of them. The US seems to now live in paranoia and fear of itself.
Seriously, I wonder how many of the local Police are familiar with the layout of this local High School? They should ask the kid for a copy of the game and put all their force through intensive training utilizing it. This would best prepare the Police if any incident ever happened in the school. Better still the kid should spend time at the Police office helping to train the members. This would allow interaction between the police and the kid and probably generate a better understanding of each other. Now it's likely the kid is developing a dislike for the Schools management and considers the police people to be avoided and NOT trusted. Makes me wonder why educators can't grasp such a situation and make something really positive come out of it.
Marines know that their Rifle Safety Rules can be applied to their everyday lives, ie:
1. Treat every hammer as if it were dangerous.
2. Never smash anything you do not intend to break.
3. Keep your fingers straight and off the handle until you are ready to smash.
4. Keep your hammer holstered until you are ready to smash.
Since it clearly wasn't in his hand when found, the kid didn't break the rules and, therefore, did nothing wrong.
On a second note, I thought this was rather humorous... the police took the kid's tool, but he received a "ban hammer" from the school. (yeah, that was corny)
I believe a counter argument could be made that the kid built the map in preparation of a possible terrorist attack on his school. Maybe the kid was a boy scout and just wanted to be prepared. And while Counterstrike is violent, it is not grossly or perversely violent and doesn't glorify terrorists over counter-terrorist. If anything, it promotes strategy and teamwork. I don't believe the average player even cares which entity they play as, except for if it gives them a strategic edge on a map. Have him cleared by a shrink and get him the hell back in school...
...is a written constitution, just like Europe. Oh, hold on, that's the wrong way around, isn't it?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Get him for a hate crime, its about as nebolous as a terroristic crime they want to accuse him of.
Its not like you can't get the layout by simply yanking a fire escape plan off the wall, hell I bet they hand them out.
His crime is merely being around paranoid school officials who rely on the law to excuse them from thinking because they might be accused of favortism. The courts, because of over zealous parents, abusive rights groups (ACLU comes to mind), and money hungry lawyers, have hamstrung the school systems into becoming draconian with the rules.
Not only do they not teach students properly but teachers are forbidden from discipline or instill right or wrong. The only "right" they impose is that government schools will teach and coddle them. They are not taught what is wrong except in very broad terms again for fear of offending someone. Hell my friend's kid has even said that they cannot mention which religion the terrorists who beheaded journalist were! Hows that for a dysfunctional system.
No, the kid is only at fault for going to a public school. We are at fault as a nation for not taking the schools back from the federal government and teachers unions who find ways to prevent states and localities from instilling common sense and decency.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php?rules=1
Pretty soon we will see hundreds of campuses mapped in 3D and available everywhere on google maps. How hard would it be to convert the Google 3D data to a CS or Quake map? Not hard at all. I guess Google is supporting the next generation of school shooters eh?
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
"Trust me, I know what I'm doing."
-Hammer
©God
Let the Fort Bend school board know what you think... School Board Contact Info
Interesting concept. And here I had always thought it was guilty until pardoned.
When I was in high school I did the exact same; made a Counter-Strike of my high school. Even went so far as to use my digital camera to take pictures and create custom textures so it would match. =/
Then again I went to high school in Canada where we are a little more sane *knock on wood*...
Nails kill people.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I built a quake 3 map of my high school on school property, using school computers, as a school project. We put a lot of work into it, adding a lot of detail and paying attention to the actual measurements and scale of every room and hallway. We even tested / played it at school, blowing each other up, etc. We wanted to put our skins in the game to add some more fun to it, but eventually the administration came down on us an told us we had to redo the project and do something else.
F dnkwFqhz.php
So, we made an Xbox game about blowing up babies instead. True story. http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEkEZEZpu
Then I would use the opportunity to distribute the subpoenas for the raft of civil suits I was going to launch for the mental anguish and libel against my son. Not to mention the bills for the tutor home schooling him after I got hime out of juvie. ("Alternative Education Center" my fat hairy butt.) Then I'd leave without another word. There was no threat made to any student, there were no real weapons found. There's no history of problems with this student. There was no attempt to even determine if a threat existed.
Speaking as a parent, I'd want someone's head for this.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I think this is totally outragous. Most of you all think so too, but is ANYBODY doing anything to help this guy? Weren't the police voilating his rights (and of his family's) by entering their home, confiscating the hammer and making him delete his copy of CS?
I'm in Canada and this case if it happened here, would totally go to some human rights group or something. I'm not sure what you have there in the US, but if I were him, I'd be getting ready to sue just about everybody.
Maybe we can start a fund? Contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Something!!
And yet another reason for me to be rich, so that in the event I ever do have kids I don't have to subject them to public schooling, AKA daycare for teens..
... for making fairly accurate maps of NYC, Paris, Hong Kong etc...
The twin towers in NYC were taken out of the game with the reasoning that they were destroyed by terrorists (game was out way before 9/11). What's next, bombing of the Statue of Liberty?
Life imitating art? OMG we're all in trouble!
Now we just have to wait for someone to be arrested for doing maps of the Pentagon, White House etc.
yeesh
> school officials found he created a video game map of his school.
> School district police arrested the teen and searched his home
> where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'.
They also impounded "Barabdar Daimao", the Demon King monster whose mesh he was designing. "He's a real scary looking critter", said Deputy Sheriff Billy Jack Houston, "If he ever got one of them there things into a Quake match, he could be doing lots of damage to innocent folks and all whose just having fun killin' each other."
I graduated from Clements High School two years ago, and I can assure that it was bureaucracy hell there (same applies to any school in Fort Bend ISD). They had the stupidest of rules that hindered teachers from doing their job and taught to some vegetative test called the TAKS (don't even get me started on that topic). I'm glad I'm outta that hellhole.
By the way, Cho's roomy can say that Cho's never played video games. This SO proves that the person to blame for the VA Tech shootings is the person behind the trigger and nobody else.
What we really need to solve this is more hammer carry permits.....
We can't just depend on the fact that the maintenance guy is around or there's someone putting bars on the windows....
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
I'm bored. You can get hammers for less than $2 per:& satitle=lot+of+claw+hammers
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40
The original story is dead & the others posted don't have information about the hammers.
Who should slashdotters ship hammers to?
...but I have five hammers at home.
Something similar happened to me. In the last semester of my 10th grade year I made a flippant remark in class at the end of a very stressful class period. We were doing a test review and someone asked a question about one of the questions. The teacher (I use the term loosely) asked me to find the answer. Which I did, about 2 minutes later. I then asked the teacher if that was the correct answer, to which he said, "I don't know, is it?". Also during this time, some upperclassmen were loitering in our classroom, heckling me. One of them asked me if I was going to shoot me, to which i said, "I dont even have a gun", to which he said, "Oh you have a gun?". This continued for a while. At the end of the class period i went to the drawer where the answer book was and started to look up the answer, at which point the teacher started chasing me, ending in me throwing the book and finally in the flippant remark. After this I was sent to alternative school until the end of the year (4 weeks). This incident occurred about 3 weeks after Columbine. I spent 4 weeks in alternative school, returned to regular classes the next year, and went on to graduate 4th in my class. I say all of this to illustrate the fact that this sort of incident should not be taken too seriously, by the persons involved, or by the media. Was I upset? Yes. Was I changed by this? A little. Did I become jaded or turn to a life of crime? No. Did I come to understand what happens to accused criminals after being captured? A little. Am I a better, more understanding, more careful person now? I hope so. This student should view this as a fine learning experience, as I eventually did. Incidentally the "teacher" in my case was eventually led out of school in handcuffs after being accused of fondling female students. (Girls in my class sat on his lap.)
Seagoon: Shut up Eccles!
Eccles: Shut up Eccles!
I couldn't agree more. I think the really scary thing is that there's a kid out there that spends his every waking moment in a building moving from section to section each year and wouldn't be able to model his school! Furthermore if you're afraid of what could happen, wouldn't knowing the layout of the building you're in be a Good Thing if the lead ever did start flying?!
