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Jack Thompson Walks Out On Hearing
Erik J writes "Apparently Jack had heard enough.
The Florida Bar asked for an 'enhanced disbarment' in the disciplinary hearing of Jack Thompson, held earlier this afternoon. The recommendation means Thompson would be disbarred and prohibited from applying to practice law again for ten years, according to 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida spokesperson Eunice Sigler.
Thompson's disciplinary hearing apparently ended in the attorney walking out of the courtroom after saying the judge did not have the authority to hear his case."
woohoo! surely the end of his reign of terror must be here!
TIAEAE!
It will be nice to never hear anything from him again.
Everyone knows it's a good idea to stick around when an NPC is talking. You might learn something interesting, or get a side-quest.
No digg!
Ha ha!
Schadenfraude be damned, this made my day.
I for one will not stand for this kind of shabby treatment! How dare you impugn the integrity of Jack Thompson, the legal mind who gave the great state of Florida it's most famous legal document!
Hasn't he been disbarred yet? I can say without exageration the man is quite delusional. He should have been disbarred after the 2 Live Crew fisco years back.
Seriously, just read his Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(attorney)
I think he needs mental treatment.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Isn't he always complaining that games lack consequences that are meaningful for evil action.
Well... Here you are jack, consequences for your arrogant actions. This is no game though, I'm sorry you don't have a save point to revert to.
I think someone should inform Mr. Thompson the definition of the word 'hubris'
-I only code in BASIC.-
One has to understand that this man is most likely very unstable but has a loud voice. He knows a squeeky wheel gets the grease.
A friend of mine, when I asked him why he was yelling to the crowd of students (in the cafeteria) instead of just speaking to them told me someone told him that if you want to get elected, then speak real loud. He was elected to the student board.
Jack Thompson has his followers but obviously this man is a kook. I can't imagine anyone getting away with the bullshit he has and not be punished. So now, he's saying they have no authority over him? He'll be surprised when he's arrested for practicing law after he's been disbarred.
Good riddance to him.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The more inflated their ego and righteousness, the faster and louder they pop!
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If this even *could* apply to you, you would already be a lawyer . . .
Ten years is unusual. I'm not even sure I've ever *heard* of "enhanced disbarment" before.
By its nature, disbarment is permanent. In many (most?) states, an attorney can petition to be considered for lifting of disbarment after five years--but has a heavy burden; he must show that he is no longer a danger if allowed to practice. The fact that he is a danger was established prior to disbarment; disputing it would end the possibility of showing the needed change.
Ten years, however . . . and that does *not* mean he gets the license back then, only that that is the earliest date at which he *could* request it and attempt to show fitness . . .
hawk, esq.
Right, telling a judge that they don't have the authority to hear your case will SURELY persuade them to go lenient on you.
Unfortunately, him being unable to practice law will unlikely stop politicians or other figures looking to ban violent video games from going to him for advice.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
.
No matter how badly things go for you in court, no matter how much you dislike the ruling, no matter how unjust you feel you've been treated... NEVER insult a judge or be less than totally respectful for the process.
And don't ever tell a judge they "don't have the authority". You'll be in a higher court soon. Judges don't like people being disrepectful of other judges, not even when the judge in question is wrong. Especailly when your own motives and reasons are (properly) called into question.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
All that pent up anger of his is finally coming out. I wouldn't be surprised if he went on a shooting spree like the troubled people he says were driven to violence by video games. I think he should try a violent video game and see just how cathartic it can be.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
IANAL!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
would love it if someone you liked did that.
Who will they turn to when they need inaccurate video game 'murder simulation' fear mongering news pieces? Who will yell, "Think of the children!" (when the obvious answer should be "Their parents, not your goddamn nanny-state...." Who will attach pornographic images in unrelated cases? ...This is a sad day. Its like losing the local bum who says crazy shit but it is always funny, ya know?
Jack Thompson: "Because I took on Bar complainant, Al Cardenas, the Howard Stern Show is off terrestrial radio and his influence diminished."
Really, Jack? I thought it was because Sirius offered Stern a free hand with content and over $100 million per year on a 5-year contract.
Three words:
1. He
2. Is
3. Insane
'Nuff said.
In his statement he claims that the judge's oath of loyalty is invalid, which would make the judge's appointment invalid. He could actually have a point.
