The Gaming Den

This week in the news

1. The Fourth Amendment was suspended Link
2. The Blacklist returned
Link
3. The justice who will likely overturn Roe v Wade was named.
Link
4. A man was gunned down by police in London for jumping a subway turnstile while wearing a coat. Link
5. A number of major retailers pulled a video game after its rating was shifted due to unplayable content made accessable due to the actions of third parties (much like how nekkid celeberity pictures edited out of films end up in the internet) and a US Senator proposed tougher laws against gamer manufacturers and retailers because of it. Link

6. Otherwise reasonable people defended each of the above events as a good thing to me.

With regards to number #5: that's not entirely accurate. The content was actually accessible as proven in this Gamespot article. They tested it on a PS2 which cannot have its core contents modified and sure enough, it worked. The claim that Rockstar put out about it being done by "l33t Hax0rs" is not justifiable in any way. They were pretty much bypassing the ESRB ratings system (which are a joke to begin with) and are going to have to take responsibility for it.

They really shouldn't have to take any flack for that. If *that* is what justifies not selling GTA to kids to people, then these people need to actually take a look at the rest of the game. You play a car thief who kills a lot of people. And they are concerned about a code that has them doing it naked? Oh, the horror.

It's probably there because the code the character models in layers, and the clothing graphic is not connected to the skin graphic.

1) The ESRB is a joke of a regulation standard since the people who work there have absolutely no idea what's in a game. The fact that they let the game off with a M rating before shows the lax standards that the video game industry has been subject to. Heck, I still don't understand how Starcraft got an M rating while Starcraft Brood War got off with a T. It's the same fricken game for crying out loud!

2) I will always first and foremost blame the parents (who generally purchase such games for their children) for not bothering to do more research on what they're actually purchasing for their kids. Its just ignorance more than anything else and these parents are just as culpable if not more so than the game companies.

The issue that I have is with Rockstar sneaking this past the ESRB. If they had disclosed that such a scene can be unlocked by doing some weird procedures, and the ESRB still gave them an M, then the crux of the blame would fall upon the ESRB (and in this instance, they're not completely blameless either).

As for the Hot Coffee mod's presence, the Gamespot article suggests that it was in there because the game developers actually put it in there and for no other reason. Just like with all the secret mini-quests and stuff in other games.

I'm just hoping that this fiasco will result in better oversight of the ESRB and that they actually give more consistent ratings for games. GTA should have been an AO game to begin with. The cleanup of the ratings board has been long overdue.

The sims 2 shipped with a skin editing program that enabled with very little imagination any computer literate child with half a brain who desired to to sit down for half an hour and make their own naked sim skins from scratch for their own perverse pleasure to do so fairly easily.

I mean seriously should the rating of the sims be changed? I was perusing the GTA boards for other information ages ago and found referrences to what I assume is the same mod, and seriously this content is not unlockable without actually messing with the software in ways not normally accepted as within the responsibility of the developer.

So if GTA san andreas needs pulling for being easily modable to be nude so does the Sims, Morrowind, pretty much every Tomb Raider ever, and almost everything else under the sun. (Have you ever actually tried typing "nude patch" into a search engine? Try it)

This is a bad bad precedent. I just saw a frightening French documentary about the war on "Indecency" in the US and this is thin end of the wedge stuff, and the thick end is frightening, disgusting and unpleasant.

And seriously nude pixels? Ooooh I'm a shakin' in me boots!

I think that the world is indeed doomed when people here are talking about 4 when it doesn't have any fvcking relevance compared to the first 4.

Neeek at [unixtime wrote:1122186603[/unixtime]]They really shouldn't have to take any flack for that. If *that* is what justifies not selling GTA to kids to people, then these people need to actually take a look at the rest of the game. You play a car thief who kills a lot of people. And they are concerned about a code that has them doing it naked? Oh, the horror.

Yeah, stuff like that really amuses me. You can go around running people down, shooting down armies of cops, civilians and pretty much anyone else, and yet they find a consentual sex scene and point to that as a reason why the game should be considered mature.

Count_Arioch_the_28th at [unixtime wrote:1122222463[/unixtime]]I think that the world is indeed doomed when people here are talking about 4 when it doesn't have any fvcking relevance compared to the first 4.

Yeah, honestly, outta that list I woulda thought someone here would argued why Roe v Wade is a poor legal standrard or how shakey the determination of Roberts's views on the matter is.