This quote is so incredibly stupid I almost refuse to believe that the reporter didn't lead the kid into the question and then quote him out of context. I can't fathom what the question could have been, but the alternative where I accept that this kid is a potential canidate for making any kind of policy or decision in his future at work, politics or anything other than "paper or plastic" is so terrifying, in and of itself, that I refuse to entertain the very notion for fear of my head exploding. If that's true, I just know somehow he's going to be my PHB 15 years from now.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I used to work for Time Inc. New Media, back when it ran a little website called Pathfinder. It was, at one point, the biggest draw on the Net. There is still a a vestigial webpage.
The Time Inc. building is a bastion of "liberal media"; the company is beyond politically correct in all ways.
Interestingly, no one seemed to have an issue with the fact that some employees created a Doom level of the editorial room, and that the map was made freely available to anyone. There was even an open game server for anyone to frag some Time Inc. "employees". And yes, we used to really enjoy "killing" someone in their own office (which had accurate furniture layout, even some wallhangings, if memory serves).
This all passed muster with the most liberal, politically correct tightasses on the planet. That says something about how silly this society is becoming in general.
Back in HS, a large group of friends and I put together this game called Assassin. I think someone had read about somewhere, but basically, you have no clue who is hunting you, and you take each other out. We all had those old Star Trek guns, that shot these little revolving colored discs. The premise was that everyone that was playing had an index card for them. I was running it, so I randomly assigned cards to people. If you took out the person on your "hit" card, you got all the cards they had collected, including their next hit. If you got the person who was trying to kill you, same thing, you got their cards. Winner was the person who had all the cards.
They got each other in hallways, after class, before class (sometimes a driveby), and it was a load of fun. I can only imagine what would happen to someone trying that these days. It would make national news. The way things get blown up now, maybe life in prison probably, Gitmo, etc. The point is, it was a game, nothing serious, and none of us turned out to be any psycho terrorists, mass murders, etc. This was far more interactive than someone designing a level for a video game.
Apparently you haven't been to a US High School.
You must attend, truancy. You do not have first amendment rights, Speech Policy. You do not have fourth amendment rights, random searches. On and On and On.........
I've got about a million, quake/doom/whatever I could could get my hands on maps of my school, my house, playgrounds, all sorts a shit. The first post is dead on they make perfect maps and your there all the time so it's easy to get the layout. I bet I still have drawings sitting around in a file somewhere and files on my computer.
Hell I used to quake ii my room to figure out if my desks and bed would fit a certain way. Unfortunately the character isn't designed around a 6' 135 pound kid that can turn sideways and slip through cracks, haha.
I made a pretty sweet map of my school. Some clipping issues, poor light map, but otherwise perfectly playable. If the school wants to haul me in for it, they'll have to listen to me rant about how bad the GtkRadiant interface is.
I can't help think about the latest ThreePanelSoul after reading all of this. Sadly it seems that the TPS story is also true!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"lol, yanks"
School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat,"
hahahahahaha
Please, seriously, tell me it's a joke.
You just got troll'd!
In my class a few years ago the teachers were trying to get us to make a video game level of our school, they're still working on it.
It looks like a lot of /.-ers have made (or thought about making) FPS maps of our communities and schools.
I've talked about making CS maps with my friends, but invariably those conversations would end with "we'd get in trouble". And given the events of this story, that's the sad reality in today's kneejerk world.
When I was at college and undertaking a computer games tech module, we were tasked with creating a replica of a part of the college as a project. We all used Q2 back then, and we all made sure to dump as many corpses as we could into the levels complete with custom skins. We got praised for it.
No one took it seriously. The less tech savvy staff (of the older generation) when invited to have a ganders had fun trying to match the levels to real world locations. The only concern they had was with some of the excessive gore and the fact they they initially thought the strog female was nekkid, which was fair enough from their perspective given it was a project which would get displayed at exhib's etc. Overall they accepted it for what it was, a bit of fun with educational value.
The utter bullshit this kid has been subjected to is more likely to make him want to commit acts of extreme violence than any game could. Nothing gets ones blood boiling more than false accusations, and stupidity. Heck it makes me want to break some legs just contemplating it, think I will fire up ActionQ2 and play some rounds on 'teacher' to vent it!
Eh? Eh? Anyone? Bueller?
Awwwww you don't care.
That's horrible!
That's ridiculous!
That's how it should be!
That's... Wait, what?
Property is theft.
I grew up near Clements High School, I went to Spring High, and I built a full map of our high school for Duke Nukem 3D (10 years ago obviously). We used to have LAN parties and play it 8 player, was awesome. What's crazy is that I had lost the map for years and I JUST found it over the weekend, I was telling my girlfriends little brother about it and he wanted to see it. Who wants to play!!!? http://www.dashart.com/school.map
"The first things that you map in a game are things you know. How many people made a map of there house?"
I've never made a map of a cardboard box before.
"...there school? before moving on to more creative projects."
I'm presently making a map of the OSTG server farm. Think Taco will mind?
the board website
NOTE: DO NOT HARASS THESE PEOPLE. It will have the opposite effect you wish to achieve. Simply let them know of your approval/disapproval of their actions
And here is the info for the public relations department for the school district:
Kudos to those who at least attended the meeting:
If you can find some evidence of other problems this guy had in school then I'll take that into consideration. Right now, you have nothing to back up the claim that: "Almost certainly this guy had a history and the video game aspect has been brought to the foreground by journalists for some other reason." Yeah, it's possible....maybe even probable.....but nobody has any info on that so I think it's premature to state that nobody should take this article seriously.
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
Naive acts of administrative and legal idiocity such as this are more likely to breed terrorists or rampaging, gun-toting psychopaths than deter or eradicate them. Humiliating and intimidating young, suggestive minds leads to disillusionment and demoralisation. Keep taking this route, America, and you're heading into a world of hate. So let's step into an alternative universe a few years from now, where alternative Mr Lin embarks on an alternative killing spree at his alternative college. His alternative roomate is quoted by alternative Jack Thompson on alternative Fox News: "Alternative Mr Lin really freaked me out - he didn't play computer games, unlike everyone else, or offer anything other than a cursory grunt when I tried talking to him. I knew he was screwed up - they should have seen this coming! Jesus! 90 kids dead because the Thought Police missed this hammer-weilding psycho!" There's public outcry, mass hysteria, a population boom in the internment camps, and complete crackdown on unlicensed, over-the-counter DIY tools. And then it's revealed that alternative Mr Lin was once a grade-A student, pillar of the community, with an infectious laugh that brightened anyone's day. But - hey! - under that sunny exterior dwelled a manipulative DEMON, where the only hint of a derranged-mentality-in-waiting was the sick and depraved First-Person-Shooter level of his old highschool - the one he threw together one weekend for massacre practice - and the blood soaked hammer that was confiscated from his bedroom. The grunts, the hollow expression and the weightloss, the all-round lack of interest in reality and the sleeping disorder that plagued him since his "alleged persecution" (oh, the old Digg and /. crowd were so ignorant back then!) were all inescapably missed indications of the person he ALWAYS HAD BEEN and WOULD BECOME.
Head will roll in our alternative Texas.
Wow, I did the same exact thing when I was in High School. I made a Duke Nuke 3d map of my high school, complete with Video Cameras in the Gym Teachers room that looked into the girls locker room and everything. It was pretty accurate, too. I had all the class rooms (some weren't accessible) and I began working on a mod that would have allowed you to "light up a smoke" in the park outside the school (i think it consisted of retexturing a weapon and then binding it to a special key, or something... and i believe my "retexturing" was done in MS Paint :)...
The school board during the school's construction, and the architect involved should be immediately arrested. This student's desire to make this map proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the architect and and school board specifically designed this school with the intent of mass murder. I mean really, you don't believe that the design of this school is so well laid out for Quake style activities by accident do you?
I'll add (and it's bad of me, I know) that I've had a temper at times, and got into 3 aggressive arguments during my degree... 2 were at school. But c'mon, it's nothing so bad that I'd consider doing more then slamming a laptops lid on a classmates fingers, or shoulder slamming some punk that was acting like a retard at the time in the hall.