Being disbarred is not about his personal opinion, nor your personal opinion, about video games. It is about his ability to practice law. I also find it ironic that people who are so keen on the freedom of speech are so eager to find a way to gag or demean someone that they don't agree with. That's not civil behaviour. It is childish behaviour. (My apologies to the children of the world.)
Can anyone address the legality of an oath taken too long after the judge started practice?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I, for one, welcome our new Jack Thompson-disbarring overlords!
http://www.object404.com
I don't understand how these things work. Can someone explain to people like me what this "recommendation" means in the immediate sense? Does it get rubber-stamped? Are there further hearings? When will the guy *actually* be disbarred?
Property is theft.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over?
P A R T .... Why? Because we gotta!
Let's see, this also means that the various shit-brained news media should stop having him offering commentary on anything, because "disbarred lawyer" doesn't have that same ring of confidence as "crazy old coot" does.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Seriously, with the way this clown's been screwing himself over, shouldn't his family get him admitted to a mental institution for evaluation?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
These guys always wind up the same. I predict that like Kent Hovind, Thompson will soon be tried for some crime that will land him behind bars for quite a few years. The ones who are loud and filled with self-righteous conviction are also the types of people who believe the law doesn't apply to them, and they inevitably wind up on the wrong side of that very same law.
I'm not a member of the bar. Does this mean my right to free speech has been curtailed? By whom? By myself, for never having attempted to pass a law exam I'm unqualified to pass? You have to be a practicing lawyer to enjoy the right of free speech? I don't get it. Seriously. What are you talking about?
Can't he just get a license in another state and pick up from there?
Stepping over the line hasn't stopped other professionals from moving their operations to other states.
I recall someone named Suddam who continually told a judge he didn't have the authority to hear the case. We all know how that turned out.
The first rule of litigation is, "Don't p*** off the judge."
Seriously.
hawk, esq.
And he ran, he ran so far away. he just ran, he ran all night and day. he couldnt get away.
Anyone else remember that GTA commercial? Was it a Canadian only thing? I think that is a very apt song for this situation and all the more ironic it was in the GTA commercial.
Karma's a bitch aint it?
He's all about protecting the First Ammendment. From Wikipedia:
In January 2006, Thompson asked the Justice Department to investigate the Florida Bar's actions. "The Florida Bar and its agents have engaged in a documented pattern of this illegal activity, which may sink to the level of criminal racketeering activity, in a knowing and illegal effort to chill my federal First Amendment rights," Thompson wrote in a letter to Alex Acosta, interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.[121]
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Apparently having a law degree doesn't mean you have any command of the English language either!
From TFA:
/. story, please!
You have been so cruel and at the same time so foolish as to call my pleadings herein "propaganda." That word means something, given how propaganda was used in the last century by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany
He Godwinned himself straight out of the gate. Next
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Freedom of speech includes his right to spout nonsense and our right to tell him he should STFU. As long as we don't actually hold our hands over his mouth (tempting as it may be), he hasn't been gagged by being told to STFU. Freedom of speech includes the right to say, "You are wrong and should not say what you are saying."
As for his flagrant abuse of the legal process in order to advance his political agenda... that can and should be stopped, and it doesn't constitute gagging him either. It should be stopped because it's abuse of the law. It also should be stopped because he's wrong.
I piss off bigots.
Don't talk about Fight Club.
That's it! I'm taking my ball, and going home!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
You foolish slashdotters. Don't you realize that Jack Thompson came closer to giving us what we want than anyone else?
If Jack's plan had succeeded for Halo 3, GTAIV, CoD4, etc, then I would never have to listen to a 11-year-old child screaming in my ear about his prepubescent views on life while he rapes me 15 kills to 4, since it's all he does all day, every day. In fact, he could get his xbox live account cancelled if I lost to him and decided to report his underaged cowlick.
You hear the name "Jack Thompson" and shriek like banshees, but in fact, he was going to keep underaged gamers out of our servers, and for that, he would have been a savior to the online FPS community, not a villain that you portray him to be. Think for yourselves on this.
Thanks to this blind tomfoolery, things will never get better, because no one will dare enforce age guidelines lest they receive a similar fate, and you'll be losing to castrato-voiced 9-year olds telling you how your mother was the last time they slept with her for the rest of your geriatric lives.
Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more... Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more!
Let's see, this also means that the various shit-brained news media should stop having him offering commentary on anything, because "disbarred lawyer" doesn't have that same ring of confidence as "crazy old coot" does.
Being a disbarred lawyer doesn't seem to have hurt Bill Clinton's speaking fees.
Don't be surprised if you see MORE of him - as he seeks to use his notoriety to pull in a few bux to replace the lost income now that he can't practice law.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Your post can be summed up as "don't pull a Reiser."
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Thompson started his career as a loudmouth by complaining about some rap from "2 Live Crew" back in the early 1990s. I bought the 2 Live Crew CD to see what all the fuss was about. They were a terrible rap group, at the low end of the garage-band level. My comment at the time was that "this group would never have gotten off the South Florida club circuit without the censorship attempt".
Saddam. He did the same thing (argued with the judge, tried to walk out of court, etc.)
Too bad it's just disbarment at stake here.
If the guys who made GTA had any balls they would have had a Thompson look-a-like NPC come running to the scene of accidents in the game, right behind the ambulances.
Religion causes whackjobs, but whackjobs cause more religion.
Jack Thompson may be a loon, but his specious arguments sit very well with the ill-informed "think of the children" crowd. He is a generator of headlines. The percentage people who both read the articles beneath the headlines and apply critical thought is infinitesimal. So these headlines are swallowed whole-hog as fact.
On the flip side, Jack Thompson is used as a punching bag by video gamers and rational thinkers everywhere. Those with a capacity for critical thought are not swayed by Thompson's arguments or behavior regardless of their position. Those without a capacity for critical thought have already chosen a side. Those who agree with Thompson either see him as a martyr or don't associate his lunacy with their beliefs.
The best thing that could happen after punishment is dispensed is for this asshole to never be mentioned in public again. His name should be stricken from the face of the earth, just like they did in the old days. He does not deserve to be remembered.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
What were those dangers? Just curious. Thompson has a big mouth and all, filed some questionable suits, and made some outlandish accusations. But exactly what real harm has he caused?
Did the door hit him in the ass on the way out?
I've got your sig, right here.
Khomeni, where are you when we need you? Do you think perhaps you could issue a Fatwa on this guy? 'k Thanks.
Like he won't be getting one of those crazy person websites, the ones with the big text, lots of animated .gifs and liberal use of the <blink> tag.
Admittedly he probably won't be quite so much in the public eye after this though.
It's never so bad that it can't get worse.
Estimated IQ of Jack Thompson = 67.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Jack Thompson will fade, but another litigious fool will stand up in his place. Our country, and I hope you realize this, is HEAVILY diseased by the corrupt structure of our legal system. Criminals go without punishment, innocents get punished, and people are allowed to abuse the legal process to extort cash settlements. Hell, even the police know that it costs you more to go to court than to pay the ticket.
This needs to be stopped. Anyone who frequents this site knows how various law offices are capable of extortion MPAA/RIAA. While this is not the only concern, it is a big one. This huge loophole, the ability to scare people with the costs of proving innocence to extort settlements, is wrong wrong wrong.
I hope others are in agreement about this.
he seems to be claiming that the judge at his hearing, and a number of other judges, did not sign loyalty oaths. This is the basis for his claim of the hearing being illegitimate.
Does anyone know what the deal with the loyalty oaths is? He tries to make it sound like his judge has done something heinous.
A Congressional seat with all graft his two little greedy arms can sweep up, at the least. Perhaps even a governorship.
Retry?
I'm just waiting for him to go on a shooting spree just so he can 'prove' video game violence causes real life violence.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
Phelps is evil. Thompson is just an idiot and a bully.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Obviously he's been reading up on the game on cheater sites. It's widely known that you have to threaten the entire bar, and insult the judge before you get flagged for the shotgun power-up on level 3. If you don't get that, you're really screwed by the time you hit level 5 and have to get past the mental institute guards to get to see the alien.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I'm gonna miss his fake American accent :(
So I googled his name and found the wikipedia entry on him.
This guy is whacked. There is something very very seriously wrong him. He is a mutant, either that or he's retarded, or insane.