On the GTA thing: it's a feature that was disabled for the purposes of falling within the ESRB rating of M. The code is still there, and if you Haxxor the program, you can re-enable it. But I am honestly flabergasted that anyone would be upset with Rockstar over that. Disabling code and then not ditributing any method of enabling it to consumers is pretty much exactly what those parental controls ask you to do.

---

On to the actually important things:

1. Suspending the fourth ammendment doesn't make us safer. Actually it increases partisan activity by increasing dissent. That means that it makes ordinary citizens less safe. Less safe from the police, and therefore less willing to bring problems to the police. And less safe from terrorism because there will be more of it. Random searches wouldn't have stopped the london bombings, and won't stop future attacks.

2. In the 50s and 60s, the government put out a list of suspected communist organizations, and forbid people from dealing with them economically. Such allegedly "communist" organizations included various black power groups, civil rights organizations, and union organizers. Now, I am a communist. The International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers was not a communist organization. Since it's actually many of the same people working on the project, I have no faith whatsoever that the government's new list of "terrorists" is going to be any less of a generalized enemies list than the list of "communists".

3. In order to be an "originalist", you have to be deeply deeply cynical or batshit insane. The guy they are putting up to take O'Connor's place is a hack who has repeatedly bent over for anyone willing to give him more power. I'm almost completely positive that he's extremely cynical. As such, it's entirely possible that like O'Connor he will turn on his masters from time to time. Being a swing vote, even if you only swing about 20% of the time, means that you are much more "powerful" than the other justices. As such, I give it even odds as to whether he will actually overturn RvW.

4. Again I question why police carry guns during their normal routines. They have radios. Those radios connect to SWAT teams. There is no possible way to outgun "the police" whether an individual beat cop is armed or not. Thus, while I see some very real disadvantages to police carrying guns, I don't see any advantage at all. They can always call in the snipers. They can win any fight. The cop on the street needs to act only as a spotter and direction giver - to the SWATs and the citizens on the street. They can keep their tonfa, I suppose, but there's no damned reason that they should have pistols.

6. The current global political situation is very very bad. a couple of days ago someone actually told me that Bush had done as good a job as was reasonable to expect, considering 9/11. What? 9/11 killed less people than auto accidents tht year. It doesn't matter. At all. All of our formiddable economic problems, our horrendous lack of credibility over seas, and our perpetual war against the citizens of countries which didn't even attack us are all completely separate from any small assed attack.

9/11 was a military strike between one group I hate and another group I don't even like. There were a bunch of unrelated civilians caught in the crossfire. There were some dead firemen and some dead janitors and that's sad. But we're up to six digits of dead innocent Iraqis now, and we've spent all the good will that generated.

-Username17

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:I think that the world is indeed doomed when people here are talking about 4 when it doesn't have any fvcking relevance compared to the first 4.

Well, I don't live in the US, but I think a sizeable part of your population agreeing on sex being more worrysome than murder is quite troubling.

When someone is going to blow himself up in a subway (Regardless of wether that was what this guy was going to do or not.), there isn't enough time to call a SWAT team, which makes for a reason for police to carry guns.

Murtak at [unixtime wrote:1122228122[/unixtime]]

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:I think that the world is indeed doomed when people here are talking about 4 when it doesn't have any fvcking relevance compared to the first 4.

Well, I don't live in the US, but I think a sizeable part of your population agreeing on sex being more worrysome than murder is quite troubling.

Agreed. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be less troubled if my hypothetical 15 year old child was having sex than if said hypothetical child had killed someone.

Most Quoted Quote of this thread baby wrote: I think that the world is indeed doomed when people here are talking about 4 when it doesn't have any fvcking relevance compared to the first 4.

Though I think one of those 4s is meant to be a 5...

The "war on indecency" is a big deal.

Like I said I just watched a troubling French documentary about it and it drew a pretty simple line about it.

It started by pointing out the asses in some southern state attempting to ban the wearing of low riding jeans.

A connection between the stupid Janet Jackson incident and how it gave power to a bunch of far right anti indecency fundementalist christian lobby groups.

Drew a connection between that and the way a perfume company was forced to withraw FCUK brand perfume off the shelfs after a concerted campaign including death threats.

A connection between that and the use of immoral entrapment tactics combined with truely shameful public shaming to remove prostitution from the streets in another US city (with the full admition that all they were doing was shifting it from the public eye and driving it underground, an apparent goal)

Then they pulled out the big guns, the crowning achievement of the anti "indecency" crusaders. Age of consent laws and public sex offenders registries.

