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Halo 3 Criticized In Murder Conviction
oldwindways writes "An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his copy of Halo 3. One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the games industry. Clearly, the AP thought they could stir up something controversial by asking the IP owner for a statement: 'Microsoft, which owns the intellectual property for the game, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."' I suppose the good news is they did not accept his insanity plea, so no one can claim that Halo 3 drove him insane. Even so, I don't think anything good can come out of this for gamers."
Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever." GamePolitics has further details from the judge's statement. It doesn't help that the boy's lawyers used video game addiction as a defense.
he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
If someone as old as 17 doesn't understand this basic fact of life, then there's obviously something wrong that has nothing to do with the video game.
... and then they built the supercollider.
"An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his [thing that he really liked]"
If he had a caffeine addiction and his parents took away his Coke would that mean that it was the fault of the Coke that he murdered them?
"I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
The Spawn Point defence should be filed along with the Chewbacca defence in the big book of crazy law.
Video Games, Movies, The Media... they all get blamed for some moron's actions. It's just another thing for politicians to hang their hat on and say "I'm fighting the good fight."
the 17 year old is clearly too damn ignorant to live.
Why can't the law do something about that? If someone is so freaking retarded that they are sane, but STILL a danger to themselves and society, why can't we just put them out of their misery with a bullet?
Or as someone once said, take the safety stickers off of everything, and let matters attend to themselves?
I can see why playing Halo (or, indeed, most games, with the notable exception of NetHack) might make you believe that. If only he had watched anime instead, he would have been taught the cruel reality of murder.
Would this murder have happened if it would have been harder for the kid the get hold of a gun?
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Hey, plenty of 17 year olds don't believe death is forever.
They're called "religious".
Excellent point. I thought childhood tantrums stopped around age 4.
Conservative, mod down for violating
If the judge believes he didn't know his parents wouldn't respawn, and that he was addicted to the game, why did he find him guilty? Perhaps, it was a case of his opinion being based on something other than the evidence presented? Either way, I don't think one can realistically blame the game, the guy must have already been insane to think real life would be like Halo.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
GOD forbid anyone should be held responsible for their actions, or be expected to have any kind of grip on reality. I think people maybe need to realise that sometimes it's not the TV's fault, or the computers fault, or anyone else's fault, perhaps some people really have no concept of consequences until they are sharing a cell with Bubba. I'm pretty sure they are able to catch with reality real quick then.
Let me get this, this kid probably have some kind of anger problem, he manage to get a gun, he is 17 and still have problem distinguishing reality but lets focus on a video game.
Okay, why hasn't anyone even mentioned the "9mm handgun"? To my simple, unAmerican mind, that seems far more like a murder weapon than the video game.
Talk about elephant in the room.
Anyway, I expect the usual 800-post NRA/2nd Amendment gun nuts vs rational people thread.
Only in America.
When will there finally be a time where the court doesn't favor stupid people at the cost of smart people. Thinking that the parents would not remain dead forever if he killed is stupid. Stupidity should not be rewarded in court. People who contribute a computer game to society are not stupid, and those are the ones that should be rewarded, for their work. Just the same as how people who are smart enough to create and sell a microwave oven shouldn't lose money to people who are so stupid to try to dry their baby in it.
You know it's flamebaiting to speak about people respawning millenia ago.
FTA:
Another article notes...
So the son was trying to frame the father for murdering the mother. Seems to indicate that he knew death was permanent...
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I was not aware of the fact that Microsoft also makes guns. Or did he shot his parents dead with the Xbox controller?...
Real life is overrated.
he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
If someone as old as 17 doesn't understand this basic fact of life, then there's obviously something wrong that has nothing to do with the video game.
Clearly Halo 3 is at fault. If they had some non-respawning game types this would never have happened...
The problem here is clearly the teen which is a sociopath, not the fact he played halo 3. It was halo 3 his parent withdrew, but it could have been a red toy car, or whatever he was using at that time. Once you are in your teen you are supposed to be able to separate fantasy to reality, and to know that death is definitive. If you don't even know or realize that, then you clearly have a mental problem. The guy was 15 at the time he shot his parents.
Miscellaneous quotes : (http://news.aol.com/article/ohio-teen-killed-mom-over-video-game/302589)
Petric may have been addicted, but the evidence also showed he planned the crime for weeks, said Burge, who found the teenager guilty of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and other charges.
Deputy prosecuting attorney Anthony Cillo argued during the trial that the teenager had planned to make it appear to be a murder-suicide by putting the gun in his father's hand.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Quoted from this article:
When he came to a few moments later, Mark Petric said, he saw that his wife wasn't moving, and Daniel was trying to place a 9 mm handgun in his hand.
Prosecutors contend that Daniel stole his father's key to the lockbox where the gun was kept and retrieved the semiautomatic pistol along with a copy of the sci-fi video game "Halo 3" that his parents had confiscated from him before the shooting.
(I snipped a section here)
Prosecutors say Daniel later confessed to the shootings and said he tried to make it appear to be a murder-suicide.
His Defense lawyer is grasping at straws for a reduced sentance, if the kid didn't realize his parents wouldn't be DEAD... WTF would he try and frame his Dad?!?!
A Man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties -- Albert Einstein
"An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his bike. One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the bicycle industry. Clearly, the AP thought they could stir up something controversial by asking the IP owner for a statement: 'Microwheels, which owns the intellectual property for the bike, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."' I suppose the good news is they did not accept his insanity plea, so no one can claim that driving his bike drove him insane(..). Even so, I don't think anything good can come out of this for bikers."
PWNED
:P
Mod me down, it was worth it
In his immortal words ... "Whatever happened to craaazzzyyyy ?"
I play halo3 alot (mid 20s here) and one thing thats annoying is the amounts of kids playing it
they so young and squeaky that its hard to tell whether its a girl or a pre-pubecent boy talking over the headset
one has to wonder how they get their hands on the game
Doesn't mean it can't be true, though. 17-year olds SHOULD know that death is permanent (and that even if it wasn't, you still wouldn't just kill people), but that doesn't mean they all DO.
Also, video game addiction IS a real phenomenon. Seriously, people read far too much into the word "addiction"; it really just describes a certain set of symptoms that can be tied to any particular trigger.
This game is so awesome, you'll kill anybody who takes it away from you!
(It's that good).
I record my sleeptalking
Unfortunately, there will always be idiotic trials. This reminds me of the infamous Judas Priest trial where "experts" tried to present evidence that an album by the heavy metal band Judas Priest contained subliminal messages that drove two youngmen to suicide.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Enough of this. People have been killing each other over for thousands of years. Sometimes over territory, sometimes over possessions, sometimes for no reason at all.
Killing over a copy of a violent videogame is no different than killing over a copy of a violent film.
This is just spin-doctoring. Quit publicizing everything that has a title that matches "videogames AND violence".
we can transform The Darwin Awards in The Darwin Olympics.
This is not a problem with the game, this is a problem with the US second amendment.
I have worked in the UK within the games industry on and off for 17 years.
From helping out in a video games retailer, when I was Tweleve, to working for a top five global publisher.
I have probably played more FPS's that 95% of the gaming community.
It has never crossed my mind to get a gun and shoot someone in the real world.
Oh but wait I live in the UK, where gun control is strict.
Its not just the access to guns that causes the problem, its the attitude that a massively out of date law creates in many Americans minds.
You don't see lots of British farmers sons going on killing sprees.
Right had my rant I'm off to kill some more Covenant.
If someone as old as 17 doesn't understand this basic fact of life, then there's obviously something wrong that has nothing to do with the video game.
Obviously. Nobody is arguing that completely normal people would go postal by playing Halo 3. If I said "All you people on slashdot are a wsate of oxygen and should go kill yourself" there won't be mass suicides, but someone already suicidal really sitting on the fence just might. So here we got a borderline psychotic, serious trouble separating famtasy from reality and he's on the fence. Was Halo 3 the push? How much should you pad the world to make sure he doesn't get a push? Or is it him, if anyone had realized how serious his issues are, that should have been put in a padded room? There's a line somewhere there, but I think what 99%+ of the population handles well should never be outlawed. The rest is just triggering some secret freak-out button that can't really be helped. Or rather, those people should be helped if possible.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think the point the judge was trying to make is that the boy hadn't thought things through. Sure he knew if he killed his parents they'd be dead forever, but he probably didn't realise that eventually he'll get bored of Halo, but he'll always miss his parents.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
So how is that games, with all their attempts to imitate real life physics and interaction, can't get this simple thing right ? ..), and take weeks to recover if wounded. If that means the game gets slowly less interesting as it empties of characters, that's fine. And if you're killed, you don't get to play the game any more. Maybe you could play a different character afterwards.
People should stay dead when they're killed (except maybe if they're zombies
You might think this would ruin the game, make it useless - but it wouldn't. It would raise the stakes for the player (don't you find a life lasts much longer in an arcade game, when you have to pay for more) and speed up the turnover of the game, raising the income for the writer. Some things would have to change to make the game saleable, but ultimately it would be more involving.
yep, the kid knew mommy and daddy would never respawn...like the games...
now he gets a life of tax paid housing and college education...
Doesn't mean it can't be true, though. 17-year olds SHOULD know that death is permanent (and that even if it wasn't, you still wouldn't just kill people), but that doesn't mean they all DO.
By then the parents or the school should have explained that already. Hm, wait, bad parenting + child killing the parents... I believe we got us some natural selection!
In every "gun is a basic right" thread I read comments what I believe to be whines about how every gun holder is responsible and how it is a privilege to own a gun, yadda, yadda. Quite frankly I think that the truth shows us something quite different. It seems to me as if most gun holders approach this as "its my right to bear arms and as such its a natural thing to do or to have". And that attitude is IMO the soul cause for incidents like these.
So they locked the game away in the gun locker? Or did they store the guns in the game locker? Either way; was it really that hard to imagine that the kid would go after the game? Better yet: is it common to treat guns the same as an ordinary PC game? Granted; this could be turned around by stating they possibly treated the game as if it were as deadly as the guns it was locked in with.
Either way; I sense carelessness. Its IMO obvious that they didn't treat the guns as special that they should be kept locked away by themselves. Instead they seemed to dump other stuff in there. And that attitude is IMO the road to disaster. Don't treat guns as something casual, they're not. And in that statement: don't treat gun lockers as ordinary lockers either, they're not.
Yeah, I know he was living up in Ohio but come one ...
Guns don't kill people! God do!
One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the games industry.
No kidding. I've been furiously working on quake skins of my folks in the days since this came to light.
Dad, meet, the "shambler".
That'll teach them for taking away my red stapler.
I record my sleeptalking
Notably, the boy's father is a minister. The church has not updated the web site, obviously.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
One has to wonder how it's a difference for you ;D
Games aren't meant to be simulations, they're meant to be fun.
I wonder how many times that has resulted in death.
If I said "All you people on slashdot are a wsate of oxygen and should go kill yourself" there won't be mass suicides, but someone already suicidal really sitting on the fence just might.
O rly?
All you people on slashdot are a wsate of oxygen and should go kill yourself.
Who knows what triggers a nut to commit a violent act but if someone is susceptible, it could be religion, a pop song, a glance from their neighbour, a movie star, a game, a character from a book. Are we to criticize all of those things on the offchance that some delusional person might hurt themselves or others?
That's not to say that games or whatever can get off without doing anything. I think all online games, at least on consoles should have controls that limit or at least advise how long someone should be able play them. For example it should be possible to restrict kids to a maximum amount of time of play per day. And adults should still be warned by popups how long they've played with occasional advice to take a break.
"Hey, plenty of 17 year olds don't believe death is forever.
They're called "religious". "
Kinda hard to sell suicide bombing and similar sports any other way.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Let alone the time Jesus accidentally telefragged Simon.
now he gets a life of tax paid housing and college education...
If by "college education" you mean "will be someone's bitch before his first day in prison is over" then yes, he's going to get a college education.
Just blame a game, don't dare blame yourself and take responsibility for your actions.
This way you play the victim card and get a mere slap on the wrist like hit & run Bishop O`Brien.
So - if you apply this to space games it wil take about 50.000 years only to play the intro...
Sounds great!!!
This shall be the last post you hear from me, you insensitive clod!
I hate printers.
Basics of parenting include: Don't let your children have firearms. Also teaching them the difference between right and wrong. Or at least, the consequences of being a psychopath.
The game has nothing to do with it, these "parents" have just been admonished for their failure. Although, it's a little bit harsh to get shot in the face, there is no one they can blame but themselves for having so completely screwed up this child that he's able to do such a thing.
they act like douchebags whose balls havent dropped
Psychological addiction isn't the same as physical addiction, but I'll agree it's pretty 'real'. However I'd also make the assertion that as a minor, his "addictions" are the responsiblity of his parents as much as his own.
Of course, the fact that as a society we're quite happy about the idea of games that promote violence and armed assault is something to be questioned, there's no doubt in my mind that having your own child murder you is essentially a 'flunk' in the 'basic parenting coursework'.
graspingatstrawslaw
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It seems that nobody here is concerned by a young man killing his parents beyond the effect it might have on video games.
Looks like the kid wasn't the only one who lost contact with "reality".
I guess I should have gone on a rampage the likes of which this country has never seen by now considering all the violent games I have played over the last 15 years or so. Not to mention all the violent movies I watch. Give me a break.
I think not.
How about a gaming scene where games based on murdering thousands of nameless, faceless opponents aren't common place? I know video games don't make kids violence, but, it *really* does look bad when you've got crazy ass kids blowing other people away and it turns out they've spent most of their free time playing FPSes.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Our brains wire themselves from back to front from babies and our frontal lobe isn't fully wired until age 25. The frontal lobe of the brain controls (paraphrased from Wikipedia): "...the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events."
It's quite obvious he had severe anger management issues, couple that with the fact that he's a teenager and wouldn't be thinking of the consequences of his actions, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Video game addiction is real. When you can't get your fix, you act just like a drug addict. I was the same with World of Warcraft over 2 years ago. I didn't kill anyone over it. I think if the gun had no been around in the house, this tragedy could have been averted.
Is / was respawning punishable by death and would that count for camping?
True, but that would be a fun sort of game. Imagine you can have multiple characters - say, a hundred - and this is your own personal "team". Each one on the team has their own individual skills - some randomly given out at spawning, and some trained. Keep the "max skill" cap low and not all that difficult to obtain.
It could be an FPS played just like a sports sim. Some of your team could be on the injured list (things like missing limbs could be explained away by a futuristic setting), and some might outright die and enter "the graveyard", where they are immortalized with their scores, skills, appearance, etc.
This would make a game where Medics are useful - you don't want to lose that guy you spent 2 hours maxing out his skills (ideally, I think that's as long as it should take, tops). You'd sure as hell appreciate the doc when you get revived on the field instead of dying of heart failure. People would actually use COVER and tactics to protect their investments of time.
Lastly, think of the achievments - longest survivor, etc. I think something like this could be fun if it were designed properly.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So yet me see:
- teenager plays Halo 3 for weeks/months/years: does not kill anyone.
- same teenager *stops* playing said game for 1 day: shoots both parents.
So does that mean that playing the game *stopped* him killing real people ?
Video game addiction: cause of insanity, or symptom?
Microsoft... declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."
Wow, déjà vu. That's the same thing they said when Vista was released.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Well said. I cheated and skimed the first link. The judge rejected the plea of insanity. The boy planned his revenge for weeks and did it in cold blood. I didn't find the quote from the judge but I think the "things" the judge had in mind were the "consequences" of his lame plot and subsequent defense, such as the one you mentioned, which given the overall maturity of his motive probably started to sink in when he was de-liced at the remand center.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
About the permanent death: implemented in Diablo and Diablo 2, on the harder difficulty levels.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
> Games aren't meant to be simulations, they're meant to be fun.
what about simulation games?
From the article (read it on local news site) the parents took away the game, that sounds to me like they were trying to do something about his "addiction" So I don't see how it would be the "parent's fault" as everyone keeps stating. the boy took the gun AND the game out of the case.
that I wanna go out and frag someone with my Spartan Laser.
>> "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
Maybe the problem is not the game but his Ubuntu box: he thought "kill parent" is harmless, since the real kill is with "kill -9 parent".