Somebody needs to outfit this nut with a straight jacket and ship him off someplace where he can't hurt anyone.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
... in the form of a GTA style car-jacking by two teenagers just after the game was released... I still am happy to see this happen. Those 17 year old kids whacked out of their heads on speed were going to commit a crime either way. They probably would've just beat someone to death. It wasn't the game that caused the crime, it was two kids from broken homes with easy access to amphetamines that caused the crime.
The second rule of litigation is, "Don't p*** off the judge."
(With apologies to Tyler Durden.)
"Go ahead, do your worst, Referee Tunis. I will continue to do my best."
We've seen your best. That's why you're being disbarred, dumbass.
LoLuMaDjAcKtHoMpsOn?
The loyalty oath issue is interesting. The loyalty oath in Florida used to contain the language "that I am not a member of the Communist Party; that I have not and will not lend my aid, support, advice, counsel or influence to the Communist Party". This was a big deal during the Red Scare era in the 1950s. It's not an oath of office; all state employees were required to sign it.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that language to be an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and association in 1961. So the legislature took out the "Communist party" part. The shortened oath is still required of all state employees and candidates.
Florida law says that any state employee refusing to sign the oath shall be discharged. It's not clear there's any penalty for an employee who, through some omission of the state, was never asked to sign it.
Florida judges are mostly elected, and normally the loyalty oath is required as part of the paperwork for getting on the ballot. But it seems that Judge Tunis was appointed (by Gov. Jeb Bush) to fill a vacancy created when the Legislature increased the number of judgeships. For most state employees, it's the responsibility of the employee's superior to make sure that the loyalty oath is signed. But for elected positions, there's no "superior", so it's not clear who's supposed to get this done. Which is probably how she became a judge without signing the loyalty oath first. Anyway, Judge Tunis did sign the oath at a later date.
Let me tell you about a guy named Jack... He got sloppy... made mistakes... and YOU WANNA GET NUTS!? COME ON! LET'S GET NUTS!"
Who is Jack Thompson? Why is he so famous that everybody all around the World reading /. should know who he is?
I mean, the article summary doesn't say who or what he is, so apparently it is assumed everybody knows... Well, I don't, sorry for being so ignorant, please educate me...
He specializes in games and claims that they do damage to kids. Unfortunately he is very flamboyant about his claims and he attracts a lot of press for his outlandish claims. A quick look online will give you a flavour of the way he has been operating.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I'm sorry, I was thinking sangfroid. Guh, shouldn't be posting this late at night...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=574161&cid=23664821
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Clearly, however, if you accept the need of a parent to evaluate a product legitimately, you cannot exclude all of the significant and potentially disturbing material from that evaluation.
Ergo, you need multiple scales. Perhaps a pair of values for violence (degree and realism), same for sexual content, and so on for whatever other factors child psychologists in general (not just the ones on the payroll of a pressure group) consider areas of genuine concern that can also be reliably quantified in a game setting.
These would replace the ratings system entirely. Parents who go by biological age ignore the individuality of needs, thereby not really evaluating but chickening out of their responsibility by blaming time. Evaluation has no place for blame and no time for those who betray their responsibilities. But what responsibility is there if elapsed cell divisions is not considered worthy of notice? The responsibility of understanding the person they are supposedly evaluating for. If a parent does not understand their child, their child's own specific needs and vulnerabilities, then the parent is far less mature and adult than the child themselves, and the child should be provided with a rational means of determining their limits and their comfort.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think his entire basis for denouncing the Judge is that she is a woman. To quote from his response (death throe?): "You, the referee, are not even a judge."
From Connell v. Higginbotham (as quoted by Thompson): "...Florida public employee as an employment condition to swear that he will support the Federal and State Constitutions..." (Note the use of "his" and not "their" or "his/her".)
I'm not a legal scholar, but this stinks. Even if you agree with him (which I don't) this kind of argument is exactly why he should be disbarred.
Applicant: I'm a disbarred lawyer, a nutjob, a crack case, a quack and a disbarred lawyer.
Fox HR man: Hey! You said disbarred lawyer twice!
Applicant: I like being disbarred!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Game over!
I've followed the reports on http://www.groklaw.net/, and it seems to me that it was SCO which abused the legal system. As in
-making public threats to Linux users without providing evidence for their claims
-using all sorts of delay tactics in court to prevent a quick trial
-filing for bankruptcy a few days before an important court decison, which smacks of an attempt to get a venue change (because the bankruptcy court gets jurisdiction)
IBM's and Novell's legal teams looked much more respectable by comparison. If they have gamed the legal system themselves at a few points, it was insignificant beside SCO's behavior.
