Oh thank you so much for bringing up the crux of the issue. While I was enjoying the joking around here, there is a rather more serious issue at hand here . . ..
The Wired article is, rather irresponsibly I might add, basically giving teeth to all of those lawsuits pending and soon to be pending against video game studios. It is simply bad juju to say "I want to frag all my friends after playing Doom3" and then cry foul when when id Software gets sued for a kid who does.
Video games DO NOT CAUSE VIOLENCE. Cause is a one-to-one relationship. Games are a multi-billion dollar industry and if there was a one-to-one relationship, we wouldn't be able to step outside without bands of teenagers recreating Half-Life and Halo squads (I understand this is really a problem in some of the more urban areas, but I also know the problem there predates Pong). If a person actually emulates the violence they see in a video game, THEY ALREADY HAVE WITHIN THEM THE CAPACITY AND DESIRE TO DO IT. There is no causal relationship between the two.
You said it yourself; you and your friends started thinking these things after playing video games, but you didn't do it because YOU WERE LEVEL-HEADED. You pretty much imply that the people who would go through with it are not level-headed, and you are right. If they didn't have the video game, there would be some other cause later.
That is my opinion. I am a hard-core video game player for most of my life, and while I will admit that my depth perception has been known to change after playing Quake I for muliple hours and it is fun to entertain the notion of jacking the cars you see on the street after GTAIII, it IS still fantasy, because I know where reality lies. People who don't know this line are time-bombs waiting to happen anyway.
E-Tools is the program that Wizards publishes; the Character Generator was an early release of the tools that went on to become E-Tools.
The interesting twist to the story, is the a core group of the developers (mostly founders) for PCGen started a company (www.codemonkeypublishing.com) that is handling the distribution of the data sets for money AND is now responsible for patching E-Tools. So the PCGen people are now working on the rival program as well.
The violinist's "thingie" is called a bow.
Geesuz, apparently you all went to school where they cut the funding on the music program but left the science programs intact.;)
After reading so many posts after all this time on/., I can reduce them to 4 catagories:
Those who liked the article/story.
Those who didn't.
Those who flame the ones who like it.
Those who flame the ones who didn't.
I'm in the server room too, but they stuck a window in my wall so they could see in. I think they want visitors to see the exhibit. Now I just make monkey faces when they walk by.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh thank you so much for bringing up the crux of the issue. While I was enjoying the joking around here, there is a rather more serious issue at hand here . . . .
The Wired article is, rather irresponsibly I might add, basically giving teeth to all of those lawsuits pending and soon to be pending against video game studios. It is simply bad juju to say "I want to frag all my friends after playing Doom3" and then cry foul when when id Software gets sued for a kid who does.
Video games DO NOT CAUSE VIOLENCE. Cause is a one-to-one relationship. Games are a multi-billion dollar industry and if there was a one-to-one relationship, we wouldn't be able to step outside without bands of teenagers recreating Half-Life and Halo squads (I understand this is really a problem in some of the more urban areas, but I also know the problem there predates Pong). If a person actually emulates the violence they see in a video game, THEY ALREADY HAVE WITHIN THEM THE CAPACITY AND DESIRE TO DO IT. There is no causal relationship between the two.
You said it yourself; you and your friends started thinking these things after playing video games, but you didn't do it because YOU WERE LEVEL-HEADED. You pretty much imply that the people who would go through with it are not level-headed, and you are right. If they didn't have the video game, there would be some other cause later.
Violent crimes have gone down since a peak in 1992, and yet the video game industry has been booming with more and more violent and realistic games. Again, no causal relationship.
That is my opinion. I am a hard-core video game player for most of my life, and while I will admit that my depth perception has been known to change after playing Quake I for muliple hours and it is fun to entertain the notion of jacking the cars you see on the street after GTAIII, it IS still fantasy, because I know where reality lies. People who don't know this line are time-bombs waiting to happen anyway.
I have a better idea. See I've made these wings out of wax. So far I've only had one problem with them . . . . :)
Problems I've had with two w2k machines include; Explorer running slowly (right click and Cntl-X), Outlook running slowly, Word running slowly.
/.!! :)
The Advanced Internet Explorer settings fix mentioned earlier fit the bill and both are running normally now. Thanks
E-Tools is the program that Wizards publishes; the Character Generator was an early release of the tools that went on to become E-Tools.
The interesting twist to the story, is the a core group of the developers (mostly founders) for PCGen started a company (www.codemonkeypublishing.com) that is handling the distribution of the data sets for money AND is now responsible for patching E-Tools. So the PCGen people are now working on the rival program as well.
The violinist's "thingie" is called a bow. Geesuz, apparently you all went to school where they cut the funding on the music program but left the science programs intact. ;)
After reading so many posts after all this time on /., I can reduce them to 4 catagories:
Those who liked the article/story.
Those who didn't.
Those who flame the ones who like it.
Those who flame the ones who didn't.
Heh heh, heh heh. Picard said "come".
What do you people use to transfer files between one computer and another?
I'm in the server room too, but they stuck a window in my wall so they could see in. I think they want visitors to see the exhibit. Now I just make monkey faces when they walk by.