Given your ID I'm assuming your old enough to remember older games. Surely what you should of noticed is that the things you are suggesting are the exact opposite of what has been going on in the gaming market, due to the fact most people don't want it.
Games have moved from Die=Restart through Die=Revert to last save to Die=Revert to before last challenge. Nintendo are even trying to patent the idea of a system that allows you to let the game play for you if you want (for example if something is too hard).
Their is a market for more involving games, and some games have persistent death for NPCs. Bethesdas Oblivion and Fallout 3 come to mind for this. However, very few people enjoy being pigeonholed. Hell, even the new DND4e has shifted this way and personally I think that was a massive improvement.
Really? I killed my roommate after he accidentally wiped out a year's progress in my game of Nethack.
> Petric used his father's key to open a lockbox and remove a 9mm handgun
so what was the father (a pastor) doing with a gun in the first place?
whatever happened to "thou shalt not kill"? or was he planning on maybe clubbing burglars over the head with the stock of the gun when they entered the house?
The father, a minister, had a 9mm handgun that the son, who played video games, used as the tool for his action.
So lets see.
Religion.
Guns.
Video Games.
Which one is not enshrined in U.S. culture and will therefore be blamed.
Sure, but people play simulation games because they're fun :)
You have a very interesting concept there. I'd love to play that type of game assuming it's not too extreme. Maybe your character could get knocked out for several days?
Addiction: Not dealt with until far too late.
Child: Not able to tell that 'murder' is a bad idea.
How is it anything other than the parents fault? They're responsible for 17 years of this child's development, and he ended up sufficiently screwed up to murder them as they slept. There's no one else you get to pass that responsibility on to.
...but he'll always miss his parents.
If they're dead, he obviously didn't miss.
Not such a fan of this "blame everything on the parents" attitude. Yeah, sometimes it is the parents' fault, but not all the time. There are a whole slew of other factors that could have come into play, or the kid could have just been fucked up to begin with. There is no cut-and-dry guide to raising a perfect kid or even a mentally stable kid. And sometimes, no matter how good a job you do, you still get a bad egg.
I think the problem is more about the american violence culture. Everything is solved by war and blunt force, from economic disputes to drugs and crime. Theese kids are feed 24/7 with neews feeds learning them that killing is the way to go when you want something badly enough.
Its a society so used to violence that people in it doesnt even see the problem. Blame anything as long as you dont blame the perverse affection to killing other people.
HTTP/1.1 400
When I look at the article on BBC website that kid looks like he has the 1000 yard stare they talk about in the movie full metal jacket or was it 100 yard stare?
anyway I have read that people who have been in combat too long they get this stare and thats what this kid reminds me of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard_stare
I am also wondering If he has any mental issues ? Has he seen a Psychologist lately ? (Not judging just a thought.)
Assembly of God? I'm surprised they allowed video games to begin with.
The games industry had better not stop making violent games... If they do, they'll soon find themselves killed by crazy teenagers.
The kid must've been at-least 15 when the game came out. By then, I had a solid enough grasp on reality to know that people didn't come back once they were dead. How can the judge believe that he managed to forget that fact?
Well, I suppose he could've been one of those kids that the parents bought another dog that looked like the old one for. Saying "he died, but got better". In that case, I'd have said the parents should take some of the blame.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
Can anyone say Banhammer? ... Where did he learn to use a 9mm. The pistol in Halo is an unusual 12.7mm.
He killed his mother and shot his father in the head. the father survived.
Daniel's plan was originally to make it look like a murder-suicide, by leaving the gun in his father's hand. After the shooting, Mark Petric said his son put the gun in his hand while saying, "Hey Dad, here's your gun. Take it."
The outrage is from people who are pissed that a manipulative evil piece of shit is trying to avoid a harsher punishment by blaming a hobby which most people here enjoy.
His first plan to avoid getting punished didn't work out so well but a judge seems to have bought into the "it was the videogames fault!",partly at least.
Yeah, "kill parent" just makes them tie up their affairs, kill any children then throw themselves off a cliff...
Personally I'm not looking forward to one of my hobbies being banned because of shits like this.
I'm thinking they'll ban portal after some kid jumps off a building since the game doesn't kill you with falls and so he thought he'd be fine.
And for many their own mortality has not really dawned on them yet. Also your ability to think through the concequences of your actions are not fully developed in the brain until around 21 years old.
I think lots of people would like to see the respawning done right, but they either slap R-ratings on games or pull them from the shelves.
A warning at the beginning of the game:
Warning: Killing people in real life will result in permanent death of those people killed.
-P
I think we have to stop and think this is tragic. My sympathy to the family.
Forget the game Halo ...
I think the real question is how did a 17 year get a hold of a gun?
Sure in the article it says he got it from the family safe but should it have been that easy ?
why was the ammunition stored with the gun ? As I understand it even with pro gun people thats a no no.
Movies, especially, are rather fond of bringing dead characters back to life. Actors go on to play other roles though I am not sure what role Lando Calrisian went on to play after Star Wars, for young developing minds, movies can certainly put some warped perceptions in there. Television is even worse in that it seems to suggest that life's problems can be resolved between 30 minutes to an hour with commercials although on occasion you may have to wait until next week for resolution. (some problems are really that big!)
And if one could actually understand all of the words in music, I suspect one might find some pretty questionable subject matter as well.
Distortion of reality is found in every form of entertainment without exception. I feel pretty fortunate that the world has survived this far!
First, I don't remember getting points for killing civilians or family in Halo 3. So wouldn't his behavior be inconsistent with the game world?
I fail to see how this is a video game issue. If you can't tell the difference between a game and reality then you have serious mental issues, traditionally called being crazy. Serious to the point where someone is likely going to get hurt.
Do the video games create the crazy? Not in healthy people. I've been a gamer for decades. I don't believe in immersion. It's a sign of mental defect. We don't have the technology for immersion. Things like displays that don't take up 100% of your view field, controllers, the phone ringing, the traffic outside, the television or music on in the same room, and hell even the chat in multi-player all prevent immersion as there is no way to get around the fact that you are playing a game.
This was simply some unbalanced individual that played Halo. Until we have tech that makes games nearly indistinguishable from reality I don't see how it's possible for the game to be the cause of the problem. Of course when we do reach this level of tech it's going to be a wide wide ranging issue since movies, television, maybe books will all use it and will all be able to create the crazy as people can't tell if it's media or reality.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Lawyers for Lionel Tate attempted to use professional wrestling as a scapegoat, and the judge and jury immediately rejected that.
I see no difference here whatsoever.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
I'd go as far as to say you'd have to go to some real effort to not notice your child is badly screwed up. Maybe you can't _fix_ it as a parent - but to essentially have so little control of the situation where the child in question is able to gain access to a fire arm and kill someone with it really is a chronic failing on the part of the parents in question.
You can blame a part of it on a culture that thinks 'killing people' is acceptable material for a game, and you can blame another part on a culture that thinks everyone has a right to a weapon for killing people with.
Plenty of blame to go around, but there's absolutely no doubt that the lions share of it must reside with the people responsible for bringing up this child for 17 years.
Games aren't meant to be simulations, they're meant to be fun.
Anyone tell the Army that before they invested a bazillion dollars in their latest gaming "simulation" hardware?
Not trying to excuse this kid, who was obviously "troubled" way before he started playing video games, or his lawyers coming up with some lame-ass excuse to blame everything else but the kid himself, I'm just saying that certain organizations out there have a very fine line between games and real-world simulators.
No, they're called retarded. There isn't a religon that I'm aware of that doesn't ackowledge that you cease to be a human upon death, and all of them believe its likely to be a one way trip. Some believe in an afterlife, some beleive we go back into a pool of life force, some believe in reincarnation. All of them believe your human life is over.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"Insanity is limited to the question of whether at the time of the offense, the defendant, as the result of a severe mental disease or defect, did not know the wrongfulness of the defendant's acts charged." State v. Muhammad (Ohio 2008).
It's called nationalism.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I don't know the kid. I don't know the parents. Chances are I'm no closer to any of them than I am to Kevin Bacon. It doesn't really impact me. Lots of people die tragically in the world (someone probably did so while I was writing this post). I'm not going to get weepy over it. I find the idea that I should show some actual concern over this laughable. It's not like I can do anything about it. I can't stop all the gangs, robbers, and psychos in this world. I do what I can locally, but I'm not about to get worked up over something that has no effect on me and that I could have done nothing about.
So does this mean I've lost contact with reality?
he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
If someone as old as 17 doesn't understand this basic fact of life, then there's obviously something wrong that has nothing to do with the video game.
Exactly. Obviously if he values a video game or software program over the lives of another Human Being (let alone that of his mother and father) he is mentally and emotionally sick, as well as severely skewed from reality.
Has this defensive tactic ever worked when it is the gubbermint that is the victim? I doubt it.
ie 'i am addicted to pole position, so it isn't my fault i was doing 20mph over the limit'
'i am addicted to WOW, so i didn't have time to fill out my tax return'
etc
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
correction ... they don't act, they are.
The problem is that if a person is that incapable of separating fiction from reality, they would presumably have been influenced by everything from the first kids TV programs they saw onwards (and I'm not just talking about the violent ones - last week, Rupert The Bear had them climbing a tree and flying due to magic - would he have tried that if he'd seen it?)
I struggle to believe someone could realistically made it to 17 with that little grip on reality, or at least managed it without this problem being plainly clear to his parents - in which case, what the hell were his parents doing a)buying him a video game like that and b)having a gun in the house?
Gun: Accessible to a minor.
Addiction: Not dealt with until far too late.
Child: Not able to tell that 'murder' is a bad idea.
I think the first point is a good one. No one wants to blame the direct issue, such as HOW DID HE GET ACCESS TO A GUN? The other two points are also adequate as there is an indication something is not right with the situation.
If the Melendez brothers can get convicted after killing their parents after being abused - this case is surely a little more cut-and-dry IMHO. He will probably be convicted. This is a repeated scenario every 5 years or so and the result is usually the same in the court of law.
Let's go over some of the tried (and failed) situations:
- Teens try to kill themselves, blame Judas Priest
- Columbine, kids blame FPS games and Bully's
- Menendez brothers plot and shoot parents, blame abuse
- A multitude of others.
You can't blame the parents fully in any of these situations. Obviously they weren't able to effectively parent in this case, but they didn't shoot themselves. Call me a hard-ass, but I think the legal responsibility lies with the teen. I'm quite certain that's how it will play out in court. The world will then continue to turn and FPS games will continue to come out, be purchased and played ... after millions of dollars of legislation and some new stickers or warnings on the game packaging.
-Tamran
Why? Who else is responsible for the upbringing and mental health of this child?
The parent is responsible, but that doesn't always mean they're to blame. There are many cases like this where the parents simply did everything they could and the kid still turned out rotten.
The guy tried to claim that Halo3 made him do it, the judge basically threw that out and called him a cold calculated killer.
They guy is obviously nuts and his defense is trying any old thing to get him off.
Other stupid defenses I can suggest:
* TV made him do it.
* McDonalds made him do it (he must have eaten McD's some time in his life).
* The gun made him do it.
* Society made him do it.
* Aliens made him do it.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
Well, the opposite end of the spectrum is people who think they are 'rational' because they believe (without proof) that people came from lightning and mud... :)
Ha! That sounds a lot like the kind of strawman arguments commonly thrown around by creationists and is a poor attempt at attacking Evolution and Abiogenesis. Of course, no rational person believes that "people came from lightning and mud".
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
I'd warrant, then, that the kid's probably had as much exposure to the Old Testament as he has to Halo 3. Personally, I'm not in favour of banning either, but if anything...
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
If someone as old as 17 doesn't understand this basic fact of life, then there's obviously something wrong that has nothing to do with the video game.
While this is a tried and afaik somewhat true argument, it doesn't really invalidate the other side of the coin.
Games making kids violent, people getting addicted to games or gambling, someone joining a cult and other things that a major part of the human race isn't effected negatively by.
Some people break because of these things and the government has a hard time dealing with it, resulting in them having to use things like outright bans for everyone.
If you want a better world without the government having to make stupid bans, you have to make it better, you have to be there to help the guy with the alcohol problem, drug problem, gambling problem...
If you help the guy next door, then your solving the problem, so governments wont have to, because sometimes giving a shit matters.
ConfÃteor unum baptÃsma in remissiÏOEnem peccatorum; et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
Glock
UZI
MP5
Nines the lot of them..
FRA: STFU GTFO
I think aliquis was asking why it was important whether they were girls or pre-pubecent boys. Careful with your sentence construction there, ionix.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
It's from Ben Stein's propaganda film.
Just to keep things in perspective:
a) The Taliban always maintained that they did not know where Bin Laden was, and even if they did, they had no control over his actions.
b) To this day, no evidence has ever been presented suggesting that Bin Laden was even to blame other than some obviously heavily doctored tapes, many of which were proven to have gross mistranslations. References follow:
http://www.rense.com/general18/ez.htm
http://911lies.org/fake_bin_laden.html
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/020807tapesdoctored.htm
This will likely be disregarded as conspiracy theorist whackoism, but I throw it into the ring as food for thought.
If you're going to launch the most expensive war in history then perhaps make sure there are not gigantic questions surrounding what appears to be a poorly constructed false pretext as a reason for doing it.
Hmmph indeed. Your blind acceptance of the drivel that the public gets spoon fed by the media makes me wonder why you read this site.
Over here we question the crap that media shits out on our plate. You want to eat it and say "yum" then digg.com will suit you better.
I hate printers.
Well, I have this rather thick black book which a lot of people seem to believe is 100% accurate that says we're all going to respawn at some point in the future. So perhaps the dumbass, oops sorry I meant to say kid, thought he could simply have a break from his folks for a little while.
~Syberz
Why, will his text-to-speech clonk out soon?
What a brilliant marketing strategy: play our game until you drop, but if you die just once, it's over. No restarts, not even after the Cave of Treacherous Abysses. And we won't sell you a second copy either, so tread carefully.
That's justifiable homicide, as far as I am concerned.
It's called D&D. And it didn't used to take 2 hours to "max out your skills" but rather 2 decades.
Hey, plenty of 17 year olds don't believe death is forever.
They're called "religious".
Gimme a break - blaming religion is the same as blaming the game. Falling back on the "religion is the root of all evil" argument is the crutch of those who don't realize that "... people kill people, [insert 'religion', 'guns', video games'] don't kill people ..."
*sheesh*
As has been said already, if a seventeen year old thought they would revive, the video game certainly did not teach them that. How can I know this? I HAVE PLAYED GAMES FOR 10 YEARS NOW. I started when I was 8, playing Heretic. At no point did I revise my theory on human life. I was aware, at all times, that if I picked up any kind of weapon, be it chainsaw or magical phoenix wand, if I killed someone they weren't coming back.
But it makes me sneer that they don't even question if religion made him do it. Religion celebrates resurrection, and celebrates death. If he didn't think they were going to come back, he would think he did them a favor by removing them from this 'vale of tears' and sending them heaven.
Of course, we could just state that not every human is of sound mind. Good chance is he is either insane, or enjoys killing. You've seen people who enjoy hunting, right? Why is it so hard for people to accept that some people probably enjoy killing?
He did not fucking killed is parent by hitting them with his Halo disk, where did he get the gun from?
Blame guns not games,
Silly Americans.
I like this modus ponens of theirs. Especially when you put it in the standard frame of the average anti-violence-in-video-games argument where P is the presence of Halo (or any video game) and Q is homocidal activity: but here it follows that if P then Q, ~P, so Q. So it seems that the presence of Halo could have saved the day. Have they considered that perhaps any form of disciplinary action on the part of his mother would have set this kid off, not just the absence of a video game?
And it was awesome. I hope they implement it in D3, sans the hacks kill me in town.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Of course, no rational person believes that "people came from lightning and mud".
Exactly! Everyone knows it was dust and breath! /retard
Funny how the same sentiment is never expressed against the strawman arguments that flow endlessly in the other direction regarding the belief in an "invisible sky fairy".