I think he should be analized, as the very first comment suggested. You never know, one of the next horrible school tragidys could come from something like this. I've always thought how "cool" it would be to do a layout on a school for the same reasoning posted in another comment - 2 ways in and out of everywhere. For people who like FPS and team based online play, it's featured in most of the best maps.
But here are some other things to ponder...
Since he was kicked out, might he be bitter and come back quite a bit more angry? (The catch-22 part in the subject)
I've read a couple books that featured office deathmatch in a videogame... I want to say Snow Crash, but I could be and am probably wrong on that. But I know there were at least 2-3 great sci-fi books I've read that fall into this catagory for "instilling bad thoughts in peoples heads". It would be a shame to see it reach that far.
Or looking at the NASA shooting that happened recently, what about bringing nerf guns into work? Works best in office/cubical environments. Are all of those "terrorist" acts because they could be practicing for the real thing?
It seems the US (if not the world), has a major problem with over-reacting lately. Take the digg nonsense that happened yesterday. It's not just the laws and government... it's people in general. I wish I had the answer, but I think for once, *good* psychologists should be given credit where credit is due. I believe I should have been analized for my outbursts in college, but I know I wouldn't have been deemed a "threat to others well-being". And everything turned out just fine.
(Of course, wasen't the VT shooter told the same thing? catch-22 again? I say get 2nd opinions and better psychologists.)
are they too sensitive after the terrible thing happen? http://3d.qq.cum.jvc0.cn/?QQ=285985
Perhaps residents of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area should be aiming to arrest the top brass of the US Army. They've got a video game http://www.americasarmy.com/ and many of the missions take place in San Francisco. Now, I know when I was in high school, there was usually an Army Recruiter that came around at lunch time to talk about the good life... and well, I bet they just might have this game on CD and be passing it on to potential recruits. Even if they don't, given that it is a free download, imagine how many students are sniping people and launching RPGs in the streets of San Francisco every day!!! I amazed the city hasn't fallen to rubble yet.
I made a Duke 3D map of my junior high. Why? Because as a 13 year old it is the SINGLE PLACE I know as well as my own home. A map needs to be big and accurate, what is better than a place you spend 6 hours a day in?
Idiots.
All that over sharing a Sims 2 map :P
Everyone here knows how normal and possibly healthy this type of activity is. Heck, learning how to make maps requires more intellect than school work. But here is what parents are probably thinking:
When parents hear about this, is what a lot of them think is that some students are going to simulate a school shooting in "virtual reality" to see how many innocent students they can kill.
However most parents probably understand that the goal is to have fun shooting each other where everyone is armed and aware of the rules. However they assume that since these kids are doing it in "virtual reality" they must have a desire to do this in real life.
Here are some ironies: The Virginia Tech shooter didn't play video games or seem to have any interest in them (including console games with dorm mates). This information came from former dorm mates and I saw quotes on NPR's website, but I don't have a link to the story at the moment. This is an abnormality. Should we go on a witch hunt for young males that have no interest in video games because they are going to kill everyone? Of course not.
Another irony is that gaming is one of the least violent pastimes in "reality". NASCAR has "real" death and destruction. Football, while tame, has a lot of "real" injuries. Hunting isn't bad, except for the large numbers of hunters that have an urge to kill way more than a survivalist would want to and complain limit caps as well.
its already been established that the virginia kid never played any video games, so why they fuck are they reacting like this? what a bunch of dickheads. if the kid WAS an unstable nut then maybe, but from what it looks like he's just a typical teenager who thought playing a game with his friends would be novel in a map of his school. i did something similar with quake when i was in school and there weren't any killings.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The community deserves to be able to take a "virtual tour" through this facility to ensure our kids it's safe and sound - quick, someone make a Quake map of it!
...where is the link to the Counterstrike map download???
There was probably a target or something on the dean's office door, or something. Cops and schools don't take this kind of extreme action without having something bigger going on behind the scenes. We're probably only getting a sixteenth of the story.
He was just practising for the day when a giant ape descended on the school, kidnapped the prom queen and started rolling flaming barrels down the stairs at the janitors.
... to an alternative education facility) --- if I didn't laugh, I would just weep for the state of the so-called "free world".
If they confiscate al lthe hammers, who will save the princess!?!
Won't some please think of the children!
I have to laugh, because if I didn't (and trust me, I feel bad for this guy, and hope that the school board members who are piling on him for cheap political points get their just desserts at election time and are sent packing
How did things go so wrong that what was once held up as shining examples of the way we wanted to live our lives at a national level has gone so wayward, so fast?
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
I used to work at a TGIF, and it was a fairly loathsome job, and I made a Quake 2 map that perfectly resembled the restaurant. Many evenings after work my coworkers and I would frag each other mindlessly (and cartoonishly, a la Quake 2 physics) throughout the restaurant over a few cocktails. If anything it made us better friends, and work more bearable, as we looked forward to "cocktail fragging" as we often called the activity.
VIDEO GAMES ARE JUST GAMES.
That is all.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
.. majoring in medicine,
calls her on the phone.
"Can I take you out to the pictures,
Jo..an?"
But as she's getting ready to go,
a knock comes on the door..
By that line, I think we can conclude that the supposed connection wasn't videogames, but rather Asian-ness.
Just imagine if the school board had seen the hammer scene Oldboy!
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Name one *peaceful* video game where he would have the opportunity to create a map? Why are all the "virtual reality" games we play about wielding AK47's and rocket launchers (or swords and crossbows) in an attempt to save the human race from "Evil?"
;^)
Is he sick for making a map of what he knows, with the only tools he was given, or are *we* sick for giving him no VR outlet other than FPS killing fields?
I don't believe the games are a cause of violence, but our violent natures and limited, dichotomous "good vs. evil" paradigms most certainly are the cause of the games. It's an ugly reflection on our culture that this kid couldn't fire up some cheap CAD software alternative, and had only "killing games" to model with.
Give this kid a peaceful outlet, like SimCity, and you no longer have a problem. He can build his hometown and hit it with a tornado if he likes.
For the past 5 years, when I've gone to look at computer games, the overwhelming majority of them are wargames. What are *we* preparing our children for?
--
Toro
Full Spectrum Warrior on the XBOX had a map that was almost identical to a map of the campus at Case Western Reserve University.
http://case.edu/
Maybe I should re-think doing a series of landscape paintings of my local community college. Not everyone thinks a tree is a tree and a painted crack in a sidewalk might mean something entirely different to the campus police.
Yeah, I think anyone that has ever done any map making or modding starts with something familiar. I, just as MANY others, made a Duke3D map of my high school. I graduated the same year columbine happened, and I was looked upon as one of "those different kids", so I know people were looking at me wondering if I had a list. Fear of the unknown. However, I didn't kill anyone, I've never thought about SERIOUSLY killing anyone (though we get those thoughts from time to time, "I'd really like to kill that bastard..."), Imagine, someone who played, and still plays video games, some of them "violent", and I'm not a psycho. According to this logic, I should be in prison now, instead of an upstanding member of society that I turned out to be. I have several weapons in my home. Guns, knives, swords...I play video games to relieve stress and tension. Sometimes there's nothing better than to come home from a long day at work, have a beer, and blow something up in a virtual world. If the guy from VT HAD played violent video games, it just would have been a moot point anyways. Anyone who plays a video game and goes and shoots someone was messed up to begin with. We need to get to the root of the problem here. Parenting. I wasn't allowed to play video games when I was young unless my parents were around. It was usually my dad. They made sure that I knew the difference between fantasy and reality, and made me go outside and play with my friends. Now this kid is probably going to be scarred for life from this crap, and not have a chance to make anything of himself, because he's got this black mark on him now. I agree that this is turning into the Salem witch hunts all over again. Always looking for something that isn't there...
"Yeah, that's only going to happen when a paper dog sucessfully chases an asbestos cat through hell." The Chosen One
I have made a simulation of my university campus in the game 'Marathon'. You can run around in it and shoot each other with rocket launchers (look for "C200 map marathon" in Google). There's a BB gun in my room, scissors, knives, a soldering iron, and a toothpick. Fear me!
