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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."
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.
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)
disbarring a lawyer is a long complicated procedure. Indeed this was his disbarrment hearing that he walked out on.
In a prepared statement left with the court he called the florida bar association Fascists. While the final ruling isn't due until September(long process remember) I can't imagine a judge being called incompetent is going to help him any.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
He gave Florida a 404?
In 1990, the Florida Supreme Court wanted his sanity checked.
"In 1992, Thompson asked a Florida judge to declare the Florida Bar Association unconstitutional. He said that the bar was engaged in a vendetta against him because of his religious beliefs, which he said conflict with what he called the bar's pro-gay, humanist, liberal agenda."
I'm not seeing it on Wikipedia, but I've read that he has filed suit against George Bush as well. He repeatedly files ridiculous law suits that demonstrate he has little working knowledge of how the judicial system is supposed to operate, and abuses his power as an attourney.
He should have been disbarred years and years ago for his tactics. He filed a lawsuit here in Omaha against the police chief for not handing over evidence on a sealed, active investigation on Robert Hawkins. He sues people for not pressing video game angles in criminal investigations, even before any evidence presents itself to suggest it a factor.
He "predicts" people's guilt ahead of time based on video games, and then uses legal threats to enforce those predictions that repeatedly turn out to be false.
He isn't just a nut-job, he is a bully who violates court orders and makes fairly serious threats. I'm shocked Florida has let this guy practice law for decades now.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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
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.
Your post can be summed up as "don't pull a Reiser."
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
> As for his flagrant abuse of the legal process in order to advance his political agenda ... that can and should be stopped
No argument there.
> It also should be stopped because he's wrong.
That is where we are in conflict. If you want to present an argument contrary to his position, then fine. That is a part of civil discourse. That is a part of the freedom of speech. But let's face the fact here: a lot of people on Slashdot are arguing that JT should be stopped simply because they don't agree with him. Yet IF a hypothetical anti-JT was standing up for the freedom of expression in violent video games, and abusing the system of law in the exact same manner, a lot of people around these parts would be crying bloody murder if the anti-JT was facing disbarment.
And MAYBE a mild version of that has already happened. Remember the days of the SCO lawsuit. Remember how almost everyone was standing behind IBM's and Novell's legal teams almost without question. Remember how almost everyone was vilifying SCO, again without question. Now I'm not going to stand up for SCO because I believe that developers should have reasonable freedom to create and distribute their own work. But the point was that people were standing up for IBM and Novell without questioning their tactics or their motives.
The reason for that, and the reason why a lot of people seem so eager to see JT disbarred, is because we have an intense emotional attachment to the issue. We are letting it cloud our judgement, and because of that we have the online equivalent of a public lynching.
That emotial response is what I'm opposed to. Ever the more so because we are saying that our sense of morality takes priority over his.
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
Jeez, what's in your anus?
Http://Stineomite.org (Yeah Thats Right I'm An Organization)
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
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.
... 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.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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.
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."
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.