There's a word for that: hypocrisy.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
What every kid needs is to be shown how ridiculous gaming tropes and conventions are patently absurd if you apply them to real life situations. has been doing this to hilarious results. Highlights include Altair freaking out people at a flea market as well as Ryu and Sagat trying to destroy a real car. One look at those and they'd never think that any of it makes any sense outside of the game world.
They didn't buy it for him.
He bought it himself and when they found out they tried to take it away, and he killed them for it.
At least that is what I remember from the initial story on Slashdot a little bit ago.
Hm, wait, bad parenting + child killing the parents... I believe we got us some natural selection!
-1 doesn't understand science.
They already spawned, he would have to kill his siblings and himself for natural selection to be working.
True, but that would be a fun sort of game. Imagine you can have multiple characters - say, a hundred - and this is your own personal "team".
Cannon Fodder?
(Okay, given the rest of your post, not C.F.)
I wonder if we can apply this to anything where you'd have to be fucking retarded not to realise the limitations?
"I'm sorry your honour, I figured you could just issue a judgement that my parents were no longer dead. You guys rule on the laws of man, so why not the laws of physics?"
It's been a long time.
The Taliban always maintained that they did not know where Bin Laden was, and even if they did, they had no control over his actions.
If they had no control over his actions then we had every right to go into that country and capture or kill him. There isn't a nation-state on this planet that would have responded differently if thousands of their citizens were murdered.
This will likely be disregarded as conspiracy theorist whackoism
That's exactly how I'm going to disregard it, given the fact that the SOB and members of his organization have admitted their involvement.
If you're going to launch the most expensive war in history then perhaps make sure there are not gigantic questions surrounding what appears to be a poorly constructed false pretext as a reason for doing it.
9/11 was a false pretext? Or are you confusing Iraq with Afghanistan again?
Over here we question the crap that media shits out on our plate.
Yes, blame the media! Anybody that doesn't agree with you is just eating crap from the media.
You want to eat it and say "yum" then digg.com will suit you better.
If you wanna spout your leftist flower-child bullshit then dailykos.com will suit you better. If you want to tout your "blame Christianity" bullshit then go find a militant atheist site or something.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"The Petric's also worked with troubled teenagers as house parents" - From the website.
Would it be insensitive if I ROFLMAO?
Nothing to see here.
This actually sounds like a really cool idea. I'd be up for playing something like this. That's the one thing I can't stand about games like CounterStrike is that people don't *have* to use cover tactics.
The father wasn't killed, unless he's succumbed to his wounds since my last reading. The mother is dead though.
Fnord.
What kind of music was they listening to? Or what kind of movies was they watching? Who gives a fuck what they was watching?
Whatever happened to crazy?
What happened to crazy? What, you can't be crazy no more? Did we eliminate ''crazy''
from the dictionary?
Fuck the records. Fuck the movies. Crazy!
If someone had just camped the Garden Tomb 2000 years ago, we wouldn't have to worry about it.
Furthermore, he didn't even get a chance to play Halo 3. If you read the other more in-depth articles, you'll see that he actually just bought the game, and had it taken away when he came home, not even giving him a chance to play it (at least at home).
Of course he had the idea. After the execution of his "plot" (since this is defined murder) the parents will never be able to take away his Halo. This fact is much more important for a teen than a concept of living parents which can only be defined and appreciated by experiencing the loss.
Hmmph indeed. Your blind acceptance of the drivel that the public gets spoon fed by the media makes me wonder why you read this site.
The blind dismissal of what the media/govt tell us just because they're the media/govt is just as bad the blind acceptance.
As for the videos being faked, I'm sure there are plenty of "experts" who will say it's not faked as well. Just like there were "experts" who said building 7 was intentionally demolished while other "experts" say it was the natural conclusion to a fire inside the weakened structure.
As there is no direct evidence in either case, what a person wants to believe will ultimately be what the person sees. You want a conspiracy, so you see one. Others can't possibly believe such a conspiracy could ever happen so they flat out ignore this "whackoism" and never question their own beliefs.
So I went to your links. Read what was there. And concluded that they present no evidence that the videos were faked. The first simply contains what-ifs and statements from pro-Taliban sources (not very reliable sources, IMO). The second compares screen captures to photos, but fails to compare properly scaled photos. One image is smaller than the other and they use that to claim one shows a smaller nose than the other. Well gee, I wonder why. And it uses very small screencaps with heavy mpeg distortion as proof it's a fake bin Laden, even though the size and distortion from that one from would more than account for the differences. The third link isn't even about bin Laden, but quotes the results of a researcher who wrote his own software to analyze the video and then draw assumptions from the results. It was not a strong argument.
17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever." I know it has been quoted already, but seriously? I mean come on. My 5 year old son understands the fact that death is forever. And he has been playing games since he was old enough to hold a controller. Hell, I taught him how to snipe the pilots out of helicopters in Mercenaries when he was two. Also, why did the parents take the game away from the kid? My guess would be some kind of violent activity and they were taking his games away as punishment. The kid most likely had violent tendencies anyway.
agreed. he would probably have killed her girlfriend if caught cheating, or any other person for any other futile motive.
He had shot them for taking away his Bible... I mean that has the theme of death not being forever too...
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia (There is no great genius without a mixture of madness) - Aristotle
I'm still at a loss for why that borderline suicidal person shouldn't just go and kill himself.
If you really feel like you're THAT worthless, DO IT. Just make sure to get it on webcam so the *chans can have a laugh.
The Dragon In My Garage
by Carl Sagan
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour ar
I live in Ohio not to far from where this happened. A note on the judge James Burge. He is a defense attorney wearing a robe. He was trying to find any reason to let the boy off. Go here and listen to what the judge had to say. You will want to listen to hour 2 of 01/13/2009. I am tried of people electing idiots into office that keep eroding personal responsibility and place the blame on everything else. It is one of the things undermining this country and its citizens from being all they can be.
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
I was aware, at all times, that if I picked up any kind of weapon, be it chainsaw or magical phoenix wand, if I killed someone they weren't coming back.
Wussy. Real men play on Nightmare Mode. :)
Knowledge != Intelligence
Well said. If Halo 3 was the contributing cause to this murder, rather than just a whiny, petulant teenager who killed his parents for not giving into his demands, then there would've been a rash of parricides after the game's release. Since there weren't, it should be obvious the game had nothing to do with this one.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I for one, am not interested in the tamagotchi you have described. If I am to play a game, I prefer to invest time in gaining real skill in my brain in terms of hand-eye coordination, training my memory, or solving interesting puzzles, than to have an artificial set of records telling me what my "skills" are.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
When I read about horrific shit like this it makes me wonder when I see expectant moms and families with babies. What will this kid's life be like? They're all so happy with the baby now, so doting. What was this murdered mother like with her baby 17 years ago? Could they imagine something like this coming in the future? I don't think anyone could. This little person you brought into the world, that you sacrificed for and gave everything to, they're going to repay you by taking your life.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
this has nothing to do with the game. this is just a sad case about a kid "loosing it" over not getting what he wanted. It could just as easily have been because he was not allowed to eat chocholate or bananas anymore, not being allowed to see his girlfriend or watch Seinfeld.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
I hope if I ever get arrested, I get this judge.
Me: I swear, she told me she was 18!
Judge: In that case, I firmy believe that the suspect didn't know that the victim was 4 years old at the time of the incident. Case dismissed!
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
So here we got a borderline psychotic, serious trouble separating famtasy from reality and he's on the fence. Was Halo 3 the push? How much should you pad the world to make sure he doesn't get a push?
NONE. Free speech is fundamental to the functioning of a democracy.
It really is that simple. Reading Shakespeare isn't an excuse for ruuning around stabbing people BTW.
Put the nuts in a nuthose. Leave freedom of speech alone.
Life is too short to proofread.
Damn you guys are worse then the people who knock on my door twice a month.
It is kinda sad for a group of people without a religion or a belief in God(s), that you are are so instantiate to bring up your views on religion even when it isn't part of the topic. Get over it religion will be with us for our lifetimes. I haven't heard anyone give a good enough reason to prove that the Atheist are right, conversely I haven't heard a good reason to prove that religious people are right.
Lets compromise God exists 1/2 of the time. There is a solution that no one likes so therefor it must be a good compromise.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
he started at the top and is working down, duh :)
Sounds to me like he had parents that suffocated him and tried to stifle any sort of privacy or development as an individual.
Not that I'm condoning his actions, but if he was essentially being denied any free will or "personhood" I can imagine the frustration.
I often wonder how many people who hold up the Bible as this great moral document to guide our modern times have ever *really* read the thing. I don't mean read as in "listen to my local minister/priest/rabbi talk about some cherry-picked passage and then read that passage," I mean really READ the entirety of the texts that make it up (and not just some Talmudic interpretation or minister's inspirational book of happy Jesus sayings). I have to wonder what a modern Christian would think when they read about their great loving God sending his angel of death to kill every innocent first-born child of Egypt just because some Pharaoh was a dickhead; or about God's chosen one, Moses, fucking his daughters; or about the rampant polygamy among God's chosen leaders (one man/one woman my ass!); or about the slaughter of entire tribes (men, women, and children) not only endorsed by, but actually ordered by, their "loving and compassionate" father-figure in heaven.
Either God went through a pretty radical transformation at some point, or the God they're worshiping bears a much stronger resemblance to the modern conception of Satan than some loving, monogamy-supporting hippie.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...17 year old with a gun in his hand.
Or, did he kill his parents with the DVD of the game?
Unless you're talking about reincarnation, most "religious" people believe entering the afterlife is a permanent sort of thing. At least, they don't generally think there's much coming back from it, not as a physical body anyway...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's called nationalism.
Which is just a form of basic tribalism.
so with a site like 911lies it kinda makes it difficult to care about what you have to say
Nice, instead of the "video game" defense, use the "religion defense"... Instead of Jack Thompson, we'll have Dawkins.
I'd say yes. We have all sorts of sayings referring to the fact that people often don't bring their jobs home with them even when they need to. "Physician heal thyself", plumbers whose toilets don't work, and so on. It's ironic, but hardly exceptional. It happens all the time.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
YEP, sounds more like his parents had "no idea" how to raise a child...
a) The Taliban always maintained that they did not know where Bin Laden was, and even if they did, they had no control over his actions.
Wait... the person(s) we found claimed no knowledge of the whereabouts of the person we didn't? Does this surprise anyone?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
They still believe it's still a one-way trip. Your new body won't be at all the same as the one you have now, either.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
b) To this day, no evidence has ever been presented suggesting that Bin Laden was even to blame other than some obviously heavily doctored tapes, many of which were proven to have gross mistranslations. References follow:
I'm always dumbfounded then I read such uninformed statements of opinion. Simple fact is, Bin Laden has all but admitted it on tape. Several people have confirmed conspiring with him to plan and execute the attacks. It's all well documented. Several documentaries exist covering his discussions, talking about the time line, how long he'd been planning it, so on and so on. Simple fact is, anyone who believes Bin Laden did not plan the attacks are ignorant or living in a cave. Even the majority of his own family believe he's behind these attacks.
The chances of Bin Laden not being the master mind behind the attacks are as unlikely as the moon missions being faked. And web sites of equal ass-hatery do not validate such ridiculous positions.
Next you'll tell us the Earth is flat...
Well, as long as we all get bigger dicks.....
Uh, not the women, obviously.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Apart from the fact that the guys is an idiot, why was there a gun available to him? THAT is the problem.
That's justifiable homicide, as far as I am concerned.
Indeed. I am judge, and I hereby set you free.
FYI, the Bible also says "thou shall not kill".
I heard the reason his parents took the game away in the first place was because he had shot his sister for having more achievements then him.
Well thought out and answered; I would only and the following in support of your thoughts:
It is clear from Matthew 5:21-24 that even having bad thoughts about ones' brother (brother being anyone--not just a blood relative) is the same as committing murder.
Admittedly, I sit on the fence with regard to both Afghanistan and Iraq. With the alleged involvement of Bin Laden (who, btw, was the very FIRST person I suspected--based upon the events of 1993) we certainly have an obligation to capture and try him in court. Iraq, as another has already discussed, could be argued that we were defending innocents from a brutal dictator. The Sanctions would never have worked, as long as they were still selling oil under the table. Saddam Hussein would have ruled that country until he died. Of course, one thing we have glossed over is that WE put him in power.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
That's exactly how I'm going to disregard it, given the fact that the SOB and members of his organization have admitted their involvement.
"Admitting involvement" is a far cry from "claiming credit" which is what "the SOB and members of his organization" have actually done. It should be obvious to even the most sceptical of readers that claiming credit for 9/11 is probably the most tactically valuable thing bin Laden could do, guilty or not.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It is really the parent's fault here, they should have known better than to take away his Halo 3. Sheesh.
"You can't blame the parents fully in any of these situations. Obviously they weren't able to effectively parent in this case, but they didn't shoot themselves."
They shouldn't take the full blame. And whatever blame they get I think at the least, the mother has "paid" for it already.
From this article:
"According to prosectors, Petric, 16 at the time of the shooting, was forbidden to buy Halo 3 by his parents, Mark and Susan Petric. The teen snuck out to purchase the game anyway, and was caught by his parents upon his return. The game was locked up in Mark's lockbox, along with a 9mm handgun."
So no, a history of violence wasn't mentioned in the articles I have seen so far. However, it also says he didn't have a copy of the game.
From the same article:
"Lawyers for the accused delivered a brief statement at the opening of the trial, explaining that their client had be under a large amount of stress after being homebound for a year due to a snowboarding accident with nothing to do but watch television and play video games."
So, presumably he hadn't been playing the game elsewhere.
But don't worry...
"Dad, I'm so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family," Daniel Petric said, according to his father. "I'm so glad you are alive."
"You're my son," Mark Petric responded. "You're my boy."
Dad forgives him...
I remember this defense back when we played "violent" games from books with our imagination called, Dungeons & Dragons. The defense didn't work back there either so it's good it doesn't work now. There will always been some scape goat excuse people will try. The next one will be Virtual Reality games made me do it!
It should be obvious to even the most sceptical of readers that claiming credit for 9/11 is probably the most tactically valuable thing bin Laden could do, guilty or not.
It should be equally obvious to even the most skeptical of readers that claiming credit for murdering thousands of American citizens isn't likely to prolong your life expectancy and one shouldn't be surprised when the American people and government respond in a hostile manner to such an admission.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As in, this kid is starved of attention. It's not the violent nature of the game, it's the feeling of power kids get from the anonymity the internet gives them which, when abruptly taken away from them, can send the less stable over the edge. Block a myspace-addicted kid from the net and he can become batshit crazy too. Shall we ban the internet?
:wq
Sure we believe that! Have you ever TRIED it?
Mix together some nitrous gas, some oxygen, some carbon, some steam and a bunch of lightning, and what do you get? Organic molecules, just like the ones we're built from!
Have you actuall
I'd rather say there is something wrong with any pond scum, err lawyer/judge, who believes that bull!%%@
Not entirely accurate.
First, I don't even know what "Credo" is, so I feel safe in stating that it is not the summary of my dogma (yes, I am a Christian). Judging by the fact that the gibberish at the bottom of your post looks like Latin, I'm guessing you're referring to Catholics in particular. Please remember that "Christian" is a title given to everyone that is a follower of Christ. We don't always agree on the "right" way to do that, hence the division in the Church (i.e., Catholics, Protestants, even Mormons (though most Christians will deny that Mormons are Christians)). Please don't lump all Christians into the beliefs of some Catholics. Pretty much the only thing that all Christians agree on is that Jesus existed and was the son of God. Just about everything else is debated between the different denominations.
Second, as a general rule, we Christians believe in we will be resurrected, not reincarnated. Big difference. The Hindus believe in reincarnations, not Christians. Reincarnation indicates that you will be reborn into a new body. That is not the case in Christian resurrection.
