Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Reign of terror? You must be thinking of a different Jack Thompson. This seems more like a punch line to me.
Seriously, when it comes to ambulance-chasing frothing-at-the-mouth nutcase walking jokes, Ol' J.T. takes the cake. And then sues Hostess for making it...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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.
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.
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.
.
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.
Oh, there's some optimism. Has the lack of a license to practice stopped Dr. Phil from being a pain? (Answer: no).
The worst thing that Jack could do is stop talking, though. He's like PETA. Some people could agree with his points, but he makes it very hard to espouse those positions without being lumped in with the loonies.
Quiet censorship is far more nefarious.
I, for one, welcome our new Jack Thompson-disbarring overlords!
http://www.object404.com
Wrong. His career as a "video game analyst" at Fox News starts in 5...4...3...2...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
The first rule of litigation is, "Don't p*** off the judge."
Seriously.
hawk, esq.
I consider this a colostomy for the legal system (one less asshole).
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
I'm not sure anybody here cares about the why. Personally, I mainly hate his guts because of the incredibly low standards he's applied to the practice of law. The prosecuting attorney that led that witch hunt against the Duke lacrosse players also got disbarred for his extremely unprofessional actions.
Really in both of those cases the reason why people hate them is that they were abusing the legal system for personal gain, being disbarred is what is supposed to happen in those cases.
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.
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.
I'll be brief: I'm unapologetically ready and eager to gag and demean someone who himself crusades to do precisely the same of both to others.
Jack Thompson was even involved in the 80's daycare scare (the "ritual satanic abuse") that ruined dozens of lives. For that alone, he is not simply strident, objectionable, or obstreperous, but really and truly evil. Schadenfreude may be shameful, but today I nonetheless feel the joy.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
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".
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 worst thing that Jack could do is
>stop talking, though. He's like PETA. Some
>people could agree with his points, but he
>makes it very hard to espouse those
>positions without being lumped in with the loonies.
I for one, enjoy having a rational discussion more than having crazies scream at me.
There are legitimate questions about what sort of material should be available to minors. I'm on the side of requiring the parents to do most of the footwork to protect their children, but it might also be helpful if extra tools were provided.
In particular, what if games came with an age group flag when they were installed, and operating system users could also have an age limit specified, so that applications with a "18+" flag would not launch of a user configured as "13."
Um, no. In fact, that's complete bullshit. Just how would you even going about quantifying the political health of a regime? Even if you could, how would then quantify music in a way that relates meaningfully? I suspect you have no studies or evidence to back that absurd proposition, but even if you did, it'd be obvious from the start that the methodology of the study is hopelessly unscientific. In other words, this is just complete and utter bullshit made up to support an argument that's just as bogus.
I will give you this: it's an old and persistent idea, it goes back at least to Plato. Of course, he had no evidence or good reason for saying it, either.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Yes, if only someone would invent parental controls.
In particular, what if games came with an age group flag when they were installed, and operating system users could also have an age limit specified, so that applications with a "18+" flag would not launch of a user configured as "13."
You know that was such a good idea that every console maker decided to implement it as well as Microsoft with Windows Vista.
It's really a non argument.
Violin.
//points at Nero
And a big fire...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I get your point however a colostomy isn't actually the removal of the anus. I can't find what that procedure is called but the colostomy just changes the location for the function of the anus. No removal actually occurs from what I can tell.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Fox already hires nutjubs, crack cases, and quacks. Why stop at disbarred lawyers?
Not a typewriter
Well, they do have a few convicted felons. G. Gordon Liddy, Ollie North...
Jeez, what's in your anus?
Http://Stineomite.org (Yeah Thats Right I'm An Organization)
When I was thirteen, I was playing violent videogames - actually, IIRC, I was addicted to Solar Winds - and jerkin' off to Playboy, Heavy Metal magazine and whatever I could find via NNTP. Oh, yeah, and trolling chatrooms... starting every conversation with "asl?"