Creating a situation where high school kids can have consentual sex with each other then without either kid wanting to pursue it, no parents wanting to persue it, no teachers wanting to pursue it if the information gets out BAM

Up on under age sex charges facing potentially MANY years in prison and then having your life ruined for an additional 25 years after that by being on a public internet sex offenders register with your name, current photo AND home address!

Leaving the kid with no future in work, education or even finding a damn place to live beyond their parents place.

Kids are committing suicide over this (and you can hardly blame them).

The GTA thing may seem small but its part of a fanatical crusade that IS in places ruining, even ending, lives and IS in many places allowing a vocal frothing minority to dictate the way the rest of us live in scary ways. And that IS important.

And of course, its increasingly happening here in OZ as well.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1122227933[/unixtime]]
4. Again I question why police carry guns during their normal routines. They have radios. Those radios connect to SWAT teams. There is no possible way to outgun "the police" whether an individual beat cop is armed or not. Thus, while I see some very real disadvantages to police carrying guns, I don't see any advantage at all. They can always call in the snipers. They can win any fight. The cop on the street needs to act only as a spotter and direction giver - to the SWATs and the citizens on the street. They can keep their tonfa, I suppose, but there's no damned reason that they should have pistols.

This one is simple. SWAT teams take time to get there, and the crooks can just get out of there before the SWAT arrives. Without guns the cops can't even pin them down before the heavy weapons arrive. Since criminals have guns, cops certainly need some way to defend themselves other than radioing for backup. Backup won't be there for another 10-20 minutes, while the drug dealer is shooting at you now.

A tonfa wielding police force would be a joke against any real criminals.

RC wrote:A tonfa wielding police force would be a joke against any real criminals.

You know, a pistol wielding police force is a joke to all the real criminals. The ones that actually harm society in measurable ways are the people like Kenneth Lay who do billions of dollars in damage.

I'm not even saying that they can't have shotguns in their car. It's just that pistols kill a lot of innocent people and intimidate a lot of people who legitimately should be talking to the police about real problems. I have never seen nor heard of any incident that Police were able to successfully diffuse by the fact that they had a pistol in their belt that couldn't have been equally diffused by the fact that they could go get a rifle or call in a squad of assault troopers.

There is no need for the cops to shoot first ever, because murderers are really rare and forensics are really good. We aren't at war with our own civilian population, and it's about time we remembered that while outfitting our police force.

MRW wrote:When someone is going to blow himself up in a subway (Regardless of wether that was what this guy was going to do or not.), there isn't enough time to call a SWAT team

If someone is going to blow themselves up, shooting them doesn't even help. If you shoot a suicide bomber, their bomb goes off. That's how a "dead man switch" works. The only ways to stop a suicide bomber from killing people are:

1> Have a social policy of sufficient justice and diplomacy that people aren't willing to destroy themselves to bring it down. But we'll assume that at the level of the police we're passed that.

2> Convince the would-be bomber to stand down. Many potential terrorists are desparate or crazy and can be convinced to hand over their devices based on just being nice to them.

3> Contain the explosion in an area with little or no civilian traffic. If the bomb goes off in an empty subway station, I honestly don't give a damn.

So a cop's job in this case would be to advise transit authorities that an imminent situation is happening, and to close off the station. A cop's job would be to open negotiations with the suspected terrorist. A cop's job would be to get the emergency teams on route.

A cop's job in this situation would not be to shoot the guy in the back. That's counterproductive regardless of whether he's a bomber or not.

Remember, those yahoos in LA who robbed a bank in multiple layers of body armor lost. The cops can mobilize a virtually unlimited military threat if they are sufficiently provoked. The public good is not upheld with handguns for beat cops. It is upheld with better communications an a greasy wheel on the ATRTs.

The lone gunman/lawman model of peace keeping was a necessity in the Old West, but it really didn't work very well. And there is absolutely no good reason to try to base modern law enforcement on that strategy.

-Username17

It's very unlikely that Roberts, whatever his views on the subject, will manage to successfully overturn RvW. There just aren't the votes:

Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia are reliable votes for overturning.
Ginsburg, Breyer, Kennedy, and Souter are all reliable votes against.