Ok so I wont deny that it may be the parents fault, but I do not believe that we can say with absolute certainty that it is. At the age of 17 you may be a minor but you are very capable of making "adult" decisions. At the age of 17 you can drive, and you can just about vote and in some places you are or just about of age to legally drink. So if the powers that be deem a person of 18 old enough to responsibly do these things how much blame can you really put on the parents of this 17 year old who was clearly old enough to make his own decisions and differentiate right from wrong. Hell I was 17 not all that long ago and I remember clearly making my own decisions, regardless of how my parents raised me. I was raised Christian, I do not go to church or currently practice any religion. I was raised not to do drugs, I did them anyways. So can I honestly blame my parents and the way the raised me for the conscious choices I made at that age, Fuck no! The parents could be the best in the world, the Kid will still make his own choices once it reaches a certain age and all you can do is try to prepare him/her to make the right choices, but the final verdict still rests on the shoulders of the child.
Besides maybe it was social factors that triggered his instability (for lack of a better word), maybe he was bullied to fuck at school all his life and had years worth of suppressed rage. So unless you actually personally know these people I do not think you can blame the parents with absolute certainty. POSTING ANONYMOUSLY FROM WORK!!! WOOO!!
Get a copy of D&D, set up a dungeon the old fashioned way - you know, with paper and pencil. Then run it with your imagination.
OK, horribly old and fuddy duddy, but it's a lot more fun than any computer game I've ever played, because your dungeon master is a person - and a good DM will anticipate your reactions, give real depth to your adversaries, and otherwise have lots of fun.
And yes, when you're dead, you're pretty much dead. Your characters die and don't come back.
come now, i mean look at the links he posted to support his claims!? I mean, Prison Planet? We're talking about a site that is so insane and disreputable that, when it served to introduce me to Ron Paul (back in 2005), I refused to believe that Ron Paul could possibly exist and had to go off and independently confirm his existence. And lets not even get started on 911 truth sites...
Even when you *are* the alien, you aren't asked to kill humans... Lame correlations...
It looks like his father re-spawned.
[...]and physical death. I pity the fool that feels you must berate religion any[...]
I don't know how many times I have to tell you.
THL phish sticks
For everything else, there's Mastercard.
It's hard to develop a connection with parents if both of them work 40 hours a week, work out at the gym, belong to a bowling or golfing league, shuttle the kids off to sport, etc.
In short: 99% of the problems we face would be solved if we had 1 working parent homes. I don't care who stays at home, just so long as 1 stays at home.
You ahve to spend time with kids for them to turn out good. That doesn't mean you send them off to activities A,B, and C and watch, you ahve to actually interact with them. I'd wager if we looked at you idea that there wasn't a parental bond in this instance, we'd see in most criminal behavior (ruling out mental defects) a lack of a parent in the home and more then likely both parents working full time with minimal time in the home when off work.
There is an old quote I coined: "We don't go camping to commune with nature. We go camping to commune with one another with minimal distractions the modern world provides."
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Sorry but WHAT THE FUCK?
Since when is voicing my opinion based on the (scant) presented facts a troll?
I'm not even disagreeing with the parent post!
WTF?
So does this mean I've lost contact with reality?
It might. Maybe you should restore a recent save and try again ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
While true .. I would love to see this as a game mode on (well ironically) Halo. When I play with my teenaged son, he will run into a room and die 3 times trying to kill everyone. I will stand back, give cover fire, and not die at all. Usually on any given level, we have the same score, I die once, maybe twice, and he will die 25 times (this is on the legendary, etc. skill levels). He thinks he is a better video gamer than I if he beats my score, however, I don't die often.
.. everyone is different. They are looking for different challenges for their entertainment. This is why video game design is so hard. Other wise we all would be doing it :)
While both skill sets are good in various ways, I think being able to teach those, would benefit someone greater than just one style of play. I cannot get him to play anything like Splinter Cell because he thinks it is too boring (you know - gun with 20 bullets in it, sneak around all level, usually don't have to kill).
But yes
If there was no copyright, he could have downloaded a new copy of Halo 3 and keep playing without bothering to kill his parent!
He killed them because of copyright! We should ban it!
... You planning to get arrested for something involving a 4 year old anytime soon?
Ghost Recon, at least the first one, was very much like this. If a member of your team died they were dead for the rest of the game.
Would be interesting with a really slow healing rate from wounds in a game. Then the player would have to be really careful how they go about things.
Could make a good stealth game.
Of course people would be yelling about how HARD it is.
I was under the impression that Nethack was one of the faster rogue-likes.... What were you doing for a whole year?
The flightsim EF2000 was kind of like that. You had a complete dynamic war running, on each round you selected a mission you want to fly and then flow your mission. If you died, you died, no retry, the plane and pilot lost. But since there where plenty of other planes and pilots you could continue the war for quite a while. Of course when you messed up to bad and to many planes and airfields have been lost, the war was lost and game over. What made the thing really interesting was that the whole dynamic campaign was running all the time, so whenever you flew a mission you always had lots of other activity going on that had nothing to do with your mission. To bad that almost 15 years only a tiny few games have followed into those footsteps.
The game also had a sequel which did a different take on the topic, instead of being able to select your mission each round, the game gave you five pilots between which you could switch at any time, if any of them got shot down and ejected they could get captured or end up in a hospital, so it took a while till they where back into action. If they died, they where dead permanently. The game was pretty flawed in many other aspects, but it was quite an interesting way to handle the whole dieing in a flightsim.
The Halo series draws a lot of material from the Bible, and perhaps his parents took it away because they considered it sacrilegious. If that's the case, the boy was just defending HIS faith that Halo was the NEWER Testament.
Let's ban Christian parents!
Daniel's plan was originally to make it look like a murder-suicide, by leaving the gun in his father's hand. After the shooting, Mark Petric said his son put the gun in his hand while saying, "Hey Dad, here's your gun. Take it."
Well there go the theories about him not thinking his parents would be permanently dead. I mean what would happen to the murder-suicide plan once the parents respawned?
Hm, well, supposedly it's going to be a "perfect" world. Does "perfection" get better when you orgasm? (And I'm not asking about past experience; you've never experienced "perfection" in the sense which it's meant. In your new body it might feel like you're having a permanent orgasm for all we know...)
You know it's flamebaiting to speak about people respawning millenia ago.
Or that Jesus would camp the same site.
A Judge can only rule on the evidence presented in the trial. Although a good judge will always use his own judgment and knowledge of the law to make a decision, he/she must always filter it through the evidence and arguments of the trial. Professional lawyers know this and tailor their arguments accordingly. If there is no case law about 'whack-job 17-year-olds killing their parents and making it look like a suicide because of God' then go with the 'whack-job 17-year-olds killing their parents and making it look like a suicide because of video games' argument. The judge MUST take it into consideration as long as no one disproves it and must temper his judgment accordingly.
That's why judges sound so loopy in these sorts of decisions - even if they know better, they can only say certain things.
He's got problems. Maybe his brain isn't wired properly, maybe his parents utterly failed him, maybe he suffered some serious brain damage during his life. But at 17, if you don't know that killing someone is forever, there is something severely wrong with you.
Whats wrong might not fit the legal definition of insanity where you live. But I'd think that it should count for something that substantially reduces criminal liability. I'm not saying that he should simply be let free. Someone who kills over a video game is too dangerous to be left on the streets, even if the conduct is excusable due to mental problems. But assuming the judges assesment of this kid is accurate, he needs treatment, not prison.
I should also point out that you also have problems if you are 17 and a video game makes you kill someone. At worst, I could see a video game inspire the form someones crimes would take, not whether the crimes would occur at all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's called fanaticism. If it wasn't countries or religions it'd just be something else.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Ironically enough he gets a +5 for those links......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Games like Diablo or Hellgate London actually implemented "extreme" modes. When you die in those modes, it's final. Considering those are RPGs where it can take weeks to months to build up a character, it can be pretty interesting!
His parents were the people responsible for bringing him up. They were, as you say, the ones who were able to prepare him for making his own choices, and being a moral well integrated member of society. The kid will still make his own choices, but would it suprise you that there's a high correlation between someone growing up to be a well adjusted adult, and how good that upbringing was?
Kinda hard to sell suicide bombing and similar sports any other way.
Newsflash: Kamikaze's didn't do it for religious reasons.
From this article: "According to prosectors, Petric, 16 at the time of the shooting, was forbidden to buy Halo 3 by his parents, Mark and Susan Petric. The teen snuck out to purchase the game anyway, and was caught by his parents upon his return. The game was locked up in Mark's lockbox, along with a 9mm handgun." So no, a history of violence wasn't mentioned in the articles I have seen so far. However, it also says he didn't have a copy of the game. From the same article: "Lawyers for the accused delivered a brief statement at the opening of the trial, explaining that their client had be under a large amount of stress after being homebound for a year due to a snowboarding accident with nothing to do but watch television and play video games." So, presumably he hadn't been playing the game elsewhere. But don't worry... "Dad, I'm so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family," Daniel Petric said, according to his father. "I'm so glad you are alive." "You're my son," Mark Petric responded. "You're my boy." Dad forgives him...
This is quite revealing. I think it's safe to say there is at least some degree of a lack of rationality in that family that is not Halo 3 related
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
By the time I started target-shooting at age 7, I knew that shooting something in the head would kill it and would be dead forever.
>>Clearly Halo 3 is at fault. If they had some non-respawning game types this would never have happened...
I'll accept your sarcasm as it was intended rather than believe your a bad parent and Adult with no brain.
This is some funny shit! They seemingly believe Raytheon, Lockheed, Fed. Reserve, Halliburton, and NASA are all run by robots. Yes, our warlord, master robots planned, engineered, and executed the 911 attacks against ourselves. LOL! You have to be a loony fucking idiot to believe those stupid fucking sites.
It must be true because HUMANS visited a web site! There is no other possible explanation. If a human has read something, then surely what they read must be true.
YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Opps. Too late. You read it so now it is true! No touch-backs! LOL. This is some funny shit. I can only pray you grow a brain. Opps. I said it and you read, so don't worry, rest assured you will grow a brain.
If 911 was not perpetrated by people within our own government, why have the following entities visited this site?
The software screenshots you will see, are from LivePerson.com, and they have documented the following visitors:
RAYTHEON
LOCKHEED-MARTIN
US FEDERAL RESERVE
E.E.T OIL
HALLIBURTON
NASA
Don't you find it odd that Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, The Federal Reserve, and big oil companies are the least bit interested in 911Lies.org? If they had ZERO CULPABILITY, logic dictates, they would not be at all concerned with sites like 911Lies.org. Obviously, this is not the case.
I'm not sure you quite understand the difference between reincarnation and ressurection, at least as they are understood in various religious traditions. Christians generally believe in resurrection (the latin term in the Credo you quoted which, incidentally, not all brands of Christianity accept), but not in reincarnation.
Sounds like Final Fantasy Tactics. I've been playing it on my PSP, and one interesting thing is that team members can die permanently if they're not revived within 3 turns or they're not alive when combat ends.
Changes your playing style substantially. Levelling up a soldier is a non-trivial time investment, so you protect them jealously.
It's been a long time.
It's hard to develop a connection with parents if both of them work 40 hours a week, work out at the gym, belong to a bowling or golfing league, shuttle the kids off to sport, etc.
In short: 99% of the problems we face would be solved if we had 1 working parent homes. ...
I can't agree with you more on that.
...there wasn't a parental bond in this instance, we'd see in most criminal behavior (ruling out mental defects)...
I don't believe mental defect=criminal. I think parental involvement would help even then. I would like to see the stats on mental=criminal there has to be studies done on this.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
And if you're going to throw out catch-phrases like 'most expensive war in history', maybe you should get your numbers right:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/big-bailouts-bigger-bucks/
Just some perspective. Current cost of the Iraq / Afghan war is in the neighborhood of 600Billion. The adjusted cost of WW2 is 4.6 TRILLION.
And let's not even talk about the cost breakdown per year. The disparity's even greater.
It's called nationalism.
Funny that the suicide bombers always seem to come from theocracies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe this?
I bet you his parents re-spawned somewhere else...he just has to find them.
In many cases, this was the premise in the Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon series. Realistic military operations where poor planning cost you. If someone is wounded, their performance will be affected until they recover. If killed, unusable for the rest of the campaign. And it was fun. You could play the missions however you wanted and design different approaches to completing the objectives. In particular, I loved Raven-Shield even though the AI wasn't top notch on either tango or R6 sides.
Sadly, Ubisoft ran these franchises into the ground and made them unplayable on the PC in my opinion - R6 Vegas and Vegas 2. Mostly, it's a beef I have with joint PC and console support for FPS and the resulting interface and control scheme on PC. Additionally, the games were just lousy and lacked a lot of what the originals had that made them amazing. It essentially resulted in the end of this specialized genre of FPS.
Because we all know that before there were video games, nobody killed anyone. There were never any problems with murder. Down throughout history, we have had a Utopian society but once video games were invented people started killing each other like crazy. It actually makes sense that he wouldn't know his parents would die if they were killed because he probably didn't learn that from his history class. Really though, I think that he had his toys taken away from him and he got pissed and killed his parents, knowing they would die and since he wasn't getting his game back anyway, he decided to blame it and claim that he didn't know they would die after he killed them.
A childhood friend committed suicide at the age of 16. His father is a shrink. Who knows, maybe this priest was one of the cornholing variety (they don't all need to be catholics, do they?) and that's what this is all really about. Odds are we'll never really know the whole story. The true crime here is that he will likely be tried as an adult, although he have never been treated as one. The "videogame" defense is basically the "insanity" defense, because anyone who can't separate a video game from reality is bugnut crazy anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The equivalent to the entire population of your city will die today.
Most of these deaths will be meaningless, avoidable, tragic deaths that come too soon. Many of them will be murders, committed by soldiers, or criminals. Some of them were paid for directly with money you earned, given to the government through taxes.
Why should any of us care about this particular tragedy, besides the potential inconvenience?
It's been a long time.
It should be equally obvious to even the most skeptical of readers that claiming credit for murdering thousands of American citizens isn't likely to prolong your life expectancy and one shouldn't be surprised when the American people and government respond in a hostile manner to such an admission.
The hole in your analysis big enough to fly an airliner through is actually, well, two holes. AIRLINER #1: The American people overwhelmingly believe that OBL is directly responsible. AIRLINER #2: The US Gov't. claims that we can't find OBL.
Therefore it is either true that it's actually not that hazardous to your health because we can't even manage to find the guy, or that it's not actually hazardous to your health because we're lying about not being able to find him. I have no idea which is why, both sound equally plausible to me given the Bush connection to the SS and the extremely nefarious activities of the CIA at a time when GHWB was in charge of it. Their admitted actions during that period are unconscionable. The Bushes are pure fucking evil. But I still draw no particular conclusions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can see the paranoid parents who would react to this in a knee-jerk manner having a major brain fart right now.
...
"I need to take Halo away from him so he won't turn into a murderer!"
"But if I take Halo away from him, he might become a murderer!"
I have before. But there's something about actually executing the moves in a first person shooter. Don't take me wrong, there's definitely nothing more realistic (other than real-life) than D&D, but doing it in a multiplayer environment against other humans using tactics not within earshot could be amazing. People would actually care and not blindly rush.
Sure we believe that
What? That people came from mud?
Have you ever TRIED it?
Mix together some nitrous gas, some oxygen, some carbon, some steam and a bunch of lightning, and what do you get? Organic molecules, just like the ones we're built from!
Have you actuall
Well, the experiment shouldn't include free oxygen (O2) since that came after life had already formed on earth. But, yes, it's well known that given the right chemicals and conditions, organic compounds can form, and it's hypothesised that this can lead to life. But my point was that the whole process of Abiogenesis is a lot more complicated than the strawman put forth that "people came from lighting and mud"
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
There really are people who have very shallow grips on reality and can do crime and harm even though they are not legally insane. I have a step son who frequently goes to prison. He suffers from manic depression. The way it works with him is that his imagination goes over the edge. He may feel as though he is of overwhelming importance and therefore all of the really big movers and shakers value him so highly that it is understood that if he needs money to get drugs that no real penalty will be applied as soon as it is known how important that he is.
Of the last 20 years he has been on the streets for only 3 or so. The rest of the time he has been in prison, drug rehabs or mental hospitals. Yet the law says he is not insane and my state has no provisions for diminished capacity in sentencing nor do they have any real psychiatric help in the prison system.
Until recently Alaskan state law required pilots of passenger plans carrying 15 people or less to carry a gun as part of a survival kit. Why? If they go down in the woods for bear protection.