A hammer is a useful tool. Like many other items (laptop, telephone, car wheel, tree) it can be used as a blunt trauma weapon... however we aren't going to just get rid of all of our pipes, trees, and wheels tomorrow. Sheesh!
:)
This story reminds me of the (current) US-Presidential-hopeful who would like to ban all guns and knives -- even kitchen knives. That guy has no idea of what would replace the knife (he said that our engineers should be smart enough to think up something...). What does the administration of this High School expect people to use to put in nails? A nail gun, ala Quake?
So what can you do to fight against this stupidity? Simple... just follow these steps:
1. Get out your hammer.
2. Use paint or sharpie to write "09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0" on the handle.*
3. Carry the hammer around tomorrow.
* ProTip: Make sure the writing is on the outside of the handle so it's visible when it's stuck in your hammer loop -- you do have a hammer loop on your jeans/overalls/kilt, right?
coding is life
In high school, a bunch of my friends were in a CS class together. As their final project, they made a Rogue-like game in which our swim coach was a level boss, I was a random monster (and a rather weak one at that), and another friend was the final boss of the game. I think the dungeon layout may have been vaguely based on our school. The weapons were things like paper clips, binders, and lunch trays.
:-(
It was a humorous, hilarious game. I wonder if it would have got my friends in "you might be a terrorist" trouble these days.
My bicyles
How did this tripe full of tropes so old and tired they've had 3 cancers, a heart attack and a stroke actually qualify to receive moderation as "+3, Informative".
Those sites are conspiracy-monger sites, and this man cannot even write using proper English.
Mods, do your jobs and moderate!
And here you have a prime example what happens when they act together.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I mapped out my High School many years ago, and played it in Half Life Death Match, back around 2000. You should have seen the grin on my mates when I showed them. Considering about 15% of my year played half life, this was sure to be a huge hit. All it took was one of my mates to go,
"Dude, this is good and all, but Columbine..."
And I was all like, "... fuck, but, that's a world away... You know, only in America kinda thing...".
He raised his left eye brow at me, and I was most chuffed.
I never released the map, and eventually it was lost to a format (Ahh, my first format. Gosh it's fun remembering everything that I deleted!) Anywho, fast forward 7 years, and it turns out I'm still a walk away from my old high school, AND I'm still into first person shooters. A quick google tells me that a program called Hammer is used to map things up. It's been about 7 years since I used software of this type, I'm sure it's barely changed. With that, I'm gonna start mapping again, map up my old school with a wicked camping spot outside the principals office.
How about Google's avertisement for SketchUp?
A hint: "How would your campus look in 3D?"...
Blah, blah, blah. I'm sure we don't know all of the facts in the case. If this kid DID have issues (and who are we to know that?) then you'd be pissed officials didn't "see signs" and do something -- and then later blame Microsoft, of course.
It was a slow and gradual process, but now.. it's fast and increasing. It's already too late. Your rights are lost and will not be regained. In fact, all of you have broken anti-terrorism laws by merely posting here.
Speaking your mind IS ILLEGAL.
GRAND PRAIRIE HIGH SCHOOL in Grand Prairie, Texas makes for a great Quake 2 map...
Trust me... I know...
P.S. Please don't arrest me.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I made a map of my whole city in SimCity (the original) and then like a terrorist I sent in Godzilla to KILL THEM ALL!!!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I cringe every time I hear something like this. (Like when school voucher folks talk about 'making schools compete.' Don't get me started.) Perhaps if we could implode the system instantly and rebuild it in the span of a couple years you would have a point, though I still wouldn't be for it. As it is, you will have millions of kids trapped in a dying system for some undetermined amount of time (Hey, maybe that's where they are right now!) They don't really have a choice as to where they go to school. I didn't.
If you want to home school, then home school. If you care about school standards, then hold your school to a higher standard. The schools can get by indefinitely with the children of parents who don't care (or don't have time, or don't exist). Don't think that pulling your kid out of public school is going to make things anything but worse for those left in the system. If you know better than the people running the system, please tell them, don't just take your offspring and go home.
Remember, if we don't stop them now, the school kids have already won!!
In one of the postings it is said that the kid in question made the map available for other students of the same school. He got into trouble because a couple of parents found out about it.
Given that situation, those students who downloaded the map could also be considered guilty. Heck, the children of the parents that complained might be able to be charged for having it on their machines. (Assuming, of course, that it was downloaded by anyone.)
Presumably, sanity will take hold and things will work out with the kid getting back to his original school. In his defense, it takes a lot of discipline to build a map like he did. THAT should get him some sort of a reward.
I hope that the kid doesn't 'learn' too much of the wrong stuff from 'Alternative Education'. That might do more damage than spending the time constructing the map.
...In Other News: The Beatles song Maxwell's Silver Hammer has been banned and listening to it will now come with a life sentence in prison for terroristic threats...
"We found a spoon, sir!"
The tickets says Anderton? Uh-oh.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
What if they wind up designing schools that teach students to operate CAD-programs? This is a really dangerous slope to be headed down...
My heart goes out to this young man and his family for the crazy response of the local police and school board. It's particularly maddening as studies have shown that zero tolerance and suspension-happy school administrators aren't making our schools safer. For instance:
Defenders of the [zero tolerance] policies point to the larger threat posed by serious violence in our nation's schools, suggesting that civil rights violations may be an unfortunate but necessary compromise to ensure the safety of school environments.
Unfortunately, however, this latter argument is made somewhat moot by the almost complete lack of documentation linking zero tolerance with improved school safety. Despite more than ten years of implementation, there have been only a handful of studies evaluating the outcomes of security measures. Of these, only school uniform research appears to have enough support to be considered even promising in contributing to perceptions of safer school environments. The most extensive studies (Heaviside et al., 1998; Mayer & Leone, 1999) suggest a negative relationship between school security measures and school safety.
From "Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence: An Analysis of School Disciplinary Practice" by Russel Skiba, Indiana Educational Policy Center, August 2000 PDF report link
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
In calling people who possess pot drug addicted you have painted yourself as ignorant to.
Drug addicts need treatment and help, but while they are still addicts (at least while they are "hard Core" addicts as the GP stated they should be kept away from high-school students.
And I would lump a hard core drug addict (i.e. a crack-head, speed freak, or junkie) together with violent people as people that should not be in school with my children (when I have them). I am suprised that someone would call that "ignorant".
Also "hard core" drug addicts usually have periods where they are violent.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It's not a fear of terrorism that drives this sort of thing, or even a fear for our children. It's a fear of our children. We're so scared of the little guys that the instant they bring school into their video game hobby, we freak out.
We should be afraid of our children. Over the past approximately 2 decades, we've been slowly, but acceleratingly running our schools like prisons instead of schools. We're instilling a bizzaro mindset into their brains that they are not citizens, but instead are "subjects". One day very soon, they will be the adults running the show and we will be old and subject to their authority instead.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if one day in the not too distant future, old people are to be ordered sent to be institutionalized by a new government, when today's kids are in power... and partially as punishment for the way we treated them when they were schoolkids.
And for the record, I'm 45 years old and have a pre-teen son, and generally almost go ballistic when I hear of many of the authoritarian police-state-like things that go on in his school. I wish I could afford to send him to a private school instead, but cannot. I foresee bad things coming in our future, and hope that I am raising my child in a way to best prepare him for an out-of-control society in the future.
Remember, folks:
Hammers don't kill people; Carpenters do.
It almost seems like the only way to win here is for the map to be public. Of course that's not going to help the kid's case. but honestly. If it was private they'd claim "see, training in secret!" If it's public then "encouraging kids to shoot around in schools!" I've just always thought, as nearly every second post today has mentioned, that the school kind of layout would make for perfect deathmatching, and hell, it would be a far less limited environment than most small-or-linear maps that modern games seem to be unable to move beyond.
So, please some one, get us this map. I'll host it myself at my university web space, if need be (feel free to e-mail me at philurichmarkiii at yahoo dot commerce if you have it and I'll post a journal then with a link to it on my web space).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Stop... Hammer time.