In order for there even to be a chance at having it overturned, Roberts would have to turn out to be a party-line conservative on this issue and Stevens would have to vote to overturn it as well. Stevens has voted to keep it in the past; I don't think he's going to reverse now.

What might happen, and is probably much more likely is that the new court could carve out exceptions for things like so-called "partial-birth" abortion and make it possible for them to be banned. That ... doesn't bother me nearly as much.

Even if Roe were overturned tomorrow, I'd bet strongly against there being the votes in the Senate (possibly in the House) for a federal abortion ban.

--d.

PhoneLobster wrote:Creating a situation where high school kids can have consentual sex with each other then without either kid wanting to pursue it, no parents wanting to persue it, no teachers wanting to pursue it if the information gets out BAM ...Kids are committing suicide over this (and you can hardly blame them).

They could always not have sex.

wrote: They could always not have sex.

First of all HA! Yeah sure.

Second teenagers have sex with teenagers. Its what they do.

Third, these kids are stuck in a multi directional bind under the thumb of the anti indecency crusaders.

1) Age of consent in the US is a confusing business. It differs wildly from state to state, and in addition some states are lax on prosecution, others are strict, and others are dangerously unpredictable. If you are in an area dominated by anti indecency types that elect the men who make the laws its likely to be a rather high age (like 18 or something) AND since they also elect lead public prosecutors... (crazy system you have there)

2) The example state given (one of the ones starting with M I think...) had schools trying to run special sex ed classes for their high school kids. Anti Indecency crowds HATE THESE CLASSES, and the very classes in which kids learn about the laws which could ruin their lives are ones that "good christians" are required to give their children permission to attend, and thus often are not attended. And when I say schools, I mean ONE school, and it was presented as a daring and atypical move in that state. To top it off the same anti indeceny lobbiests push to shut these classes down outright.

3) In the example state the indecency crowd had pushed for and got laws which require teachers to report under age sex, which is then viciously prosecuted. So the sex ed teacher the kids are supposed to go to for advise on, you know, whether its wise for them to have sex (or about sex they have had) is A) Likely to say "lalalalala I can't hear you" for the kids own good B) Not be any help C) could result in them going to prison if they admit to having already had sex to them.

4) The anti indecency crowd not only hate sex ed classes they have their own alternative which they push mercilessly... teaching abstinence. A course of action PROVEN to actually cause MORE TEEN SEX (and teen pregnancies, teen STDs, etc... but like anyone cares...)

5) The anti indecency crowd pushed for, and got a public sex criminals register that violates privacy and the very concept of criminal rehabilitation and justice. This makes even the best case result of many cases, like a deferred sentence, infinitely worse what with another twenty five years of another kind of imprisonment... and its the twenty five years that happen inbetween being a teen and being middle aged, you know, the good years, the ones where your life is supposed to happen.

The life where you get a job with an employer who doesn't find you on the public sex offenders registry, marry a girl who doesn't find you on the public sex offenders registry, buy a house from someone who doesn't find you on the public sex offenders registry, with a loan from a bank that doesn't find you on the public sex offenders registry, then have kids who don't ask questions about finding you on the public sex offenders registry, and during which time you don't get beaten up in your home, recieve hate mail or letter bombs from jerks who find you on the public sex offenders registry... etc...

6) Teenagers are dumb and reckless, most likely because adults keep telling them they are, but so they are all the same.

But you gotta understand the typical Christian mindset. Punishing someone for 25 years for having consentual sex while underaged with another underaged partner is all well and good.

Jesus died for us, so we get to do our damnedest to actively fvck everyone else over hard, to the point where they don't want anything to do with us at all. That way, we can keep all the lowlifes that weren't born to the faith out of heaven. Dirty born-again christians don't deserve to be in the same heaven as the rest of us.

The part about the christian mindset that I don't get is the abstinence as sex education one.

You know the bit where they hate the idea of sex so much they will actively promote policies that cause more of it as long as it prevents anything like an authority acknowledging that it exists.

It just turns my brain inside out to think about the sheer dumbness of it.

But here is another fun one on indecency, self proclaimed christians and sex.

Medical science has now gone and discovered an immunization for a minor STD that turns out to cause cervical cancer (like pretty much most cases of it or something).

If we immunise girls before they become sexually active, bam, its gone.

But so called decent christians are actually campaigning in favour of women dying of cervical cancer JUST ON THE OFF CHANCE that young teen age girls regard this immunization as a rubber stamp of approval for them to start their sex life.