They are pretty useful items to have if you live out in the country and need them to protect livestock or yourself if you live in bear country.
Plus target shooting of course.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
resurrection != reincarnation
At least the Nation is likely to survive you, be it thanks to your sacrifice or not.
On the other hand, Christ and Mohammad, let alone Moses, are long dead. And God has never existed to begin with.
His father Mark, who was shot in the head and survived, testified that his son came into the room and asked: "Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you."
He said he expected a pleasant surprise. Then his head went numb from the gunshot.
The judge's remarks about video games being at fault for this are asinine.
This kid knew well what he was doing. If I were the prosecutor, I'd be asking for the firing squad for this kid. That quote there gives me the chills.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
You know its a sad day when your hitting on someone over a game of Halo 3.
And that's notable because...?
Come on. I'm scratching my head as much as anyone as to how a judge could determine that "addiction to Halo 3" is a valid defense to a murder charge, but that was the defense's theory. It's not even clear from any of the articles I've read that his parents having taking the game away was a motive for the murder.
Even so, not one of the news stories I've read has suggested that the killing had anything to do with religion, or the boy's father being a minister. (Incidentally, TFA doesn't mention that the kid's dad was a minister--just how much research did you have to do in order to inject that totally irrelevant detail into the discussion?)
I think it's irrevelent what weapon was used. If it wasn't a gun, it would have likely been a knife. It was premeditated murder, the kid knew he was out to kill harm parents and would have found a way to do it regardless of what tools he had access to.
There was this kid who really liked cutting weeds in the south forty with a machete. He cut weeds so much that it effected his school work and he never spent time with his family. One day his mom took his machete away and told him to do his homework like a good little boy. I'll be darned if that kid didn't steal back his machete and cut his mom in half with it. In court, they blamed the machete. Can you believe that?
So, they take away his copy of Halo 3 and he SHOOTS his parents? Why the hell didn't they take away his gun? Lock up the ammo? My God, if they took the game away because he was obviously addicted, other warning signs must have been evident that he was another Columbine killer waiting to happen. Jesus Christ. Go ahead and take away my computer or console games. I might just thank you for giving me my life back.
"Breakdown in security at the detention facility" and
"Shot while trying to flee"
I'm not much for the death penalty, but this kid should fry.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I know, also see the resonable answer below his that got modded flamebait. Bad form mods, bad form.
Whoops, my bad. The judge rejected the defense and the kid was convicted. Why all the hoopla, then?
A 17 year old isn't a little kid. They serve in our armed forces and often are tried as adults. Some might be not as mature as others, but we aren't talking about a 7 year old giving a temper tantrum.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
what's even worse is when the little guys on there start singing into their headsets. it's like they don't know anyone is listening. i don't care if they want to play, but it's really annoying to have to mute every last one.
No? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze
Well, I could be a smartass and say we have the biggest guns so whose gonna stop us, but it would seem that the UN of all places gave us that right:
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Given that we are dealing with an orginization that has attacked us it seems rather obvious that we have the right to deal with that orginization.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Reincarnation is a Shaman ability requiring a reagent, allowing the Shaman to bring him or her self back to life after death
Ressurection is an ability shared by Shaman, Priests, Paladins and Druids, allowing a dead party or raid member to be brought back to life.
Obviously not for the judge.....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
To me, you sound like you're willing to accept things based on absence of knowledge - i.e., faith. Because that's really what the 9/11 truthers are.
Quite frankly, I'm getting really tired of this meme about media brainwashing everybody. There is no "media". There is no global media agenda. This is just standard conspirationist crap.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Over here we question the crap that media shits out on our plate. You want to eat it and say "yum" then digg.com will suit you better.
Oh, Snap!
If the judge seriously believes that someone with more than two functioning brain cells could have no idea that death is permanent, then he needs to be removed from the bench, and checked into a mental institution.
That leaves us with two options:
1. The judge is insane.
2. The 17-year-old is mentally incompetent to live, and should be checked into a mental institution.
Either way, somebody here's crazy, and it's not me.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
All the hoopla, because it's an excuse to bash religious types.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
there won't be mass suicides, but someone already suicidal really sitting on the fence just might.
Suicide? Ahhh, I see your theory. It was the parents who wanted to play Halo 3 but their son was hogging the TV watching Dukes of Hazzard reruns. They couldn't take it anymore, hence the reason they were found with the Halo 3 disc clutched in their double-suicide red hands.
I must be really confused about Easter then...
It should be equally obvious to even the most skeptical of readers that claiming credit for murdering thousands of American citizens isn't likely to prolong your life expectancy
You are clearly on the wrong side of the crazy line if you think that any significant number of americans would believe bin Laden if he were to deny the accusation.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In D2 hardcore mode if you died you DIED/
I was about to post a rebuttal to that featuring the age-old problem that you cannot prove the existence of an invisible, incorporeal sky daddy.
However, the AC posting Carl Sagan's "The Dragon In My Garage" has out it far more succinctly than I can.
To be short, the starw man arguments from creationists are totalt bullshit. You can scientifically prove (and infer by fossil records) evolution.
On the other hand, you cannot prove that God exists. Nor can you prove that he doesn't exist. That does not make it hypocrisy. That just makes for the proper application of the scientific method.
If some day we invent a magical Jesus detector, I may revise that statement (depending on who invented it, what it does, and how it works), but for now there is no hypocrisy in calling something I do not believe in "the invisible, imaginary sky fairy" just because a large proportion of the population has been fooled by a book written circa 2000 years ago because they didn't understand science and nature and assumed that the sun was some sort of god.
So the kid thought his mother and father were both Jesus?
I do understand the difference. What I don't understand is how is reincarnation more irrational than ressurection? Are there any data or facts that support one theory over the other? The point is, both religions offer promise of transcedance and a better life after death if you play ball and an eternity of divine punishment if you're up for detention.
The problem is not that god does exist or does not exist but how people are treated for having an original thought. Atheists are told they are without morals by the religious and the religious are told they are a bunch of lemmings following things blindly by the atheists.. who is right? who the #@%@#%#@ cares... keep your religion in your back pocket and just go have a nice life..
sig goes here!
Wow. I'd say the real thing to note here is "Don't store the stuff you take from your child as a punishment in the same box as your guns, they might get ideas"
people say a butcher knife is just as good well its not. if the kid would have tried using that they could have fought back. getting the gun made it easy unfortunately. as a owner of a firearm its sad when you hear of these cases. but i wanna knoe why the kid was able to get the key to get the gun let alone the ammo. my gun has a trigger lock plus lockbox and the ammo stored separate. so even if a kid got one of the keys to my gun he still couldn't use it. i also keep the key on me at all times i never ever leave it laying around.
His dad should have replaced his copy of Halo 3 with this. That would have set him straight...
Best "String" Ever!
Is He willing to prevent evil but not able? Then is he impotent?
Is He able but not willing? Then is He malevolent?
Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
Not that I agree with straight-up bashing of religion for bashing's sake, but there's logically nothing in favor of the Faith side besides, well, blind faith.
For the record, I'm agnostic, because I hope there is a God, because that would make things more exciting.
.
Doesn't "kamikaze" translate to Divine Wind/Spirit Wind?
PWNED!
Just a comment that for many, Christian != Roman Catholic. "Christian" is a much broader term, and not all "Christians" accept the Roman Catholic creed.
Also, it's not reincarnated in the traditional sense of the word. Resurrection and reincarnation are not synonyms.
Just a nitpick, but so far we'e spent less than 1/3rd of what we spent on WW2, for a war that has gone on longer and didn't have the buildup leading to. For example there were a lot of keels laid and other moneys appropriated prior to Dec 7 in anticipation of a war we knew wsa coming. In fact through 2007 we spent about the same we spent in Vietnam (all in 2007 adjusted $). Not to mention that in less than 6 months we've managed to hand out more money to corporations than we've spent on 7+ years of the war. Not arguing justification, just stating facts.
This judge has no right to pontificate on the eternal condition of the victims. With the Resurrection, they won't be dead "forever."
There isn't a religon that I'm aware of that doesn't ackowledge that you cease to be a human upon death, and all of them believe its likely to be a one way trip. Some believe in an afterlife, some beleive we go back into a pool of life force, some believe in reincarnation. All of them believe your human life is over.
Daniel 12:2
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
You can't take the sky from me...
Agreed, and ignorant people will use this one insane individual as an excuse to blame Halo as the cause.
Except that religious people have, historically and to this day, attempted to curtail the rights of those that "don't fit" their narrow view of the world - either by out right extermination and conquest, or by categorising them as sub-human (by passing laws that restrict their freedom), or curtail their entertainment (by forcing publishers or TV creators to curtail their content because it mortally offends the religious and must be banned - going back to the very invention of the printing press.)
Atheists do not mind religious people. I have a few religious friends myself, and I'm quite happy to let them be, as long as they are not trying to prevent me from living life the way I want to. I have nothing against the general principle of some religious doctrine - be kind to others, be humble etc, but it seems that some religious people believe tat those are exclusive traits to the religious, and that if you're an atheist (or shock, horror, belong to a *different* religion) that you're automatically a nasty, evil, persecuting-of-good-values person.
While I am well aware that many churches (and their members) do good work (helping the less fortunate, helping each other, helping their communities) I would wager that it's the nature of the people, not that they necessarily have a belief structure.
It is only when that belief structure threatens the security and freedom of those who don;t share it that I become hostile towards them, more in self defence than anything - because if you *don;t* defend yourself, you end up with a gay marriage ban, or the over reaction to Janet Jackson's nipple, or the burning of books, or the picketing and harassment of women going to planned parenthood clinics, or the removal of real science in classrooms and the teaching of religion in its place (that might affect my child also attending the school), or a severe curtailing of the sex education programs in schools that only allows for the teaching of abstinence, backed up with deliberately false data about the effectiveness of birth controls and the way STDs work (what was it about Jesus saying to be truthful at all times? ha!).
Not really. Christians believe that when the world is over, after the second coming, you will be reincarnated.
If you mean "reincarnated" as in "put back into meat", ok, but I think you meant "resurrected".
"Reincarnated" usually implies a new, different body. The belief you're talking about is the reanimation of a dead body.
You can't take the sky from me...
That sort of thing is a big part of The Battle for Wesnoth. You recruit an army and level up each individual member. Death is permanent, so there is a lot of strategy involved when trying to decide how to make use of your high-level characters without getting them killed. See here for more info.
It does indeed. It also says that bunnies are evil.
But on a serious point, if you're going to use that defence, where was the almighty "thou shall not kill" during the Crusades? Or in Timothy McVeigh's head when he built that bomb.
You could simply categorise this kid's killing of his parents as a religious mission from God because he was wronged by the heathens that gave birth to him. Plenty of religious people have hidden behind that one before.
"This Crusade will not stop until Osama Bin Laden is brought to justice. Now watch this drive..."
Paraphrasing, but, you get the gist.
So after Christ comes back, it'll be like Night of the Living Dead?
Shit, someone should mention that when discussing Pascal's Wager, I'll pick nothing over zombification...
Apply what we already know is true. If you practice something over and over again. You get better at it. In short, practice makes perfect.
When you play a video game you want to get better at playing the game. So, you practice it. This 17 year-old perfected what he practiced. Now his parents are dead. Who wants to be next?
Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean that I'm wrong. Maybe the reason you're being taught the history of your religion by an average atheist is because you haven't studied it as much as an average atheist.
"Credo" (latin for creed) is a prayer composed somewhere around the 4th century CE by various of what was then called "church councils". It was composed to affirm and solidify the christian dogma so as to combat the various spin-offs from mainstream church (these spin-offs were and are still called heresies and were violently persecuted and mostly killed off). The purpose of Credo was to describe concisely and firmly the details of the christian dogma, so that the common believer knew what was heretic and what was canonical. Its importance as an affirmation of canon was so great that the addition of a single word (filioque, latin: of the son) was enough to constitute the pretext that caused the political differences between eastern and western christians to erupt and caused the first schism of the churches. This single word was one of the theological reasons (read: pretexts) why there the once unified christian faith was divided into two (Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy).
Credo is currently used in Sunday mass by catholic, orthodox, lutheran, presbyteran, baptist, methodist and anglican christians, as well as many many others. A good rule of thumb is that only "free christians" don't have a credo
It clearly states that the dead will be resurrected, just as you said in your reply. What I don't get is why belief in ressurection is less absurd and completely arbitrary than belief in reincarnation. In fact, if you believe that you do get a second (or third, forth, n-th) chance after death, then ressurection is even more unlikely than reincarnation because it needs the restoration (and according to christians the perfecting) of your identical physical body. Reincarnation just needs the body of a suitable (higher or lower) life-form, which is still absurd, but demands a lower degree of speculation and fairy-tales to believe in.
i lol'ed
Well said by a parent who has no kids, or a kid who thinks that sitting at home with the knitting circle is the highlight of the day.
So, if Halo 3 had a detailed medical simulation modeling flesh impact, bone shattering, blood spurting, flying brain chunks and actual realistic death then it would be a perfect game suitable for children of all ages?
/facepalm
I've already replied to that
Areas with widespread legal firearms ownership tend to have less crime than areas with severe gun restrictions.
Severe gun restrictions tend to be enacted in areas with high crime rates.
You can't take the sky from me...
Doesn't "kamikaze" translate to Divine Wind/Spirit Wind?
I'm not a huge WWII buff, but I believe during the Pacific War (or whatever), the Japanese government recruited literally all of their young men (including college students). They basically were given a kamikaze short course on how to fly, and then were sent on their final mission. My guess is that the gov't used the spiritual connotation as propaganda. I think very few kamikaze pilots believed they were doing it for divine ascension.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Incorrect on the kamikaze pilots - the Emperor was Divine. To die for the Emperor was to die for God.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I am reading this article and posts today, while my five year old son is watching cartoons. Mind you he was given these cartoons for X-mas, (sorry I celebrate the commercialized version) from "Santa". In one of the cartoons a group of people, along with a bird, are shooting, with shotguns, at a young girl that came into their house. She begins to dance to avoid being hit by the ensuing barrage of bullets. So in approximately 12 years from now my son could conclude that anyone can "dance" their way to safety, due to him watching this cartoon, if television was taken away from him and he got angry and got a hold of a shotgun. Does this accurately sum up the thought process of this teen? IT'S NOT THE GUNS IT'S NOT THE GAMES!!! It's the involvement of the parents with the children teaching them the fact's of life and death. The cartoon is Betty Boop and it was created in 1939. It doesn't matter what kids are seeing now a days our Grandparents saw the same thing just not as graphic or even in color. Did the gray scale used help separate that reality and fantasy for them??? Without a proper foundation to build reality on then kids will set their own reality. And if the only thing they have is violent mediums to build that reality on then I can see how this teen could say he did not know they would not re-spawn. But during his early years someone missed something to help him not be delusional.
Perception = Reality.
If they had some non-respawning game types this would never have happened...
Should have been playing EVE Online.
I do believe that video games can have a negative effect on people along with other types of media. Yet I have to agree with you on this one. By the time your 17 I would hope that people know that shooting someone in the head is going to have a very negative effect on them at best.
But then I also don't have a gun in my home. I have what has been proven to been proven to be a better system for home defense, three dogs.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
i heard roman sentries did but jesus probably fragged them....remember, older games let you be invincible for a few seconds after spawning to avoid spawn-camping.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
You mean that dying for the God in a human's body Emperor isn't religious?
thats a load of crap that kid is not insane just retarded.
Why does this affect the gaming industry? Seems to me like it should affect the parenting industry which is doing a pretty piss poor job if you ask me. Parents need to get off their asses and act like parents.
Credo" (latin for creed) is a prayer composed somewhere around the 4th century CE by various of what was then called "church councils".
The 4th century is the same time that Constantine decided to make "Christianity" the official religion of Holy Roman Empire, correct? Christianity had been around for 300 years by then.
It was composed to affirm and solidify the christian dogma so as to combat the various spin-offs from mainstream church (these spin-offs were and are still called heresies and were violently persecuted and mostly killed off).
Mostly killed off, not really. Persecuted and wahtnot, yes most definitely. Interestingly, according to the Roman Catholic Church and for most of "church history," the beliefs that I have were heretical. Martin Luther-ish ideas.
why there the once unified christian faith was divided into two (Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy).