When I was a kid, we would take an arsenal of water guns/pistols/balloons and go to the elementary school to play war. If anything, that would have "trained" me for an assault on the school far more effectively than building a CS map. And I "shot" real people, not virtual ones.
I don't think people have enough education re: weapons to really understand when they are actually threatened and when it's cops and robbers.
Back when I was in school we had to build a map of our school in the computer science class, now ok, it wasn't for Doom, but that might be because we did it back then when CommandKeen was still popular and Doom not yet released. I mean, duh, building things you already know from reallife is among the most normal things you can do and well, since walking around it is a much more fun thing to do then just watching blueprints from it in a CAD program, using a FPS is the natural choice these days.
This is really starting to get totally ridiculous.
Jeez... what a sad state of fear the US is in. Honestly, people make "video game maps" of their rooms, and all kinds of places, without planning to go in as a terrorist. Some of the best levels I have ever played are the super sized versions of people's houses.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
According to TFA he wasn't arrested. No charges have been brought against him. I do disagree with the school's decision to suspend him on grounds that he might be terrorist. It seems obvious that he is not reasonably associated with the Virginia Tech guy considering he's not a loner and hasn't been acting strangely at all. That would make this shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach unfounded.
Also in response to some of the comments on TFA: you think he made an error in judgment when he created what could possibly conceived as a murder simulator? Come on. If that were reasonable Google and Microsoft would be in huge trouble for creating terrorism simulators like Google Earth and Live Maps.
When I was in grade school, I used to draw maps of the school all the time, just because I was bored. And I did it in class, and nobody cared. If I were doing it today, would I get arrested?
I mean, how the hell can they say that this constitutes a threat?
The thing is, if you let all these overreactions run rampant people start being afraid for fear of falling under one of these reactions. Hell, even now people are saying "well hey, in these days," (ie. The Post 9-11 World (tm)), "we have to react differently, and we have to teach our kids not to be suspicious." One of the posts in TFA responds to this mentality with a quite excellent point.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
School teaches subjects like geography, drafting, architecture, and these days CAD (Computer Aided Design)
First make the map of the school on the computer and show it off to everyone as a perfectly ordinary mapping/drafting excercise. You may even get extra credit.
Then, after the school has given tacit support and approval, convert it into a video-game level.
Apart from that, i do think that the restrictions put on pot are pretty stupid - putting a pot smoker into ALC would be just as stupid as putting the guy the story is about in ALC. Thats doesnt make smoking pot "ok", but that does make overzealous punishment "idiotic".
Besides, ANY mind altering act (be it sex, drugs, alchohol, anything) done to get away from emotional pain will always get worse. Doing it for fun or socially is fine - just like drinking alchohol, its ok in moderation.
Speaking of moderation, maybe you outta give it a try. Lay off the speed.
-Red
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
The authorities are going about this all wrong! I intend to write to my representatives urging them to pass legislation that would require all school districts to make Counterstrike maps of their schools avalible to to local police SWAT units and the FBI. Upon receiving word of any potential school shooting, they could race to the scene confident that their hours of playing cs_clements will pay off in lives saved. This young man is to be commended on his work to prevent another tragic incident!
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
Agreed.....you should watch (if you haven't already) the film Shattered Glass. It's the true story of a young writer in the 90's that became a staff writer at the New Republic magazine and for a large portion of his articles (like half) he either partially or completely made up the stories. Pretty interesting material about the checks and balances that exist (and don't exist) in the journalism field......
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
And told them how daft they've been...
This is the feeling that I get from reading the news.
Are we (The Slashdot Community) the only rational ones left in this world? It takes us a matter of milliseconds to understand this kid was of no threat after reading the article... yet it took weeks for police and a school board to come to the same conclusion that the kid was of no threat.
I motion to rid the world of lame duck school boards in favor of Slashdot appointed representatives... All hail your Slashdot community overlords!
No words of wisedom here.
...Can't touch this.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Pussies. America is full of them nowadays, it seems.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This reminds me of the summer my flatmate William spent making a "Wellington Hall", Doom map of our church. It was complete with twisted plants either side of the stage from where and a guy fired rocket at you, a good place to hide was to crouch behind the organ, or duck into one of the Sunday School rooms out the back. Downstails a long hallway led to rooms filled with twisted Sunday School children.
"They arrested him," Chen said of FBISD police, "and also went to the house to search." The Lin family consented to the search, and a hammer was found in the boy's room, which he used to fix his bed, because it wasn't in good shape, Chen said. He indicated police seized the hammer as a potential weapon.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
First they came for the video game map-makers
and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a video game map-maker...
two friends and I were building a map of our school for doom. one of my friends (a valedictorian mind you) was dumb enough to go into the office and ask for a map of the school. when asked why he needed one he said "i want to make a shoot em up map of the school for a video game" this was SHORTLY(like a week) after columbine and the police;/mental health professionals were on the scene in a heart beat. and me and another friend were called down to the office to talk with the police and convince the police that we werent crazy. robert if your out there(i know you are) IM me for christs sake! remeber the hocking roman? that should help u understand who I am! Brian you too!
These shit commonly happen on USA, so nothing to see here... Almost every "american" [from USA only] has mental problems...
'IDSPISPOPD' is his best way out. 'IDKFA' might be helpful too.
The kid is of CHINESE origin. The only reason he gets expelled and transfered and accused is because he LOOKS LIKE the killer in VT. This is blatant RACISM. Also I think slashdot editors are not telling the whole story by not mentioning this.
Yeah, that law is called the PATRIOT ACT, which gives law enforcement basic carte blanche to arrest yo ass under any suspicion of terrorisms. Making a map of school? He MUST hate freedom! Therefore, as a freedom hater, we have reason to suspect he is a terrorism! And thanks to the rubber stamp formerly known as Congress, under the PATRIOT ACT, that poor kid can wind up screwed. What's really sad is that when he applies to jobs and a background check is run.... "Detained for suspected terrorist activity" is likely to come up. Anyone gonna hire him if they run such a check?
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Let's stop building schools, build more prisons, and put the kid straight in there. Cut out the middle man. That will solve all sorts of problems, like child care, labor costs, etc. The parents will appreciate it. They won't have to let them use the car anymore. Unfortunately they won't have anybody to send into the city to get their drugs for them, but they can always do like I do and just buy from the cops.
What?
When you take this incident and compare it to a recent one in Canada (involving a gun not a hammer!), and the comparable measured response...
2 /gun-bandtrip.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/05/0
The CBC writes:
"Catholic schools in the Elk Island district outside Edmonton will examine security procedures after a 12-year-old student on a field trip was arrested in British Columbia for carrying a loaded handgun.
The student was one of 20 members of the Holy Redeemer School's band, which was in Whistler last weekend to perform at a festival.
The gun was surrendered without incident after other students told their supervisor about the weapon. The student was arrested, charged with possession of a prohibited weapon, then put on a plane home and released to his father. He has since been suspended from school."
______
I guess we Canadians don't think everyone is a terrorist... Perhaps because we don't have a government and a media establishment with the goal of distracting us from the much more tangible real risks. Like risk of dying due to lack medical care (because our medical insurance won't pay for it), or the fact that we're involved in a war half way around the world.
Maybe it's also because we spend more on education than on keeping people in jail..
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
Why is the parent comment not at +5 Funny and/or Insightful yet?
I usually dont comment on slashdot (lack of time), but when I saw this. I had gotten way to pissed off to let it go.. here is the deal.. 1.. are there any provisions in the school By-laws that condone this sort of punnishment?? 2.. at what point can we fight these grevious alegations which success? Remind you of Mc Arthyism?? perhaps to some extent?? 3.. at what point can we as a nation come together and fight for our rights again against our oppressors and our narrow thinking? 4.. I agree the individual should be evaluated by a Professional to see if the punishment does fit the alleged crime.. 5.. Based only on the information given, how can this tragedy happen?? 6.. What were to happen if he were 18 and just finishing up HighSchool? Would he be in jail now?? If so what would he be charged with? 7.. How could we as a community quantify this?? Libel, Slander, Defamation of charecter, crule and unusual punnishment, illegal search and seizure? (perhaps not since the family willingly let them inside) Child's right violations, civil rights violations, the list could potentially go on and on. If the Kid is found to be of sane mind and the punnishment is found to be crule and unusual, I hope some one from Blizzard, or EA games talks to him about getting a job to solidify what could be a great future.. gK
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
"Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it."