Hows that for the good news.

Abstinence only programs became a big noise from the Christian Right after it was proven that they don't work.

I'm pretty sure that it's because they don't work that they are being touted. The Christian Right has stated several times that they want to increase the number of white people. Pretty much every organized religion endorses protocols that increase the number of children their people have - that's simple religious darwinism. Religions that discourage having children (like the Shakers), simply don't exist any more.

Yeah, it's not like the people who do Abstinence 4 Life don't know that it increases the number of children and STDs that the children who go through it end up with. That's the entire point.

---

Or maybe not. One of the current buzzwords of evil from the right wing is "Outcome Based Education". They go on and on about how evil and stupid this is and attack all kinds of programs for being the dreaded "Outcome Based" programs. Almost noone outside the right wing uses that term. Everyone else calls it "The Scientific Method". The idea is that you make a hypothesis about how education works, then you test that hypothesis by putting it into practice, then you check in and see if your hypothesis worked or not. So "Outcome Based Education" means that you discontinue programs that don't work, and you expand programs that do work. That's all it means.

So when the right wing attacks programs for being "Outcome Based", they are really saying "This program works, we have to stop it right now!" Now... why would they do that? Simple: the right wing was against the idea of funding public education in the first place. It doesn't take someone too paranoid to put together the conspiracy theory that this is part of a plan to discontinue the funding altogether.

It goes like this:

Step One: Discontinue functioning programs.
Step Two: Create programs that have negative or no value.
Step Three: Show that public education overall is accomplishing little or nothing, discontinue it.

It's part of a similar plan going form the other end (called "no child left behind"):

Step One: Test all children.
Step Two: Reduce or eliminate funding for all schools which are underaverage on those tests.
Step Three: Once those schools are gone, there will be a new average, reduce or eliminate funding for all schools under that.
Step Four: Repeat until Achilles catches the tortoise and no schools exist.

-Username17

I am puzzled by the statement that "No Child Left Behind" mandates reduced funding for schools that underachieve.

The law is enormous and (shockingly!) filled with legalese and most of the analysis is focused on other areas, but what I've been able to find on the subject suggests that, while continuing failure on the NCLB testing scheme carries with it a variety of consequences, reduction or elimination of federal funding is not among them. The closest I can find is that schools that "underperform" permit students to transfer to ... other schools that are performing better, if there are any.

Any chance of a cite?

--d.

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1122295598[/unixtime]]The part about the christian mindset that I don't get is the abstinence as sex education one.

Yes, folks, sex is evil and dirty, and you should only do it with the one you've sworn to love forever.

Game On,
fbmf

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1122227933[/unixtime]]

4. Again I question why police carry guns during their normal routines.

Talk to a couple bartenders.

Because occasionally, cops have to "escort" NFL defensive linemen who've had a little too much to drink out of bars, nightclubs or sub shops. They absolutely don't need to shoot these people, but they need to have a credible threat of overwhelming force against physically stronger people in order to do their job, and this threat needs to be available faster than backup is likely to arrive in most juridstictions.

I think that the shotgun in the car model would work well enough, and oh hell, tasers, pepper spray and newfangled "goop guns" can all accomplish the job

. The current global political situation is very very bad. a couple of days ago someone actually told me that Bush had done as good a job as was reasonable to expect, considering 9/11. What? 9/11 killed less people than auto accidents tht year.

You mean that month

Actually, I can't prove that, but according to Official Government Statistics, roughly 12 times as many people died on the highway as in the WtC incident in 2001, so by averages, it should be really close.

Frank wrote:Simple: the right wing was against the idea of funding public education in the first place.

They work together but with different goals. The straight out right would like to eliminate public schools and replace it with, well nothing, as part of their elimination of the government to return all power into the hands of some sort of anarchic capitalist oligarchy.

The RELIGIOUS right would like to eliminate public schools, which they see as a breeding ground for atheism and the quesitoning of faith, so they can replace it with religious indoctrination. All as part of THEIR plan to eliminate secular government and replace it with a fanatical theocracy.

At some point down the path one group has to stab the other in the back, leave the other in the gutter and part ways. The right believes they can do the fundies because the fundies are nuts and simple minded dupes. The fundies believe they will be doing the stabbing because it is the work of god.

The fact that the fundies are relying on an invisible stabbing buddy aside, I think BOTH groups are taking a big gamble and though I can't pick a clear winner I hope niether wins.