Major beef with that statement. There was a unified "Holy Roman Empire" type "Christian" faith. There was never a completely unified Christian faith. There have always been divisions, even back in the 1st century. I might add, at this point, that I am a Christian and, had I lived in 1300, would have been persecuted and killed for my Christian beliefs that you want to say were "unified."
Credo is currently used in Sunday mass by catholic, orthodox, lutheran, presbyteran, baptist, methodist and anglican christians, as well as many many others.
Many Baptists do not use the credo; some use creeds (like the Apostles' or the Nicene). Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists do not call their services "mass." That is a Roman Catholic thing, and the Protestant denominations wanted to get away from that for the most part.
In fact, if you believe that you do get a second (or third, forth, n-th) chance after death, then ressurection is even more unlikely than reincarnation because it needs the restoration (and according to christians the perfecting) of your identical physical body.
Are you referring to reincarnation with the n-th chance? Secondly, it's not the "identical" physical body, otherwise it wouldn't be any different (and thus not "restored" or "perfected" or, the theological term, glorified). Thirdly, if you believe in a God that created the universe and everything in it, "finding" bodies isn't too hard, is it?
Reincarnation just needs the body of a suitable (higher or lower) life-form, which is still absurd, but demands a lower degree of speculation and fairy-tales to believe in.
So either reincarnation is a more human-ish religion than Christianity, or Christianity's fairy-tale makers were much more imaginative, or Christianity wasn't just made up. I find it interesting that, according to most people, the more "normal" the religion, the more "believable" it is... just like the more "human"-ish God is (e.g., he can forget something, he has petty angers, he can't do anything, etc), the more people are willing to accept the belief. When you mention stuff like the Trinity and other "hard to believe" doctrines, people start asking how you can believe THAT about God, it doesn't make sense! (as though, in order for God to be true, He would have to fit into His creation's minds and be fully comprehended... which essentially makes him little more than a really smart human being).
You are clearly on the wrong side of the crazy line if you think that any significant number of americans would believe bin Laden if he were to deny the accusation.
Well I guess we'll never know since he hasn't seen fit to deny the accusation. And you are clearly on the wrong side of the crazy line if you think his hands are clean.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
He meant Lot.
But hey, the wife was unreceptive (being a pillar of salt by then), and his little whores-in-training got him drunk and seduced him, so it wasn't his fault.
Not guilty by reason of drunkenness. It's right there in the Bible.
Star Wars Battlefront has sort of this type of gameplay. There's two teams of several hundred combatants, and you spawn as just another soldier. When you die, you spawn as a different one. You have to be careful because other than you, the wild card, the teams are essentially even, so you have to be sure you make a difference and don't die too much otherwise the balance will tip in the other team's favor.
There must have been other motivations besides taking away his Halo 3. That kind of rage takes awhile to develop. The game probably gave him an outlet for his anger. A kid that mentally ill should not have access to firearms. /points at Daddy
As far as religion is concerned, its well documented that extremism occurs here in America and is no different than extremism in other parts of the world. Its not much of a stretch to make a link here...
There are "extremist" atheists who verbally decry religion, and there are atheists who adhere to the values of a "religion" aka philosophy without requiring a belief in a deity. I see those people as perhaps the most enlightened and least prone to violence.
It is mainly notable as it relates to the GPP's mildly humorous comment about religious people believing death is not forever. It's also notable because it is another case of a preacher's kid going off the deep end, when in theory, those kids ought to be angels. I say this as a preacher's kid who went off the deep end, too, although I didn't try to hurt anybody but myself.
It took about 20 seconds of research, by the way, since this article is a supporting article to one of the main articles, and it says the father is a "Reverend", and it doesn't take long on Google to find out where.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Well, I believe that there is a teeeeny tine teacup somewhere in the asteroid field, orbiting around the sun. Can you disprove me? Then I must be right, right? That doesn't ask a lot from the imagination, but my guess is that you don't believe me. Also, if god could create anything, why didn't he create beings that could understand his awesome intelligence? Why did he make imperfect beings? Why didn't he create an entities equal to himself, who could understand him, right then and there and not have to go through all that shit ti become in his image? Couldn't he? Or did he want to tease the lesser minds of people with unfathomable mysteries, all in the name of supreme goodness and freedom?
At the very least, he would have known he was "team killing" which should also be a criminal offense.
So the judge was saying he was, you know, not sane. Oh wait, that idea was rejected.
No sig for you!!
You could believe that, but you have given no evidence whatsoever. I have plenty of historical evidence for a lot of the Bible's claims/history/background, etc.
He made perfect beings that had the will to choose. And they chose wrongly, fairly quickly apparently.
Equal to Himself? That would be interesting. For one thing, He "couldn't" do that, since one cannot create something with no beginning.
Question - ever actually read (in its entirety) what you so strongly disparage?
"dead forever"
As opposed to what?
What I find shocking is that the judge believed the person who committed murder did not understand the consequences of his actions, but did not accept an insanity plea.
As I don't wish to be flamed I would also like to comment that I don't believe that video games cause insanity. Magical thinking is as likely to be influenced by books, advertising, cartoons, religion, comic-books (incidentally, I remember when comics were blamed for problem behaviours in children and adolescents before the focus of attention turned to videos, and to games), etc.
If someone does not understand that shooting someone could cause permanent injury (or permanent death) then they are a danger to themselves and to others, and should be treated for their mental illness. If the person in this case truly did not understand that shooting his parents would kill them then it is likely that he was suffering from a form of mental illness before he played Halo 3.
And you are clearly on the wrong side of the crazy line if you think his hands are clean.
Never said I did. But thanks for playing. Your contributions were most illuminating.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Your contributions were most illuminating.
I hope they were as illuminating as your flamebait'ish sig
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Also, comment heard in suicide bombers' training camp: "Listen carefully I'm only going to show this once..."
According to the article, the kid tried to frame his father for the shootings. That seems to strongly indicate that he was indeed aware that the deaths would be forever.
They have those. They have games that have permanent death, as well as games where if you die in the mission, you don't come back until the next one.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I hope they were as illuminating as your flamebait'ish sig
Trust me, they weren't even close. Glad you recognized your shame though.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Glad you recognized your shame though.
Yep, that's what I recognized. I bow to your infinite wisdom and will make sure that I make efforts to address all the people that I've wronged in my life, right after I accept that only a power greater than myself can restore my sanity.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Coyote chases Roadrunner, triggers the shotgun trap he set up, BOOM! He's a splatter on the ground. Next scene he's chasing the roadrunner again.
How much violence does fifty years of violent cartoons confront you with? Do we have kids thinking that the only way to kill someone for real is to douse them in paint remover? "I firmly believe that Roger Rabbit had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
I bow to your infinite wisdom
You should, because your display of poor reasoning ability and illogic in this thread has been sad. At least you can make a spelling flame though, that's one thing you can be proud of.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Wow. I'd say the real thing to note here is "Don't store the stuff you take from your child as a punishment in the same box as your guns, they might get ideas"
Like I said...
This is quite revealing. I think it's safe to say there is at least some degree of a lack of rationality in that family that is not Halo 3 related
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
At least you can make a spelling flame though
I aim to please. I hope you came when you read it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Good thing there was a gun in that home!
That makes me want to have a game console at home.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
^ Actually, that was my point. My post wasn't a "defense", it was meant to imply that it's silly to bring religion in to it to begin with, espeically when claims can be so easily contradicted.
You should really watch the movie Zeitgeist. It gives perfectly logical explanation of how religion was formed. It sure did open my eyes.
That's because it's not really a strawman argument... Unless you can point out some difference?
And yes, when you're dead, you're pretty much dead. Your characters die and don't come back.
That's entirely up to the discretion of the players playing the game. Also, D&D has resurrection spells, so even if your DM won't let you save your character by just making up some hand waving to excuse how he's still alive (and in that case, he/she is a bad DM, since DMs need to work with what the group wants, not lord it over them), you can just resurrect him. Death is no more permanent in D&D than in any video game.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That sounds like a lot of turn-based strategy games, e.g. the Final Fantasy Tactics series, where, once a character is KIA, they're dead forever, and you'll have to train their replacement.
The judge who presided over this case should be fired and it should be handed to a competent judge. Either the kid is insane or the judge is insane. One or the other.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
This judge needs to be disbarred for being a moron.
The kid obviously had whack-job religious parents which was the root of this.
Of course they are going to look at the game in a situation like this. The American way is that nothing is your fault yet always somebody elses. The same thing happened at Columbine, when the kids did that they looked at computers, games, and music that they listened to such as Marilyn Manson. Yet that was not the reason for the kids taking part in that. The real reason was rejection from fellow students and other people in their lives, and also the boys had menta problems. Instead of realizing that it was their superiors faults because they did not pay attention to the boys they blamed and media and such. With this situation the kid obviously had mental issues and the parents and/or teachers or people around him. This is not the games fault, it is the child's fault. He is guilty and needs to be charged as an adult.
-Steve "The Geek" Hencye
"Lawyers for the accused delivered a brief statement at the opening of the trial, explaining that their client had be under a large amount of stress after being homebound for a year due to a snowboarding accident with nothing to do but watch television and play video games."
So, presumably he hadn't been playing the game elsewhere.
He played it at friends' houses, according to this account of the trial (which also uses the word "homebound" -??):
The fact that he didn't have access Halo 3 didn't kill that boys parent, the fact that he had access to guns killed that boys parents. Ban guns!
Hey, plenty of 17 year olds don't believe death is forever.
They're called "religious".
Ha! Vshael hit the nail on the head. This kid is just trying to get off of a murder rap. If he had music in his hand when he came home it would be "rock and roll's" fault.
Well, yeah, there is some historical fact in the bible, since in some books it describes fictional (or based-on-a-true-story) events that happened in the real world. It's not the accuracies that surprise me, though, it's the scientifical, geographical, historical inaccuriacies and the internal inconsistencies that bother me. I mean, if a book cannot accurately describe common geographical knowledge how can it be attributed to divine revelation? (read Mark 10:46 and have a map ready. The jesus-and-friends itinerary is quite impossible) I mean, why would a book written with the help of god tell me that pi = 3, or that insects have four legs?
If only the Romans had known how to spawn-camp properly...
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
Yes. But the information isn't insignificant. The fact that they were foster parents is likely to be a huge piece of information that SHOULD sway at least somebody. They were working with troubled kids. TROUBLED. They just didn't do so well with this one, I guess...
I didn't RTFA, but another angle is: If he is their biological son, then they probably spent more time working with OTHER kids. Which led to their apparent underestimation of how he would react to their chosen punishment. He probably felt out of touch with them, and that they didn't understand him and never would. And therefore, by working with troubled kids, their own child ended up becoming one. Due to their lack of attention.
It's called Fire Emblem.
This is an awful lot to pin on a game. It would be my guess there were several other problems in this family unit, long before Halo 3 got involved.
New Headlines: Wacked out kid kills parents after denied to watch Dexter.
Shaman's have Ancestral Spirit and Reincarnation actually.
If you're looking for Resurrection, it's Priest.
The priest spell has a reagent requirement too since patch 3.0.2 - KY and an altar boy IIRC.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
Sounds like Fire Emblem. Give it a try.
Funny that the suicide bombers always seem to come from theocracies.
One word for you: Kamikaze
Also, you might even be wrong about more contemporary events as well.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Funny how the same sentiment is never expressed against the strawman arguments that flow endlessly in the other direction regarding the belief in an "invisible sky fairy".
There's a reason for this. If you refute the anti-science strawman argument by supplying the actual scientific evidence for the origins of life, the scientific opinion begins to look increasingly reasonable.
On the other hand, if you refute the anti-religion strawman argument by supplying the self-contradictory "evidence" found in the bible, the religious opinion does not grow to appear any less idiotic.
What are the things? Either there
I hope your belief in undecidedness pays off some day, though.
It's not the accuracies that surprise me, though, it's the scientifical, geographical, historical inaccuriacies and the internal inconsistencies that bother me.
Rightly so, let's look.
I mean, if a book cannot accurately describe common geographical knowledge how can it be attributed to divine revelation?
Agreed.
(read Mark 10:46 and have a map ready. The jesus-and-friends itinerary is quite impossible)
So, the issue is Matthew says Jericho -> Bethpage -> Bethany -> Jerusalem whereas Matthew just mentions Jericho -> Bethpage -> Jericho, correct? Firstly, there were three routes from Jericho to Jerusalem. There's a mountain in the middle. You can sorta see it on this map. So, the three routes were to the south side, right straight up the mountain, or the north side. I forget which was the most common. If Jesus took the northern route, He would hit Bethpage first. However, we know that He did not immediately go into Jerusalem but went to Bethany, where he stayed for a while. Note, by the way, that Luke gives the same account in Luke 19:29. Bethany is on the east slope of the Mount of Olives. Mark 11:12 directly states, "As they were leaving Bethany..."
I find it interesting that people are so willing to admit the mistake without bothering to look up the history and compare all the accounts with an open mind, especially seeing that we are accusing Mark of not knowing the area around Jerusalem. That seems pretty hard to believe for a Jew.
I mean, why would a book written with the help of god tell me that pi = 3, or that insects have four legs?
Pi does more or less equal 3, does it not. 3.14, 3.14..... etc. You would bring up the same argument no matter what value was mentioned because it's an infinitely long decimal, ans thus a "perfect God" would reveal it to us "in its entirety" even though it's mathematically impossible, right? A very detailed look into this issue. You may not like the source of the information but that does not immediately discredit it.
As for insects with 4 legs, don't forget the Bible spoke to a Hebrew culture, 1500 years ago. This means, among other things, that they viewed things differently. I am quite sure that the Hebrews knew what flying and creeping things were and how many "feet" they had. But they may have defined "feet" differently. In fact, the Leviticus passage that you have apparently not read but only read a sort of "atheist's guide to Biblical errors" version, mentions "legs above the feet." So apparently, the Jews back then knew what feet were and distinguished the feet used for walking from the legs used for other things.
Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet,
I ask again. Have you actually read the Bible for yourself, or are you just going on other people's opinions and recycling the same 'errors' while ignoring the refutations?
Damn you guys are worse then the people who knock on my door twice a month.
It is kinda sad for a group of people without a religion or a belief in God(s), that you are are so instantiate to bring up your views on religion even when it isn't part of the topic. Get over it religion will be with us for our lifetimes. I haven't heard anyone give a good enough reason to prove that the Atheist are right, conversely I haven't heard a good reason to prove that religious people are right.
Lets compromise God exists 1/2 of the time. There is a solution that no one likes so therefor it must be a good compromise.
For every question that religion was pitted against science that was later answered, science was found to be right. Examples: Galileo versus the church on whether the earth revolves around the sun, early medieval doctors versus the church on whether you should wash hands between patients, paleontologists versus the church regarding the age of the earth, etc. Secondly, the bible is full of self-contradictions that make most of it impossible to believe regardless of evidence to the contrary.
To be aware of all of this and still come to the conclusion that atheists and religious people each have a 50/50 chance of being right is intellectual cowardice that does nothing except promote the continual erosion of our school systems towards religious-based nonsense teachings.
Note that there is an option you're ignoring. While He supposedly made us in his image, it's only an image. That means we are flawed, and hence evil (and given the choice of redemption). Given that we are flawed and that we are the one's that are evil, He would have to eliminate all of us to remove evil from the world.
If we were perfect, we would be God.
It's possible that this world is the best possible world that can exist given the flawed nature of humans. Without His enlightenment and influence the world could only be worse.
But this is logic candy. I'm atheist.
It's the borderline people that need help.
People that can calmly explain that they no longer feel like living, have held that stance for some adequate length of time, etc. are clearly not irrational and don't need 'help'. And yet euthanasia remains illegal most everywhere, and in any place that it is (that I'm aware of) it's limited to the terminally ill. Go take a look at some stats for botched suicides (as in the ones intended to actually work) - it's unfortunate (and messy).
Who knows? Maybe one day it will even make sense for me. But it certainly would not be the emotional, sissy-tears, wrist slashing bullshit.