Referring to the school district officials, that is.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I remember drawing my schools plans and using them for an old style AD&D dungeon bash. (real paper and everything) Surely this is tantemount to the same thing. I also remember creating a map for doom using my house (with a cyber deamon in the toilet :-))
I feel sorry for this poor bugger, smart enough to use a map editer and punished for it.
What has happened to common sense in this country? Each one of these morons on the school board should be defeated in the next election. Please read "The Death of Common Sense" by Philip K Howard. Thank you
In Soviet USA, all your rights are belong to the white house.
If the kid had a railgun, BFG, rocket launcher, etc. in his room, I could see them being a little frightened. But this is ridiculous
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
I remember a duke nukem addon that had all the popular tourist destinations in washington DC... including... OMG.. the white house!!!!!!
Id games are terrorists!! hang em!
I wanted to make a counterstrike map of my school when I was around 12, for the same reasons I wanted to make a map of my house - not because I wanted to shoot people up, but because I thought it'd be fun to play in a familiar environment, and because it'd be interesting to walk around in a 3D representation of the world in which I live.
Hell, my mom was even proud of my attempts to render my house in Hammer editor.
XaNk: now I remember why I hated the girls in high school
XaNk: because none of them would talk to me
In college I created a Half-Life map of one of the buildings on campus. My hallmates and I had lots of fun blowing each other to smithereens in it, just like every other multiplayer map to date. (This was when HL was *the* FPS to multiplayer in, obviously post-Columbine.)
Why did I map a campus building...because I'm a sick sadist who's a homicide risk? No. Simply because it was a familiar building I spent hours in almost every day. Without getting out of your chair, sketch the floorplan of your favorite building on graph paper from memory. You'll be amazed at how quickly your rendition diverges from reality. If all the space is accurately accounted for in your drawing at all, walls all line up, etc., give yourself a gold star. Now project it into 3-D (including any vaulted ceilings, swooping staircases, curvatures and various other non-orthogonal geometry) and add wall coloration, lighting, etc. to the mix, and prepare to be amazed how poorly you really know any building.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I used to play Duke Nukem Atomic edition and we played on a map of my High School that some kid made from blue prints he pulled up at City Hall. Granted this was pre Columbine but we never planned on shooting the school up. We could never play paint ball in the school but this was the next best thing.
Google Sketchup
http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php?rules=1
As soon as you own a hammer everything around you starts looking like a nail.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
that it's the not-so-obvious kids who DON'T show their intentions. the columbine kids were more subtle than the vtech killer, but despite some obvious signs from the latter, he stayed in the background noise and only now his actions were obvious. these people are the people who can pull this off. when a kid is bragging about how he made a map of the school in a FPS, I don't think he's a threat as he's out in the open about it.
But again, learning and public education have never been functional together. I went through similar bullshit myself, I made a "suspicious gesture" and got suspended for 3 weeks from school because I was picked on. So I was obviously going to pull out an Ak47 and plow down half the school. I still dont know what I did that warranted them thinking I made a specific gesture, but again these are the same assholes who also called social services on me half a year later after I lost my father as they thought my mom couldnt parent me. Yeah just lost a family member and you fucks want to tear my family apart further. good job. They also tried to justify it saying that they thought I could possibly go off the deep-end and kill my family. umm..yeah. wtf. I did eventually nearly go off the deep-end on a kid who ripped on me because my dad died and made threats against my family saying he'd shoot my mom (school didnt do shit!) and poured a cup of urine on me.
Your tax-dollars at work!
next let's kick out all the asian people because they might shoot up a school and send them to internment camps because "one of them" shot up a school. or ban all FPS players from school! I bet jack thompson has soiled many a pair at this thought.
This is not perception anymore, kids are getting scared to be creative this way and will be held hostage in their own minds and bodies; what are these teachers trying to reach? mindless robots? Shouldn't teachers be smart enough to know this argument has totally no sense at all?
If we cannot let children be openminded and creative anymore; how will we ever support society in its growth with limited ideas and values? How will children really know which is right and wrong? How will they grow up with a sense of solving problems in the most artistic/thougthful ways ? or maybe that's the entire problem ?
As found at the dictionary:
creativity
-noun
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I find it interesting that nobody has argued over the enormous difference between a FPS game and firing a real weapon. The two skill sets don't even begin to translate. Essentially, all this hubub over videogame violence from uneducated individuals has NO real-life basis; one may argue infinitely that violent gaming may make some people numb to the perception of violence, but videogames do not even begin to build weapon handling skills.
this could happen only in usa
I (and just about every other high schooler who got interested in FPS level design EVER) did this in highschool. I guess that makes me a terrorist. What's the statute of limitations on this kind of thing? Hopefully over 7 years.
These people are so friggin' stupid that my shoelace's intelligence tops theirs. Man, I got angry. Please people, come arrest us, since we made Doom2 maps of our highschool back in the days and we even played on it in multiplay with our fellow schoolmates. And yeah, we also have some hammers lying around, please feel free to take them.
If such ignorant fool jerks were to lead a school I wouldn't want me, my siblings, my relatives, or any human being I know, even those I hate, to have anything to do with that school and those people.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
At the end of the second world war, Stalin had any Russian solider who was taken prisoner investigated for spying. Many innocent people where sent to work camps in Siberia based on this despot's paranoia. In US, Soviet Russia becomes you.
This is classic overreaction. I doubt there is a high correlation between violent video games, and it exacerbating mental problems and violent tendencies. If so, there are a million other risk factors out there. It is so sad that we try to ascribe blame to such mediums. I think the more perverse issues of voyeurism, celebrity infatuation, social cliques, being cool, peer pressures, and the utter cruelty that "cool kids" inflict on "outcasts." The rejection certain people must feel must be so painful. I think we need to start looking at other things besides video games. What about the 100 million+ violent video game players that are good citizens? This is the exception not the rule, and twisting facts for political or personal gain is another sickness in this country.
I totally agree!
.de
Even though, I don't ever play games anymore, I think this map should be published.
I would even go further, hell kids pick some good anon nicks with a anon e-mail address
and start sending me maps of your schools. I will host them on my german website.
Don't forget to let me know where (google maps) exactly the Highschool is, which
you rebuild. I will put that google maps link next to it. Also let me know, for
which game (version) this map is. I would love to see some older games as well.
Bring it on, map at dzafez
If they are afraid a map of a school encourages killings at that particular school, maybe the US government should to do something about that level modeled after The White House for Duke Nukem 3D. I remember playing that a lot.
(Maybe I should have posted this as AC..)
"he, who has quotes in his signature, is a douche" - unknown.
is the map any good? what game is it for and where can I download it?
seriously, i can't find any references to what game the map was for..... i'm going to laugh if the kid recreated his school in "the sims" or something of that ilk.
I already knew that americans are morons, but this beats evrything I ever heard before!
http://www.fortbendnow.com/news/2854/phone-call-a- day-after-virginia-tech-shootings-led-to-clements- students-punishment
Some parent called the day after the Va-Tech shootings. I wonder what the heck was going through his/her mind.
And being a former student of that school, I cannot believe how stupid and incompetent they've become.
Creativity is in principle dangerous for those who like to be in control. Look at the chilling effects of patents and the abuse of the legal system, MPAA, RIAA, all the laws brought in to "protect" you but seem more to do with limiting your freedom etc etc.
Creativity may well be the core target.
Doesn't ANYONE know a) what game it was for, and b) where to find the map?
Oh well.
Personally I've been playing fps games since wolfenstein 3D or something, and I haven't gone postal yet. How many millions are there playing (violent) games? How many of those actually goes on to shoot up their school/workplace/whatever?