Let kids be kids. Jeesh. That means getting obsessed with ninja gear, jerkin' off until their wrists are sore, and blowing things up with crudely made homemade explosives that only work a quarter of the damn time.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Ok, then we'll go with this. The asshole is still there, it just doesn't have the official capacity to spew shit anymore. See, my analogy still works.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
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
And yet he'd still be closer to reality than O'Reily.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This gives me an idea. Let's devise a way so that parents could somehow know what video games their kids were playing. That way they could choose what they felt appropriate for their child.
This could work for other influences in the child's life, like friends, TV, movies, etc.
If only there were a way for a parent to get involved.
Hmm. That's interesting, because I've read that computer monitors (CRT as well as flat panel) give off electromagnetic radiation, and this radiation is correlated to the type of software that's running on the computer. Televisions also give off the same radiation, correlated to the signal they're tuned into. There's even some evidence that non-electronic objects such as books and people can passively reflect this radiation, selectively absorbing parts of it and causing a characteristic disturbance.
Many species are able to detect this type of radiation -- and this might seem far-fetched, but I have a hunch that humans might be able to do it too, at least with the proper training. If a parent could learn to distinguish between different games, movies, etc. by detecting patterns in the electromagnetic radiation they emit, they might be able to figure out what their kids are up to.
Clearly, this needs to be studied more before we can draw any conclusions, but I'm willing to do the research if someone wants to fund it.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Well, they do have a few convicted felons. G. Gordon Liddy, Ollie North...
North's conviction was overturned, so technically he's not a convicted felon. Of course he's an amoral, deceitful, arrogant swine who admitted under oath to breaking the law, but he's not technically a felon.
You can't be anally retentive without an anus :)
...
... 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.
It's called a Total Pelvic Exenteration, and it's probably the nastiest operation a woman can undergo.
It's only for women though. I assisted on several in my former career, not a fun thing the help with, I can tell you.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
And here I was thinking that it was "Add another 8 lawyers, wait for the cement to dry and get ready for the best game of whack-a-mole of your life."
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
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 ?
I don't think I could be any more involved in my 16-year-old son's gaming and circle of friends. After hearing that I was a Counter-Strike addict in a former life, they introduced me to Call Of Duty 4. After I proved that I don't completely suck, they all now invite me into their games. They also like hearing "stories" about how things were before the Internet - dialing in to individual BBS systems, acoustic modems (yes, just like in Wargames), saving programs to cassette tapes, etc.. In the late 80's, I wrote a war-dialing program that found its way onto several BBS's, and still lives on the Internet today (it's even referred to in at least on computer security book, found on Google Books). They all thought that was just the coolest damned thing ever, so I'm seen as the "uber hacker".
Hilarity ensued one night when several of them were at our house - one of them brought a laptop. In my house, Facebook and Myspace are banned, blocked via several methods (Squid, Dansguardian, and OpenDNS). The "lead hacker" at the time thought he could get around my blocks by using another open proxy. The entire time he was messing around, I was upstairs watching the logs, watching all this take place. I let him struggle for about 15 minutes, then went down and casually asked "Who's trying to get around my firewall?". His face turned beet red, he stammered around for a few seconds, and then said "I didn't even know you could block proxy servers." The rest of them all laughed hysterically, and my son chimes in "Dude, my Dad gets paid to protect computers!". From that point on, I was seen as "l33t". Imagine, me, "l33t". Hilarious...
Good lord. I just googled that operation. I will not be sleeping any time soon.
Uh, actually all three major consoles in this current generation (Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii) have parental controls built-in. The console can read the rating on the disc and you can set a maximum allowed rating. So yes, they do have the tools necessary to enforce what games their children play, and no, they don't have the right to prevent the rest of us from playing what we want.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Actually I think Clinton "got off" wayyyyy before he was brought up on impeachment charges...HA
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
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.
The Constitution is a "technicality" to most people. "Got off on a technicality" often means "they didn't have a search warrant when they obtained the evidence".
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What good is your retentiveness, Mr. Anderson, if you don't have an anus?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Right, and there are definitely those who don't want you to be able to easily make that distinction. There are a disturbing and depressing number of Americans who really do believe that not only is watching a woman take her shirt and bra off more damaging to a child than watching someone get shot or beheaded, but it is their duty as good Christians to make sure that everyone believes that—or at least has that standard enforced on them.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.