Suicide isn't some kind of mental disorder. Some of us can rationally say "Not an option yet since X, Y, and Z close relations would be harmed", or later, "Okay, the will is done - now for DBAN in each computer."
As for the webcam bit...
Yeah - that's EXACTLY what the world needs right now. Another media crusade.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
Automobile manufactures pleased that Mario Cart is named "Game least likely to be banned from mentally ill teenagers."
The Big Three were happy to hear that Mario Cart was named "Game least likely to be banned from mentally ill teenagers" by Gamasutra. In a joint statement they were relieved that future automotive homicides might be avoided. Since the game is wholesome fun, preachers and fathers alike are normally tolerant of it's antics.
In the rare cases where the game was banned, players were known to take the family car where the game was hidden and drive over members of the family while throwing bananas out the window.
That may be true, but if you lose a soldier "permanently" during a battle, you can simply load the game back from your last save, and try the battle again. Since FFT's battles are short, it's not a big penalty.
The similar game Fire Emblem (except for the recent Wii version) has a harsher penalty for death. You can still load back your previous save, but if you do, you have to begin the whole chapter over again, which usually means 1-2 hours of your time vanish. At times, you will just need to face the fact...your character died and they're not coming back.
Unfortunately, there will always be idiotic trials.
Not technically a trial, but the advertising standards authority in the UK might have to rule whether God exists
Christians complained about an advert saying that He probably didn't, so the legality of the advert depends on God's existance
This kid was probably never disciplined when he was younger. He got out of control and the parents tried to start disciplining him. Too little, too late. They never taught him there were consequences to his actions.
"Politicians always tell the truth, when they're calling each other liars."
So how is that games, with all their attempts to imitate real life physics and interaction, can't get this simple thing right?
Halfway through the first level: "you died. therefore, this copy of the game will no longer run".
Sony would love it
Sounds just like no rational scientist ever believed that life emerged from 'piggy backing' on crystals. (See Ben Stein's movie 'Expelled'.)
It appears that no system of belief or thought is free from pathology. Even on /.
I'd have to think that the kid was being fed the 'eternal life' since the day he could comprehend speech.
To put this on the video game is just silly.
Blar.
Schrodinger's cat taken to a whole new level.
That reminds me of JA2 in Iron Man Mode.
Only that you did not spend 2h to max those skills but rather 200.
www.gog.com [download the game]
http://ja2.dragonriders.de/ [Linux-Port]
well, either you will defend the position that the bible is a work made by humans and that it can be interpreted by humans using human criteria, such as point of view and cultural and scientific differences of the day, or that it is the eternal truth, which (if existed) would be invincible to any kind of critique. Still, in a time when human science had already theorized that the earth is round and calculated its circumference with impressive precision, why did the divinely inspired new testament circulate beliefs such as the flatness of the earth?
Setting aside the scientific, logical and factual errors, how do you justify the ideological inconsistencies? My main point is that, although there are a ton of bible excerpts of debatable accuracy, even one gray area (and I'm being very lenient here) would suffice for it to be unable to be considered as divinely inspired. I mean, with the power of ultimate knowledge and wisdom behind me, why would I write even a single word that is debatable at best and plainly wrong in terms of historical accuracy. Take into account how modern history rejects the bible as a credible source of historical fact.
Lastly, I've been trying to ignore your insinuations that I don't know what I'm talking about, since it is borderline argumentum ad hominem and frankly, I don't discuss fallacies. I've read the whole thing, not only once, but many times over. It sucks. It's inaccurate. It even takes a dangerous and socially disrpuptive ethical stand. And I'm not referring to the beliefs that mainstream religion now considers primitive. (how queer, that the eternal truth is subject to the inevitable changes of time and social context) I'm also talking about the beliefs which are at the core of the christian idea system. Please refrain from trying to save me by politely suggesting to me that I read the bible again.
How is it anything other than the parents fault?
Hang on, the parents said "no you can't have this game" to a 17yo (their son, fwim) who had a gun.
Would you say "no you can't" to a youth with a gun?
IIRC, Hidden & Dangerous has a system similar to this. But without the stats.
So was Rainbow Six (and its next few sequels, which I realize Ghost Recon was). Losing a team member was so problematic, though, that I found myself compelled to:
- Make a team of only the "expendable extras" that you had infinite of
or
- Play with only a single character (or perhaps a teammate), and don't accept the mission failure results if he died.
NEITHER was really how the game was "intended" to be played... but losing teammates (as inevitably teammate AI would get themselves killed without excessive babysitting) was frequent and devastating. I signed up for shooting terrorists, not for babysitting teammates who didn't clear a door before entering, or didn't watch behind them.
It was still very fun, mind you. I just had an expanded list of Failure conditions.
There are games like FF Tactics and Fire Emblem, in which if characters die, they are no longer playable.
In a video game, I can usually choose to re-try an encounter that went badly, and "prevent" the death in what is effectively an alternate timeline.
In D&D, few EARLY characters have the resources (or the value to the campaign world) to spend on resurrection. Sure, if you're in a high level party, your team will probably (if prudent ;)) have ways to ensure resurrection is possible, perhaps even socking away resources dedicated for that purpose. Early on though, characters just don't really have the resources. Additionally, resurrection isn't without penalty (unless I misremember -- which is likely ;)). Isn't there a loss-of-XP factor as well, or am I mistakenly mixing up my D&D with EQ?
Based on the "load an old save" feature, I'd say that death is a much lighter penalty in video games. I'd be interested in playing a game based on Richard K. Morgan's world from the Takeshi Kovacs novels (Altered Carbon, etc). There, most people have their mind stored-at-death in a "cortical stack", which basically allows the consciousness to be downloaded into a new body ("sleeve"). Real Death (or loss of the stack) is still possible, of course, as is an eternity of virtual (or real) torture ... but generally it's a "given" that snuffing out a body doesn't permanently kill them -- assuming they have the money for a new body. I think that could make for some interesting roleplaying.
Anyone else remember the game Cannon Fodder on the Amiga (and other 16/8bit machines) back in the days, in that game something similiar was implemented. The soldiers you controlled got better the longer they stayed alive, and if they didn't stay alive, a new recruit got sent in and another tombstone got raised in the graveyard with that soldiers name on it. Just proves that some games on the Amiga was way ahead of it's time.
17 and doesn't understand what death means... that's the parents fault; serves them right!
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
Invincible to any kind of critique? Meaning it cannot be critiqued or cannot be critiqued correctly or ... ? I'm a bit confused about your dichotomy here. If you want to know what I think, I believe it was divinely inspired by God through humans. Which means it has human characteristics (personality, it's firmly stuck into history, no pains are taken to hide claims of what happened where, etc), but yes, it is eternal truth where that is concerned. This also means it was written in a human language, to a human population, using human idioms and phrases and everything (e.g., "four corners of the earth" is still used today, I guess that means we're all flat-earthers... or calling the earth a "circle" or whatever). On the other hand, I could show you some quite interesting comments in some OT books that show some undiscovered scientific stuff. My guess is you would think I'm stretching it way out of proportion to get it out of the text; and so I would say to you, also, that you are stretching the text to fit what you want it to say (such as the "circle of the earth" implying that it is flat, or the four corners thing, etc... also, I can comment that "circle" is a translation, and what the Hebrew word actually meant should be looked into as well - I actually haven't, so I am not sure waht the word is :) )
even one gray area (and I'm being very lenient here) would suffice for it to be unable to be considered as divinely inspired.
The ironic part is that I agree with you.
Take into account how modern history rejects the bible as a credible source of historical fact.
That's been happening for a while. Like the Hittites, etc. But I think we're going to simply divide at this point because of the people we are choosing to believe when discussing the Biblical account... of anything, apparently.
Lastly, I've been trying to ignore your insinuations that I don't know what I'm talking about,
If I was highly critical of, say, evolution, you would likely ask what I had read too, would you not? The insinuation that you had not read it was definitely there, because I assumed you had not, as that is what appeared to be the case. And you didn't answer the simple question. If you said you had read it, I wouldn't have asked several times... :)
And I'm not referring to the beliefs that mainstream religion now considers primitive. (how queer, that the eternal truth is subject to the inevitable changes of time and social context) I'm also talking about the beliefs which are at the core of the christian idea system.
These sound interesting. not that I particularly care about mainstream religion, as most people go along with whatever flow happens to be flowing (in science, in society, in ethics, in pretty much everything, the proverbial lemming syndrome takes place).
Regarding historical accuracy, it's been proven historically accurate quite a few times, and has been verified quite a bit, and contains a ton of history. For being such an inaccurate hoax, the writers were either plain stupid or ... something else, because if they DIDN'T know their geography/history, they were pretty stupid to put it in anyways. And yet, many like to think that the Bible was written for 40 some odd authors over the course of 1500 years and it is completely based on myth... that's some pretty amazing mythology right there. Greek mythology, as smart as they were, doesn't even agree with itself and appears to be far closer to what humans tend to think about ... gods and goddesses having sex, murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. The gods were nothing more than supernatural humans and acted in the same petty and immoral ways.
Scarier question, he's 17, did he have a drivers license or permit?
Would he expect his car to be fine after colliding first into oncoming traffic? Or even just from plowing into a building, such that no one is hurt and he drives away as if nothing happened? Or would he blame Need For Speed, despite their prominent warning that began at least with Underground.
The fact that the title was Halo 3 isn't really pertinent. The problem is : They took his copy of X away and so he killed them. X could have been Halo3, it could have been his cell phone, gun, permission to go out, car keys, teddy bear, security blanket, computer, etc.
He's 17... soon he will be a voting 18 year old adult.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
Wouldn't you go completly insane if you use a Microsoft product every day of your life?
So it's Microsoft's fault, for making shitty, overhyped, annoying software and hardware that make people go insane from using!
The problem here is that so do you.
Additionally, resurrection isn't without penalty (unless I misremember -- which is likely ;)). Isn't there a loss-of-XP factor as well, or am I mistakenly mixing up my D&D with EQ?
No, you're right, but it's also one of the more bullshit rules D&D has, considering it's unfair, frustrating, and doesn't even add flavor to the game (since XP is an abstraction of your character learning from his/her experiences, and when you fail at something, you don't suddenly become more inexperienced. You actually become more experienced, or at worst, are where you started). It's one of the idiotic D&D rules that I'd house rule away if I ran a campaign.
Besides, none of that changes the fact that since you're running the game, you can at any point say "No, that didn't happen", and bring your character back. In that way, death in D&D is even less imposing than in a video game, since at least in permadeath video games, your character really dies, no hand-waving possible.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Have you tried America's Army?
Blinded by your own prejudice...
What is it about the anti-religionists that retards their ability for rational thinking? Are they so filled with hate?
Did you disable his text-to-audio program remotely? That's awesome.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I get nothing but appreciation as a Medic in TF2. My team mates absolutely adore me.
Well, sometimes i get a knife in the back.
Good point, I second the banning of all hammers.
I think you might be describing Jagged Alliance. I didn't spend much time with the game, so I can't say much. However, I can give you a link.
It's called fanaticism. If it wasn't countries or religions it'd just be something else.
I know that after I complete my suicide attack, I will live out eternity in the afterlife full of spaghetti and meatballs. Yay!
If it weren't those things what would it be? I reckon that it would have to be something even more outlandish than those already are, thus they would bring a smaller following. It is wrong to dismiss the justifications for fanatical behavior as irrelevant. They should be evaluated carefully and condemned by society if they are found to be harmful or, at the very least, tempered carefully.
Steel Battalion is that way. It aims to be super realistic to the point where if you don't eject in time, it erases your save.
The kid plotted this weeks ahead of time. Even if he was delusional "at the time he hatched this plot", he had plenty of time to come to his senses.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
He killed his mother and shot his father in the head. the father survived.
Daniel's plan was originally to make it look like a murder-suicide, by leaving the gun in his father's hand. After the shooting, Mark Petric said his son put the gun in his hand while saying, "Hey Dad, here's your gun. Take it."
The outrage is from people who are pissed that a manipulative evil piece of shit is trying to avoid a harsher punishment by blaming a hobby which most people here enjoy.
His first plan to avoid getting punished didn't work out so well but a judge seems to have bought into the "it was the videogames fault!",partly at least.
That he was going to frame it as a murder-suicide is clear indication of awareness that the action was wrong, and if he understood that murder was wrong, then he understood death was final.
I agree with you, it's a manipulative jerk trying to avoid the consequences of plotting a murder.
There are still plenty of one-death per character muds out there. Try bat.org's hc version.
I was just continuing the term since it was used by the OP.
And how am I blinded by my own prejudice? That I say he's an incorporeal sky daddy? Religious people do say hes the Father (and son, and incorporeal holy ghost) and he is (allegedly) in heaven, which is depicted by religious people as being in the sky.
And you'll note that I'm not ant religious, merely anti-restriction-of-my-own-freedoms by religious people. It's not the same.
We're looking at classism and the fact that in America there are two systems of justice. The first is the gentle, nice, forgiving system of justice and its for straightlaced middle class people (being white helps seriously). The other system of justice is vindictive, mean, and harsh its for anyone who isn't at least middle class and doesn't try to match the Leave it to Beaver 1950's image.
As an interesting similar case, in 1997 in Amarillo TX Dustin Camp, a local jock with a clean cut look and upper middle class parents murdered a local punk, Brian Deneke. Ran over him with his car during a fight, and according to a friend riding in the passenger seat yelled "I'm a ninja in my caddie". During the trial the judge repeatedly referred to Camp as a "boy" or a "child", and expressed the opinion that it wouldn't be right to ruin "a boy's" life with a long sentence.
Basically, if you're middle class, white, and can look like you came off the set of Leave it to Beaver, you get the kid gloves. Any freak, non-white, or poor person, they get the harsh treatment.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
I will also say that "What is it about the anti-religionists that retards their ability for rational thinking?" is possibly the most hilarious statement to level at someone who doesn't believe in God.
Let's not have the "believing in God is perfectly rational, but believing in evolution is not! God put dinosaur bones on the earth to test our faith!" debate. You will lose.
Simple answer: He is able, but not willing, to enforce good on humans. He gave them their own free will, and it's not malevolent of him to let them exercise this free will when they choose to hurt other people.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It really was.
The sense of community in 'hardcore' mode was much much greater than 'softcore'.
Interestingly, the first level 99s (after patch 1.10) were hardcore mode.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
dude all this was and is at most is temporary insanity due to teenage hormones that at his age he should be more in balance of. the simple fact is that his parents were parenting him , but had previously SPOILED him and now he acted out with intent in the stupidest and worse Temper tantrum ever recorded by a teenager short of one that ends themselves as opposed to another person.
he had a temper tantrum and killed his rents cause they took his toy away ... it has nothing to do with not realizing they wouldnt respawn! immediatedly where he left their corpses to rot .
this is one of those individuals that we as a species may wanna consider neutering to prevent continuation of this obviously damaged persons dna (harsh but hey thats a penalty most guys will actually fear next to death)
leave the religion out and screw the game its a over glorified digital toy , his parents being parents took it away (a good move apparently) and he threw a temper tantrum (mild insanity possibly influenced by teen hormones) and killed him..,
just dose him up and dump him on the streets as per usual im sure there are file sharers or peace activists somewhere they could be pursing or even someone thats violated the constitution on more than one occasion that deserves more depth than this
No! Not weeks. Once you're dead, you're dead, Fucking Game Over! Go buy another license! This solution has also the aditional merit of making us get rid from recession. Who would say that DRM would end up saving the world, huh?
Your ad could be here!
Yes, but there are very few situations where you can die instantly. Usually it's because you've been swarmed by a dozen insanely powerful monsters, got PK'd by someone who took you out very fast, or - most likely of all - the crappy BNET servers lagged to high Hell.
I'd like to try Hardcore online but the griefers and server latency are the reasons I really never bothered advancing beyond Level 20.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I didn't know there was a Fire Emblem FPS! Where can I get this amazing game?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I bought Jagged Alliance 2 for my buddy. SWAT 2 also worked in a similar vein - you had a huge team of people, and they could get injured or outright die.
But what I'm talking about is a First Person Shooter exactly as I've described it. I don't think anything like this - in a multiplayer-only vein, mind you - really exists as a fleshed-out concept.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Sounds like Diablo II in Hardcore Mode
Or Operation Flashpoint.