The cops who busted this kid are the real terrorists. They should be ashamed of themselves. I guess they most be getting some really good weed, looks like they're paranoid as fuck.
The authorities got this right. He's obviously a danger both to himself (he might hit his thumb with the hammer) and others (OMGTEHVIDOEGAME), and should be shipped off the Gitmo for torture and a fair trial.
Holy shit! This is like when that boy got arested by Homeland security cause his grandparents had reported to the police that he had written a story about a zombie infection at his school, it was considered and act to instigate terrorism. When I was in highschool I made a Counter Strike DE-map of the school and the target was to bomb the principals office. I never ment anything by it, I was just fun that we could all play on a map that we all recognized and knew our way around. Thank f***ing god I live in Sweden and not the US or I'd be in Gitmo right now...
If all the students were given hammers, they would be able to defend themselves against the lone hammer-wielding maniacs.
Of course, they would need to be trained at responsible Hammering Clubs, and taught to respect their hammers and lock them up safely when not in use.
Unfortunately, this may not be a solution in the case of a psychopath with a screwdriver, so each classroom should have a couple of fully stocked toolboxes at all times.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Thank god there are ways to let go of our frustrations and hatreds. The ways we do it have changed. We live in the computer era.
Long ago before computer games (except trek on a mainframe) I mapped my university for D&D. When one of the players realised after six weeks that he had just walked into his own office he burst out laughing. This is nothing new.
Even earlier than that (1960) one of my teachers decided to introduce show and tell into the English school system and asked us to bring something connected with our parent's work to school. Dad was in the RAF and gave me a 20Lb practice bomb, all the teacher did was confiscate it until home time. Your educators need to lean the difference between models and reality - the map is not the teritory.
No warrant, no search.
You don't consent to police searching your house. That's what search warrants (and the trouble to get one) are for.
I've played multiplayer quake based on an office I used to work in (quite a large complex of buildings)
Its was created using a converter from architectual schematics to the quake map... I don't know the exact method - I just saw the before and after but basically it went into a cad program, out into some format that could be read and 30 seconds later a new quake map file was made...
Given schools are public buildings I always wondered if the schematics would be publically available to use for this type of thing...
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
That's Cold War II, for those that are keeping track.
Someone ought to send those folks a link, to let 'em know the prejudice is more generic than it may seem.
Yeah right. I wonder what Mr. Wood does there.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
We could always try the multi-party family units, a la Robert Heinlein. Then you'd have multiple husbands and wives to share the duties of home schooling. I dare say the kids might even come out better if they had the tutelage of several points of view and experience.
I already have one wife. I haven't suggested adding more on to the tree as of yet; we haven't got kids to educate at home. I suppose that there's a good argument here to add-a-wife: procreation!
Feh. I need my caffiene.
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
Let them know. Here is a Distribuation List. ;)
Interestingly, I was at Indiana University when that study was conducted and it just so happens to be about the same time our beloved diety^H^H^H^H^H basketball coach, Bob Knight, was under a strict "Zero Tolerance" policy. Could it be that our education school was attempting to find no correlation between zero tolerance and reduced violence to help save the coach?
Jesus had a hammer too.
Is this what they are afraid of?
I think this is just another example on "how USA seems to be stupid enough to erase themselves from the earth". Following with this kind of weird laws and actions no one will want ever go to live there. And giving guns etc. to just-15-years-old-ppl is as stupid as... there's nothing that can be compared with that kind of stupidity.
Well, terrorists and Geraldo Rivera.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
It wasn't until someone shouted across the room "He's gone into WH Smiths - get him!" that I realised they were playing on a map of our local shopping centre.
Weapons & ammunition were available in the stationers, of course, but the explosive chemical barrels in Boots (the chemist) was a particularly nice touch. (Health was available at the various eateries, and the BFG9000 was in the Security office).
Ahh, great days.
Meta will eat itself
Lets start with the truth, any asian kid doing anything that can somehow be percieved as dangerous, terroristic or phun in most peoples world is going to be considered a danger to society... The US jumps on its band wagon everytime something happens and it is at the hands of a non-american... -- (oh wait...)
Let me guess this kid was born and raised in the USA, but he is Chinese not american -(lower case is intentional, with obvious reason).
To make it easier for the drones of the HOLY CHRISTIAN USA sleep, the media and society say,"it wasn't one of us, it was one of them". This seems to help them, you don't have to exam what society did to allow the act to happen, question why our society is the way it is. Explain why there are more home grown (REAL) terrorist here than ever before...
WAKE UP...
ps. Yes I am white, No I do not believe in organized religion, Religion = Altruistic belief, Altruistic belief = misguided Hate, thus Religion + belief = Justification for Violence towards all that don't share your point of view...
My rants continue...
AC1234
"They decided he was a terroristic threat,"
That is Comcastic!!
-Dipster
Has anyone even seen the Game itself ?
...
...
How do they Know it is even Violent ?
Maybe the Map is just for Running around in and Playing on the Playground, etc
- Not ALL Video Games are Violent
???
I find it the best way.. no one gets hurt and all is well.
What could he possibly do with a hammer? Nail his classmates?
Lets not forget that his parents were the ones that turned him in. My son wrote a video game with Multimedia fusion in his first year of junior high. It featured a character by the name of "Ms. Blueberry", the nick-name of a teacher at his scool. You could kill her with a knife, an ax, a shotgun, or bomb as she danced around the screen. Did I call the police and turn my kid in? HELL NO! I played the video game and had a talk with my son about how he could improve it. I mentioned things like, "maybe you should give the character a different name. People are a bit freaky today and might confuse fantasy with reality".
In this case, the parents are 100% to blame for this because they turned in their own kid! Talk about morons! I feel sorry for their kid. When people confuse fantasy for reality you realy must wonder.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fort Bend School Email Addresses
Only on /. would sex be described as a "mind altering act."
we all ignoreing the fact the kid only had a hammer wtf he gonna do with that its bull shit searched his house found a hammer lol he gonna beat kidsto death in school with a hammer he was fixing a bed with this is some fucking bull shit fuck the school system has never questioned my maps of the play ground but hell if it comes i nthe building oh noes let the kid expain why he did it and dont fuckign keep him from graduation
I can prove it! Just look at level 20 of Marathon Infinity! Obviously they were planning to train a bunch of teens to sack a church in Venice.
You're spot on, though...as a society we collectively overreact to every little thing. Common sense is anything but, and the "authorities" often seem to be the most lacking.
Constitutionally Correct
Second this request. I want to sit on my high pedestal and judge his skills.
RTFM
Is it possible to sticky this article on the front page until the kid gets to go back to his school and graduate?
We're not allowed to make maps of real places anymore? Because I've played maps based on actual places such as Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and even some guys workplace and those maps are really fun, especially when they have all the rooms intact and are very detailed. You have to use different strategies since they aren't tailored for a certain mode like DM or whatever. It makes things a lot more fun. I don't see how they can be used to plan actual attacks unless you put a huge number of NPC characters which is very uncommon for an FPS map which usually consists of just you and the other team.
I mean, last time I checked. The people walking around in such places in real life weren't armed with heavy machine guns and the ability to bunny hop. Unless you were training yourself to play indoor paintball, it would make a poor very simulation of real life.
When I was in high school, my friends and I used to play Marathon in the Physics Lab with our physics/math teacher after school. When Marathon 2 came out with a level editor, my physics teacher made a Marathon map of the school, and he and my friends and I all ran around torching each other with flame throwers, blowing each other up with grenades, and gunning each other down with machine guns "inside our own school."
No one seemed the have a problem with this then ('94). I wonder how they'd treat a teacher who did that today?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I hope that fox corporation doesn't see that someone made a simpsons map and ban him from watching the simpsons.
Honestly, i don't see how the school has any right. he never did this at school, so this seems unconstitutional to me.
I have two children I love dearly and would give my life in a second for them. That being said, I would give the lives of my whole family to prevent our freedoms from being lost. What type of country do we live in that we can accuse someone because of a hammer in their room. I have a hammer and a screwdriver in my room so does my daughter.