In other words, even a moderately sleazy lawyer will look good compared to SCO's legal team. So don't be surprised if some minor abuses from SCO's opponents were overlooked (I'm not saying there were such abuses, I merely consider the possibility).
C - the footgun of programming languages
To bar J. T. from professional lawyering would be a violation of the Constitution (that freedom of enterprise thingie). I hope the federal goverment stands up to enforce his civil rights to free enterprise as much as it enforces negros' and other coloureds' right to open car repair shops, hair saloons or brothels.
Correlation is a situation where two things happen with statistically significant coincidence. Simply said, if there are effect A and effect B, and if you have significantly more occurences of A and B happening together and of neither happening together, than occurences of A happening without B or B without A, then there is a correlation between A and B.
If A is "the person played violent videogames" and B is "the person murdered someone", then every case where someone played violent videogames and soon before or afterwards murdered someone is a statistical point in favor of the correlation between the two, but only if there also are cases where someone did not play violent videogames and did not murder someone soon before or after: unfortunately for Jack Thompson, the latter is becoming extremely rare, which reduces the significance of the former. Also, every case where someone plays violent videogames and does not murder someone is a statistical point against the correlation. Similarly, every case where someone did not play violent videogames yet did murder someone goes against the correlation. So far, evidence shows that any correlation between the two is extremely improbable.
Illusory correlation, like that inferred by Jack Thompson repeatedly between violent videogames and crime, is the situation where someone insists on considering two events to be related despite being not significantly correlated. Despite popular belief to the contrary, such illusory correlation behaviour is not correlated to schizophrenia (paranoid or non-paranoid, delusional disorder), nor with depression. So Jack Thompson is probably not technically insane on such grounds.
However, illusory causation, where the person infers causality between two supposedly correlated events, is a trait of paranoid disorders. Jack Thompson goes as far as making public claims (and suing according to those claims) that a causation exists between people playing violent videogames and murders despite the absence of even mild correlation between the two, and even interprets much of what happens to him in his professional life as having a causal link to this illusory causation in the first place (as evidenced by his claims of collusion between the Florida Bar or Supreme Court and the videogame industry). When his interpretations are rejected by the public (like when he unsuccessfully sued Janet Reno and RockStar), he rejects the result of the scrutiny instead of questioning those interpretations: that's a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia. At one point he even fantasized himself as being Batman, FFS ! It makes him a very dangerous man in my book, because the paranoids are often capable of nurturing delusory fantasies of persecution and injustice that can push them to commit serious crimes.
Given some of his more religious statements I certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that he has auditory hallucinations which he attributes to God... The other symptoms (disorganized thinking, absent or inappropriate emotional behaviour, etc.) are easier to hide and less prominent in paranoid schizophrenia.
Even if the guy is disbarred for ten years, if he really has paranoid schizophrenia, I would only consider the general public to be safe when he is committed to a mental institution.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No, not really. I for one want him stopped because he's a fucking lunatic, and I don't see why such lunatics belong in a court of law. He's still free to rant on his own time, to whoever listens to him, but I genuinely don't see how he's fit to help determine if someone's guilty or not.
It's not just about games, but about all his surrealistic antics. Seriously, read even the sample on Wikipedia, and you tell me if it doesn't sound like someone clinically insane.
Nope, sorry. In fact: good grief, no. When I have something to say, I want it said in a professional way. The last thing I want is my position to become associated with raving lunatics, idiots trolling for attention and abuses of the judicial system.
He's acting like a troll fanboy, or what we'd call one on any forum. And that's something some people don't seem to understand: annoying fanboys and zealots don't actually help get your point across. Regardless of whether it's "Linux is ready for the desktop" or "games are good for you", you want it to come across as a helpful and even-handed opinion. You don't want it to become a case of, basically, "oh, heh, it's those trolling fanboys again, blowing stuff out of proportion." Annoying people for attention is bad too, because if you've annoyed them, they're automatically inclined to _not_ listen to anything you have to say.
In Slashdot terms, you want advocacy to come across as +5 Informative or +5 Interesting, not as -1 Flamebait.