They already made games like this and they were good, perhaps you just missed them.
My guess is the kid obviously not of the right mind for whatever reason (medical or otherwise) probably would have done the same thing no matter what the parents had taken away.
Homebound? What does that mean? That he had a bad back? Or was this some kind of lame excuse for cutting a full year of school? I wonder to what extent his snowboarding injuries were?
Microsoft have just announced they are introducing a new version of Halo - Halo 4 "The One way Trip"
In this game, which costs just $15.95, you are issued a fixed set of characters. When they die, that's it. You can save where you are in the game, pause and resume as normal BUT you cannot ever come back to life.
It is supported by the American Coalition of Concerned Mothers and the American Conservative Churches Association, who have combined to condemn the continual "resurrection" in games. "Once you are dead, you stay dead" said one of the mothers - "Well almost" corrected one of the religious brethren.
Microsoft spokesman Jack Frogmouth said Microsoft is excited by the new game concept and looks forward to the great new stream of revenue. On being questioned whether Microsoft would contribute a 10% tithe to the church, he declined to comment.
"Cats like plain crisps"
He should sue the school system too for not teaching him correctly about biology. Damn underpaid teachers...they think they can not teach just because they are getting paid shit. What has this world come to???
First: Games are supposed to be fun, not realistic.
Second: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Emblem
Of course there's other instances too, just not as pronounced as this, like in Rainbow Six once a teammate is down he's unusable, but I believe for only that mission.
I'm trying to think of a religion that teaches respawning.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Or, at least, use a stronger box.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
See the way you got moderated is one of the bizarre ways slashdot operates.
Feel free to bash Christians all you want to. You'll get so many +Insightful and +Informative mods they'll fall out of your ass.
Now here's where the bizarre part comes in...
When you express the opinion that the Christian (you know, the same folks whom bashing was deemed to be insightful and informative by moderators) parents in this article likely suffocated and stifled their child and he lashed out at them because of it... well you're just a troll for doing that.
Bizarre ain't it?
I suppose that's because many of the moderators are still quite attached to their Christian Mommies and Daddies who are nice enough to let them dwell in the basement. If something were to happen to Mommy and Daddy that would be awful, because I mean who'd like pay the rent and get Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew? So lashing out at Mommy and Daddy for making them go to church by bashing Christians on slahdot is cathartic. When someone else does it they can lash out vicariously, if they have mod points they show their solidarity.
But if someone were to dare suggest that a person who actually had the balls to lash out at his Mommy and Daddy and manage to kill one of them might have been pushed to do so by Mommy and Daddy... well that is just intolerable to moderators. They yearn to lash out at Mommy and Daddy but just don't have the stones to do it. Your suggestion makes them feel inadequate and pathetic. So they punish you by modding you down.
Am I right?
Is He willing to prevent evil but not able?
Yes, he/He is able. (*)
Then is he impotent?
Yes, he is omnipotent, but in most theologies that word doesn't mean what you probably think it means. Few if any theologies claim god/God can do even the logically contradictory.
(I think you meant "not omnipotent" instead of "impotent" (i.e. powerless) since the there are plenty of powerful non-impotent people out there who want to stop evil but are not able to.)
Is He able but not willing?
No, he is not willing.
Then is He malevolent?
He does not act because to do so would be a greater evil. Namely the violation of our free will. (The choice between either "no freedom and no evil" or "freedom and evil from abuse of that freedom" has been explored in a non-supernatural context in several science-fiction works, but curiously once you bring god/God into the question people start to switch from preferring the freedom to preferring no-evil.)
Now if you want evil to include things like natural disasters and not just evil that people directly inflict on others, theologies start to diverge. Some say that all evil is an indirect consequence of a direct personal evil (e.g. Genesis and the Fall of Man). Some say that evil as a moral aspect can only be present when there is a moral agent involved (e.g. a tree falling on a person is not evil but purposely making a tree fall on a person is evil). Some say that bad things happen to allow a greater good. Some say that, like with free will, the laws of nature that would have to be violated and that would be an evil. Others give other answers, but if you restrict yourself to evil actions committed directly by persons, the free-will argument is a widely accepted answer.
Note there are two very important theological points here. The first is that god/God can't do "anything". That is to say many (most?) faiths at least restrict god/God to being able to do "anything that is not a logical contradiction". Some restrict god/God's abilities even further.
The second point is that free will or the products that can only come from free will (love?) are valued as a very high good, high enough in value to balance all the other evil in the world.
(*) Though some might argue that he/He is not able since they restrict omnipotence to doing "anything not contrary to god/God's nature" and that nature may include not interfering with our free will
(The above is only my reasonably well informed understanding of the theological teachings of certain faiths. Apologies if I got anything wrong.)
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Catholic Church,
the communion of Saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. AMEN.
Not sure why you couldn't use the english version.
Also, your soul returning to it's own body is no more reincarnation than someone being resuscitated after dying.
Caffeine, cocaine, alcohol, pot, video games whatever, no diff. Parents take that stuff away everyday. This kid is bad seed, but since premeditated, not crazy.
>All of them believe your human life is over.
Actually, that's not true. Christianity believes in a physical ressurection to a physical human life in a physical world to come that differs mainly in that it is perfect as compared to this world that is imperfect. Part of the point of the insistence that Jesus' ressurrection was physical, was that the ressurection is to a new physical body [albeit one that no longer contains the flaws brought about by an imperfect world].
This was on 'the daily show' last night. there was a guy who had written a book about the kamikaze pilots and the gist of it was that they were college students who were not recruited but drafted into service shortly after the US fleet showed up at the doorstep. no-one was happy at the prospect of having to sacrifice their lives with that level of certainty. they were given a crash-course (no pun intended) and were ordered to go on the mission. many flew back claiming they could not locate a target. none were doing it for the emperor or for god. in fact, most never even cared much for the emperor.
to reverse the situation a little, if there was a draft on in the US. the draftees were then told to go on a mission that was doomed. what choices would the draftees have? we can look at Gallipoli to find an example of similar circumstances.
see this and this
remember, japan doesn't have a friendly neighbor to the north to take in asylum seekers.
... and have the biggest deficit *ever* to show for it. just stating facts.
Halo is sexually explicit? what did I miss when I played it?
I haven't heard anyone give a good enough reason to prove that the Atheist are right
Let me give you mine then: so far, the existence of "God" (as we currently define it) hasn't been the most likely explanation for any given phenomena. Therefore, God's existence is irrelevant to our current understanding of our universe. Therefore, faced with whether to believe that God exists or not, the explanation that requires the least assumptions should be assumed as true, therefore we must assume for any other purpose that God does not exist. Or as I like to put it, I'm an atheist because I've applied Occam's Razor to the problem of God's uncertainity.
It is, however, a reason not to believe in God rather than the non-existance of God per se, but good enough for me. Though perhaps it's more of an agnostic's belief since if there *is* a phenomena that's best explained as "God did it" it'd automatically go the other way, but I'm not entirely sure.
Lets compromise God exists 1/2 of the time. There is a solution that no one likes so therefor it must be a good compromise.
I believe that surpasses Schrödinger's cat as the best possible use for the blink tag ever ;)
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
> mathematically impossible
it's nice that science and math can be used when it's convenient.
> don't forget the Bible spoke to a Hebrew culture, 1500 years ago
thank you for pointing that out. now how about something that speaks to our culture here and now?
What you've never humped a corpse?
nice to see someone enjoy logic candy despite ones own position. nicely done.
but if he's all knowing, then he knew which way it would go. therefore, how it went was a foregone conclusion and therefore it was never free will. since he created us without free will but with eventual evil - he created evil. so not only is he unwilling to wipe out evil, he created evil.
free will implies uncertain outcome. which implies no knowledge of the outcome beforehand. which implies he is not all-knowing.
What's funny is that the only source for that prison planet article has since retracted his claim, and it was a claim of "probably" at that. I wonder if he even clicked through to the actual source?
I'd kill my parents if the pulled this kind of shit on me. Of course given the two weeks he had to plan the murder his plan sucked and execution was equally poor.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
You ignored the complete idea of the Devil. Which, you know, shows up in the same collection of books that claim he's all powerful and loving.
free will implies uncertain outcome.
Free will does not at all imply uncertainty. It merely implies control over a choice. For example, I ask my friend where he wants to eat, even though I know him well enough to know what his answer will be. It is his free choice even though I know what he will choose.
which implies no knowledge of the outcome beforehand.
"Before" and "after" don't apply if god/God is outside time. The statement becomes nonsensical in that case. It is perfectly possible for entities inside time to exercise their free will by choosing how the story of time evolves, but an entity outside time sees the entire story in one instant.
This is a topic that is actually well hashed over and tackled head-on within theological/philosophical writings under the topics of predestination (as a consequence of omniscience) and free will.
It's not polite to make fun of people's ridiculous beliefs...
read some interesting stuff at mightyinteresting.com
Yeah! There is no need to setup straw man arguments to attack religious beliefs. The beliefs themselves are so obviously ridiculous as to make it unnecessary. I know many people I would classify as smart who profess a belief in an organized religion, and without exception they were all indoctrinated at a young age. When you look at any of the big religions from the outside without the benefit of that early indoctrination, they all look like so much mumbo jumbo. (With apologies to the devout believers in mumbo jumbo.)
At least they won't have any other stupid children like him. Natural selection I say. An improvement to the future of the human race... Hey, someone has to see the positive side of life (and death)!
Communism comes to mind. You know, the small insignificant movement which was used as an excuse for mass murder by people like Stalin and Mao ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm going to call bullshit. Robert Tappen Morris didn't get the kid gloves, and nobody even died when he screwed up.
I just have to play Devil's advocate here.
So if I see someone's about to be raped, should I simply walk away, since interfering would be a violation of the rapist's free will ? What about murder ? And how about a terrorist trying to nuke a city ?
Except that we don't prefer freedom to no-evil. In fact we devote a lot of resources to prevent people from harming other people. Those science-fiction works in question typically show a dystopia where the system is run by people who are evil themselves and thus abuse the system for their personal gain; this seems to be the main argument against various surveillance systems in real life too - the guards can't be trusted.
Furthermore, while preferring freedom to no-evil certainly sounds noble, it implies that the perpetrators of that evil are more important than their victims. Sure, you could argue that freedom is more important than safety, but what if the perpetrators are doing something which strips their victims of freedom, such as slave trade ? Then you have a situation where either the perpetrator loses some of his freedom, or the victim all of it (and all of his safety too, of course), so it's simply a matter of who you value more.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
We'll never know the whole story, so let's speculate about incestuous rape. Right on, drinkypoo !
It's nice to know that you don't find murder to be a true crime.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
these things just happen in the U.S.
You know, I went through military service at 18, and managed to not kill anyone, despite having access to an assault rifle.
Pleading insanity in a court is not the same thing as actually being insane. And 17-year old is not a child.
But how can you blame the parents, when it's obvious that they were screwed up by their parents ? Those evil grandparents are to bl... no wait, they were raised by their parents, who were raised by theirs, and so on.
I guess we'll have to blame Adam or the amoebas, depending on which theory you subscribe to.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Most of the time, the rules seem to treat XP as an abstraction for "life force" of the characters, rather than having anything to do with experience. Negative levels, XP costs for spells, resurrection penalty, etc.; they all make sense if - and only if - XP is the character's life.
XP is life, and the primary way of getting it is to kill something. The more that something had levels - or XP - the more XP you get. Which of course means that the player characters are all vampires. They've all been brainwashed and given a magical disguise and sent to combat their fellow monsters, but it's just a matter of time before their memories return.
How's that for a campaign idea ?-)
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Lookup a game called Soldiers of Anarchy, not an FPS, more like the style of Commando, but it has a lot of what you are talking about.
The flightsim EF2000 was kind of like that. You had a complete dynamic war running, on each round you selected a mission you want to fly and then flow your mission. If you died, you died, no retry, the plane and pilot lost. But since there where plenty of other planes and pilots you could continue the war for quite a while.
Back in the day I had another flight sim with a similar campaign mode. I hadn't really realised how few games adhere to that pattern these days, but come to think of it there aren't that many of them.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's nice to know that you don't find murder to be a true crime.
That is not at all what I said or what I implied, and you are a stupider person for having suggested it.
I feel it is wrong to ever try a minor as an adult, EVER, because rights come with responsibilities, and responsibilities should come with rights. Until you are 18 you are basically a non-person in the USA. You cannot own anything, you cannot work under your own terms. You should NEVER be tried as an adult if you do not have the rights of an adult.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If someone is fundamentally incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction (which is the claim here), then he's unlikely to be safe to be let either out the house or on the PC on his own.
And that still doesn't address the issue of the gun.
Because we know that stuff that comes from Microsoft help to get a grip on reality and is always a rational way, the Ms way[/srcsm]. Bullshit! Where did he get the idea? MTV? American Idol? a pixie? you just can't say that the game does not have anything to do with the crime, it's obviously generated (in two diff instances) from the game itself. YES, GAMES DO FUCK PEOPLE! obviously this just happens in places where youth does not have anything better to do than go killing other people because it's "scene stuff" where a SEVERE DISCONNECTION from reality is the norm. And the dad is a jerk, I'd sign in anything to send the bastard right to a jailbait-class-A prison.
It's Captain (Jack) Thompson and his sidekick, Raging Insanity! But seriously, if someone lets a game or film influence them in a way that causes them to murder their own parents, that's not the fault of the game... That kid is just fucked in the head. People keep blaming shit on everyone and everything even when the problem is them.
Have you considered that God may not be some "invisible sky fairy", but a man? Maybe there are more than one? Presidents, kings, etc. Or maybe he's a guy rich and powerful enough to command them. Kind of like Xerxes or the one from 10,000 BC, only in the modern age. Food for thought.
your right your parents are evil too cause they didn't stop you from making every mistake in your life that you used your free will to make. oh did I pop your ballon.
This is what I think of you.
it's nice that science and math can be used when it's convenient.
Not just when it is convenient. When someone complains "The Bible doesn't make sense with science" and is referring to something like flat-earth or four-footed insects, that can be discussed... what does it actually mean, did it really mean they only have four feet or does it mean something else. But when arguments of "Why didn't God ..." or "Why can't God ..." come up, usually the person asking really doesn't know what God has already revealed about what He did; and secondly, the questions along the lines of "Can God create a rock He can't lift, if He can do anything?" ... those questions don't even really make sense in themselves, but somehow God has to be able to do them because He can do anything (meaning, He can do anything I can imagine, even if I'm TRYING to be ludicrous... may as well ask, if God can do anything and lives forever, can He kill Himself? ... )
thank you for pointing that out. now how about something that speaks to our culture here and now?
There is plenty. My point was that the original language used is that of Hebrews. I hope nobody expects the physical words to change depending on who reads it, a la Harry Potter. Something that speaks to our culture here and now? How about not murdering, not adulterating, not stealing, not coveting, being a peacemaker, being humble, being meek, loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, doing good to all? Most people don't have a problem with those. Of course, there's also the more important aspects of loving God, weeping/repenting over sin, serving God, not having idols, etc. Those are ones people don't like so much, and thus are "irrelevant," because we tend to define "relevant" as "what I want right now."
No R35P@wNz!???!
It can be difficult to be rational when a significant portion of your brain has been shot off.
Didin't he just community service? Not exactly harsh.
Whats next? 17 year old boy kills parents and starts frantically checking closets in the house after playing L4D?
Regretfully I don't know what the theological response to that might be. As a pure thought experiment, I could offer some conjectures, but I don't want to misrepresent what answer various theological schools might give.
Maybe he thought his parents would respawn, like people do in halo. All joking aside I do think that if the kid didn't realize his parents wouldn't be dead forever that this had nothing to do with the video game, but the kid himself had issues completely unrelated. When my grandmother died when I was 14 I knew she was never coming back.
further more, this statement reveals this judge as a total and complete moron. you might as well claim that because wily coyote keeps surviving falls off cliffs and being blown up by the road runner that watching cartoons causes a 17 year old not to realize that shooting your freakin mom is freakin permanent. Judge James Burge remember his name for he is an idiot.