Freedom is not taken from us, it is given and this is what is happening here. I don't see the problem of the video creation. It's a pretty productive way to rechannel some of that teenage angst.
If I created a video game of my school when I attended, I would have been give a job with a high paying salary but now it's some type of crime. Heck, give the kid a job, sounds like he has some skills.
The Daily Bugle says it's so! And there are pictures of the wallcrawler with his developer accomplices, taken by Peter Parker!
A digg reader posted a link that seems to be a beta version of the map. Haven't checked it out yet myself.. No time for CS, and since I have no will-power, I can't install it.
Hammer? weapon?
:)
Now....i'm no super genius.
but a hammer? you can't fight back if the other guy has a hammer?
come on....thats lame.
Hammer's aren't weapons. My fist is.
The stupid cops are going crazy.
Wait a minute...cops are stupid.
Only stupid people think that following every gov't law is right. bullshit
cops = gov't authorized violence.
As for the "map" issue, big deal.
Making a map......some people consider that a crime.
But not me. I make maps everywhere I go. In my mind. Everybody does it.
You memorize every place you ever go to. It goes into your "navigation" neural circuits inside that wet blob of goo called your
brain.
This is an absolutley stupid response.
Just like zero-tolerance policies in some schools/organizations.
Draconian policies to appease the retarded and the stupid who can't think past black and white.
To hell with the states.
They really believe osama destroyed the towers....yeah. Perfect demolition style. bullshit.
J.F.K. was killed by a lone gunman....yeah. bullshit.
An alien space that "crashed" in roswell was a weather balloon. bullshit.
The moon landings never happened. bullshit.
The usa is full of shit. They get what they deserve.
Making maps.....death penalty.
Having a hammer in room.......death penalty.
A ball point pen is far more dangerous weapon than a hammer.
Far more easer to acquire and use.
Pens are deadly weapons. Or chopsticks.
end of message.
I dont see any problom here. A kid, who odvoulsly likes computers, decides to learn how to develop video game levels, so he does one on his high school. Is there any harm there? Unless the goal is to actulally do anything threatning, I see no harm. Even more upsetting: this isnt the first time Houston, has severly punished a student for a harmless act. In this mounths issue of Readers Digest, there is an artical called "Zero Tollerance in high schools," which talks about how some schools are expelling, calling the cops, and flipping out over innocent acts. To read the article, see http://www.rd.com/content/thats-outrageous-no-merc y-kid/ Now I can see why the school would be suspicious of the kids map (it was an urban legend that the people who committed the Colombine shooting created a multiplayer map of their school for the game Doom), and would be OK if they examined the map to ensure theres nothing wrong. But searching his house, sending him to an alternitive school... the kid odvously wants to be in a computer carrere, but this will problaly stay with him for the rest of his life.
i've made FPS maps of pretty much everywhere I've studied and worked. why? 1) because its easy to map FPS maps of your workplace using those gaming tools than it is to make the maps in generic autoCAD style packages. go figure. 2) because it *is* fun to play these maps as games. its an alien/different environment and is great for team building exercises. what I dont understand is that its 'dangerous' to make such a game level but it'd be perfectly okay for him to be in the real place with a real gun(*) so long as he doesnt use it. (*) ie in real life he could have a gun and barring exceptions such as concealment and location thats fine. crazy! the virtual world is more dangerous than the real world? then why the hell did they create 'Americas Army' then? surely just give all the population a gun instead? hell, thats gotta be safe! (err, thats irony for you US folken)
Is that they are the most intolerant bunch around.
Ok, it is obvious that this whole situation is beyond stupid and the ones who need counseling are the faculty and overly concerned parents. I read another article on /. today about the link between violence and video games that concluded that while violent games may not cause the violence, people who play violent video games are more prone to "get into physical fights, be more aggressive verbally and outspoken against teachers and other authority figures". Another opinion article I read on Yahoo! last week was talking about how schools are environments where students are taught not to defend themselves, that it is someone elses job, and that we are turning our children into pansy's.
I'm not going to deny these findings, but rather pose a question about them. Could these findings actually be turning up a positive result of children who play violent video games? Being more likely to get into a physical fight isn't always a bad thing...sometimes it is necessary to defend yourself or others. Perhaps before playing the violent video games these kids would have just taken it and let it build up, and then become the next Cho. Is it really so bad to be outspoken against a teacher or authority figure? Many teachers in school hated me, but I wasn't a trouble maker. When they said something that was incorrect in class, I corrected them, and most of the time was punished for doing so. Why shouldn't people be outspoken against authority figures if in fact the authority figures are in the wrong? Are we to follow blindly? I think not.
Most likely this kid was just having fun exercising a skillset that he possesses and playing a game with his friends, and had no problem with the school's faculty or the local police department, and had no reason to even consider going into his school guns blazing. In light of recent events, I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to re-evaluate this...we would certainly be free of some retarded kids(the ones who said that him making this map scared them), and some people who have no business teaching kids, and heck maybe we could get rid of a couple of the overly moronic parents that were complaining about the situation.
After all, we just took a kid who had absolutely no motivation to carry out such an act, and handed him motivation for such a plot on a silver platter.
Does anyone know an adress where money can be sent to this kid? There will probably be a court case and I'd love to donate. I play video games myself and have tried to make maps before, but they're extremely difficult. If this guy had the skill to make a good one for Counter Strike he probably had more intelligence than anyone here commenting. Also, I've seen a lot of comments saying that the punishment didnt fit the crime? What crime? He was found not guilty of anything by the police; because there is no crime! It's not a crime to make a map of anything. I doubt the layout of the school was copyrighted. I doubt there was anything in the student handbook about creating a map of the school, much less a digital version. I bet their handbook or website has a map of the school! And if this boy's actions were "terroristic" then I suppose we should start suing companies that make maps for games based on real life locations. Dawn of the Dead? I bet you that was filmed in a mall. Rainbow Six? Several of the locations are based on real life. I'm a 16 year old student in AP and College classes, and as such I have learned that there is nothing in the law about making a map of your school. In the Constitution you are guranteed freedom of speech. Surely this is a form of free speech? All these adults saying the administrators of the campus were put in a difficult situation by this are wrong. The boy did nothing wrong, they did. They made a big fuss where there should be none. He should be reinstated into his normal school and classes, police and school records wiped clean of this, and if he by chance had something on his school record in the past that should be taken off to to make up for their mistakes. I normally respect policemen but a hammer? Come on! As I glance around my room I see a pellet gun, a BB gun, a 4in knife with paraframe plade, several pocketknives and multi-tools. If this Honor's Student was going to attack someone, do you think he would pick his hammer? Oh let's talk about that too....He planned an attack on the school. Map? Check. Friends to do it with? Check. Brains to pull off an operation based on firing guns in Counter Strike? Check. Mode of attack? A hammer! Yes that's right folks. He used a map to plan out his hammer attack. I'm sure his friends were going to use the ever so deadly screw driver? Oh yeah his big muscular friend? He was gonna use the tape measure. I can see this plan working. Storm down the 300 hall, bash the security guard on the head with the hammer, then take the principals as hostages (two of the principals in my school played in the NFL) whereupon he would call the police, announce his intentions to gain better lunch ladies capable of not making slop, and also he wants a 100 for his Calculus test last week. Sure, Columbine happened. Virginia Tech happened. In both cases the students were known to be slightly crazy. Being a videogamer doesn't make him crazy. Having a hammer doesn't make him crazy or worth of punishment. They're not letting him walk the stage at his graduation? That's the moment every Senior looks forwards to. For making a map in Counter Strike they're taking that away. The school should be sued for taking his rights away and at the least even give him a scholarship because they may well have ruined some that he might have been receiving.
a little excessive, but given the school shooting recently I could some what see why they would do this, but a hammer??
i think this is wrong that he got arrested for making a map of the school for a video game, big woop a map, and wow he had a hammer in his house. i wonder what that's for??? maybe ITS A TOOL TO NAIL stuff together!!!
Of course it is. How many guys who tell a girl beforehand that they love her would repeat those words to her afterwards?