It's not even as much a personal opinion. Read any advocacy faq, and it will tell you the same. People like JT are _not_ the kind you'd want as advocates, for any domain or idea. JT is the kind of obnoxious troll that the real advocates wish would STFU already and stop polluting the channel. _Especially_ if they profess to be on your side.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Then I realised that since noone on
At least now that SHE is gone.
Consoles have parental controls as well:
Here is handy instructions for each one:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2006-12-28-parental-controls-consoles_x.htm
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
It always amazes me. Many religious people are indeed true bastions of good in our society. They hold to a moral code and teach it to others, but they're thoughtful and recognize the difference between set-in-stone "morality" and ethics. Then you get people like Thompson who have this rigid (but often equally vague) set of rules that they want to impose on everyone, while at the same time breaking all manner of ethics in the process. Is lying, cheating, and hurting people a good way to moralize our society?
does anyone know what mr. thompson's view on the second ammendment is? i'd find it rather ironic if he opposes gun control, given that so much of his career has been railing against video game violence.
It was probably just a coincidence. It's not like GTA invented car jacking.
Am I the only one who wonders how this guy has been able to make a living for the past two decades with his vexatious and non-meritorious lawsuits? I can only presume that most of them were dismissed or otherwise lost.
Is he independently wealthy and just doing this for shits and grins, or does he receive some sort of assistance from crazy wacko family-oriented special interest groups?
Sent from my iPhone
This is no game though
How do you know? Our only evidence for anything is what our senses tell us. My own life is so weird I often wonder if it's still the late seventies and I'm in a coma after that auto accident, dreaming all this.
What we think of as "life" could be an Asimov Dreamy. You could have paid good money for your futile, doomed existance.
Life could be something akin to a video game and again, you could have paid good money to be here.
Or this particular universe could be a prison you were sentensed to for some horrible crime.
I can think of 38 more things life could really be. Our only sane recourse, of course, it to believe that the universe and our lives are real, what we experience is really real, and act accordingly. But there is no way of knowing.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
...if he managed to pull down the Florida Supreme Court before he got disbarred? Yeah, he's bat-shit crazy, but you gotta admire the rabid determination to always be right. He's damn-near presidential material (vice presidential at the very least!).
...
I object, strenuously, as I have in the past on the record, to the very notion that this proceeding can even occur, on various grounds any single one of which is fatal to its legitimacy, including but not limited to the following grounds:
You, the referee, are not even a judge. The law in Florida on that is clear, and it is found in Florida's Loyalty Oath Statute 876.05, et sequitur, held constitutional and binding by the United States Supreme Court in Connell v. Higginbotham.
We know now from a recently concluded State Attorney's investigation and Report that your first state loyalty oath was forged. We also know that your next two oaths, which you signed, did not conform to that statute in that the language deviated from what is required and they were not even notarized. A number of formal opinions by Florida's Attorney General state that such flaws are fatal regardless of intent.
The statute itself states that if any state official, including a judge, fails to comply strictly with the loyalty oath statute, then that judge is without legal authority to serve and must immediately be removed from office. I will accomplish your removal from office in the days and weeks ahead, as the litigation that will achieve that has already been filed by me in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The Supreme Court of Florida, which you, the referee think is your ally in what you are doing here has ruled that your loyalty oath screw-up is fatal.
Secondly, we know now that six of the seven Florida Supreme Court Justices never executed valid state loyalty oaths. I have proven that, as has Florida and Washington, D.C. lawyer Montgomery Blair Sibley, whose own Bar referee, Judge Prescott, had his oath forged by the same person, Sayed A. Shah, who forged yours. What a coincidence.
Here come da fudge!
If it's "Leisure Suit Larry 3DD" you know there's not much violence but a lot of smut and some pixel jubblies.
"DangerKILKILKILL" won't have much apart from violence.
However, the parent can read all this from the blurb on the back. And an 18 game even if it's for graphic violence and has not boobies is not acceptable for a 10 year old. At 16, it depends on what you think your child is compared to "an average 18 yo" and this will change: you may be a lot happier having your teen playing LSL 3DD because he's mature enough about pixel boobies to enjoy without being warped.
and to summarize his letter, I simply say: TLDR.
Now let's just hope this was the last we had to hear from him (apart from the actual debarment).
Does your knee hurt from all the jerking? The amphetamines were no more the reason for the violence than than the videogames. Bad genes and a bad environment (shaken baby syndrome perhaps) were the cause. Not sex, seugs, rock and roll or video games like the neocons blame all of society's ills on.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Right, but what if he gets the 6 of 7 justices removed based on a technicality like that? OMFG, All of their decisions since they were put into office would automatically be APPEALED and, almost certainly, dismissed. the far-reaching implications of his crusade would be .... well, bad for FLORIDA.
Glad I live in NY.
I read this study (the study itself, fwiw) that actually found a slight negative correlation between their violence metric and males who played violent video games. There was a pretty significant positive correlation among the females, though. All college students.
It's just an interesting study to quote to idiots who think that playing violent videogames makes people violent. I mean, we know that if a child witnesses familial violence they may even shy away from violence, so why wouldn't video games be the same?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
both survive by trolling video games
jack thompson could write the script, say: these two parents don't pay attention to their kids' videogames, and the kid shoots up the local school. fairly boring and insipid plot. but bear with me here:
then uwe boll comes along. now what uwe boll usually does is take redeeming material for the movies that shows some promise, and utterly makes it into the most insipid useless crap imaginable. so what would happen if uwe boll started with insipid crap to begin with instead?
the inverse! uwe boll would make a movie masterpiece!
by starting with the insane ranting lunacy of the imagination of jack thompson, uwe couldn't help himself but to completely destroy the script writer's vision, a movie that completely betrays the original material. he couldn't help but turn a ranitng stupid insane jack thompson script into the reverse: a masterpiece of art. nothing at all like what jack thompson wrote, therefore: something oscar worthy, an awesome thoughtful and poignant commentary on videogames and society
they would negate each other and create genius! a troll apocalypse!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
LOL please mod this guy funny. He is sort of offtopic, and high as a kite by the looks of it, but holy crap he's funny!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That will probably be his next defense. Seriously though. that guy needs a psych exam. he's whacko.
I don't think a licensed psychiatrist is qualified to make remote diagnosis, let alone yourself. For one thing, you are definitely twisting the definition of illusory causation, which requires no reasonable plausability. Not just unlikely, none at all. Jumping to conclusions like "I bet the shooter was a gamer and since games make people violent, it made him do it" is wrongheaded and stupid, but is not an example of the kind of delusional state required to call it "illusory". Now if he said "video games make people violent because the CIA slips mind-altering codes in that turn people into the Manchurian Candidate", that would be more like it.
He is getting a lot more erratic in his filings, but it looks more like plain old sloppiness -- there's few if any signs of truly impaired cognition in his filings, such as changing tense or voice in the middle of a sentence.
Now narcissistic personality disorder, there's a slam dunk for you.
Can I nominate this for post of the year?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
which requires no reasonable plausability.
When he heard someone had been shot in the face, and knew nothing else of a case, he insisted the shooter must play videogames, because only hitmen and gamers shoot people in the face.
I'd say that pretty much qualifies.
I also find it odd that you criticize someone for remote diagnosis, only to offer a diagnosis yourself.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I'm actually surprised that they haven't locked this fruitcake away in a mental institution yet, he certainly belongs there.
From all that I've read about him all he seems to be is a religious nutcase who sees himself as some kind of crusader. What a wack job.
Attach a bunch of printed gay pornography to your next court submission and see how much the judge likes it.
The judge will most likely never see it. Assuming it isn't intercepted by a clerk, it will get as far as one of the magistrates, who does 90% of the work these days in the courts- the judges mostly supervise and sign off on the magistrate decisions. Kind of scary...
Please help metamoderate.
seugs?
We're not talking about whacking the guy, just moving him from the location of the legal profession.
Bravo to the Judges! Finally the enemy of freedom is getting what he deserves. If you disagree with violent video games, The idea is simple, DON'T BUY THEM. You don't force everyone else to do the same, that is not moral, that is not freedom.
The hearing was more like a colonoscopy and his disbarment like the removal of a polyp.
Despite my parents best effort, I found out about Frank Zappa. A friend gave me a copy on cassette. It is the only pirate music I have ever received. What was special was that it was forbidden, not that it was pirated. In the long run, exposure to Zappa didn't hurt me much.