Donation Tracker Online

Use my Child's Play button on the sidebar to head on over to the new RelicNews Child's Play Donation tracker, every penny counts!

Props to Molo!

Firefox Beta Adblock fix

A while ago, I told you to dissable Adblock so that you could see Flash animations again in the Firefox Beta.

Well no longer, mosy on over to the AdBlock Plus website, and get Adblock Plus extention, this works for me, good luck!

Have fun!

The Jack rant

There is a Person, an individual that is a self proclaimed expert on something he has, time and time again, shown that he knows nothing about. You probably know the lawyer from Miami, Jack Thompson, and you probably know about his latest crusade, but what you may not know is how long he has been making these bizarre, irrational and ignorant claims.

Before I start on that, I want to clarify my position on the violent game dispute. I think that a person should not play a “violent” video game if they are not mature enough. To understand what I mean, a quick look at the RelicNews forum in the forum issues section will explain a lot. You will see people who were banned because they were being idiots or inciting a lot of hate. Some do not even seem to take the time to spell out a simple word such as “you” or “why” and will replace them with “u” and “y” respectively. Some of these people are older than I am, yet show a lower level of maturity. For myself, my parents long ago decided that I could drink alcohol, as long as I finished the drink. The overall effect? I didn’t drink much because it was nothing special; it also showed my parents how mature I am in that area. This brings me to my second point, only your peers (mainly parents) really know how mature you are and what games you should be playing.

Jack Thompson does not come across as a mature person. To start off we should look at his latest endeavors, from his lobbying against the gaming industry to the emails that he replies to in a most childish manner to the uninformed comments he makes such as “GTA allows you to kill pregnant women.” It would seem that he does this to further his own career, how this helps his medical malpractice suits is beyond me. This man also has a history of such frivolous actions that seem to be meant to simply defame people. For example, back in 1988, Jack ran for the Office of Dade County State Attorney against Janet Reno. Janet won, but not without Jack having his say. He made a series of ridiculous accusations, at least one of which is non-consequential, in an attempt to defame her. His methods are similar to how he acts when it comes to video games, and peoples responses to his comments.

Jack Thompson has a less than unique way of talking to people who either: A) he considers socially inferior or B) against his position. To give a bit of weight to this statement, it can be shown that Jack Thompson can act as a civil and rational person… at least while everybody is on script and agreeing with him. The moment someone comes up with a contradicting viewpoint, statistic or source, Jack’s mouth becomes a festering cesspool of indignant and unbecoming phrases. (examples 1 and 2) The second example is quite interesting; a fourteen year old makes a rather long and well thought out email to Jack, to which Jack responds with a one liner, without even backing his argument up. After a few emails are sent back and forth, the fourteen year old attempts to understand what it is that Jack is fighting against, to which Jack tells him to go check into the nearest mental institution. Evidence in this series of email transactions would suggest otherwise, as would Jack’s history for giving this recommendation, and his assertion that “gamers’ ideas are the latest oxymoron.”

Not only are his comments on other’s cognitive abilities so insulting, but so are the so called facts that he spews about video games and their effects on our minds. While I have no proof of this, Jack does not come across as someone who has truly researched his subject, if had, he would never have come up with things such as "Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise...contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair." This is of course a blatant falsity that he would have realized had he played the game at all, that, even with the censor screen off (one needs a 3rd party patch to do this) the models are featureless. Same idea for the GTA: SA “controversy,” I feel. The Hot Coffee scene cannot be seen without a third party patch, downloaded from the internet, thus even if the content was there, it’s complete inaccessibility meant that it may as well have not been there. Luckily for us, his public image is starting to crumble.

Recently, the NIMF sent Mr. Thompson an email which would serve to distance themselves from him, while both NIMF and Thompson have similar goals, NIMF is a lot more calm, educated, and in better standing with the key companies in the industry. While Jack continues to fire off threats and obscenities, NIMF has truly made an impact on minors’ access to violent games. Mr. Thompson later replied to that email, condemning them for the same reason that has allowed them to help. In this same email, he comments that he finds it amusing that a copy of NIMF’s original email was sent to Bill Gates, who Jack sees as guilty as the cause of the D.C. Beltway  sniper case, by proxy of Microsoft owning Bungie, who made the game Halo. Jack had also proposed a game himself, which he now claims was satire, where the protagonist would go on a murdering spree in vengeance for his son’s death caused by video games. He would have to kill the employees of the developer/publisher of said game and kill its CEO all while the company’s name, as well as its CEO, are modeled directly off of Take Two and Paul Eibeler (Take two’s CEO). Should someone make this game, he would donate ten thousand dollars to the charity of Paul Eibeler’s choice. Later, Jack withdrew this “modest proposal” saying that he meant it as a satire, which also meant that no charity would get the ten grand (an amount that he had rather touted when Penny-Arcade informed him how much they have raised from gamers through their charity). Upon this announcement, Penny-Arcade made the donation themselves, ten thousand dollars, under Jack’s name. This of course upset Jack, who then faxed the Seattle PD claiming that Penny Arcade had been harassing him, and that they should be arrested, all while attempting to force hate upon PA by making outrageous claims such as that GTA is a “cop-killing murder simulator” and claimed that two cops were killed (there were) by a person who was trained by video games (err no). His final paragraph gets a little too persecution happy for me, and if you read what is on penny-arcade’s website, you will agree that they have not been harassing him (though he claims they are idiots for putting up proof that they are harassing him).

The result of all this? Well, I am rather pleased to say that Jack Thompson is now under investigation by the Florida Bar Assoc. who had already given him a reprimand in 1998 for his antics back then. The FBA says that they have received an overwhelming number of complaints on Jack, and with any luck, they could revoke his license as a lawyer.

Sources: pretty much just wikipedia and many sites they also source.

-- the_sidewinder

Song of the day: Your Attention Please by The Blue Man Group off their album The Complex

New stuff, and: Actions speak louder than words

I picket up a Wacom Graphire3 tablet a few days ago. Sadly I do not have Photoshop (well, not a new one at any rate *cough* PS5 *cough*) and probably won't until after the holidays. Thank MS for creating the want for FOSS, for without it, I wouldn't even have The GIMP (GIMP 2.2 isn't at all that bad)

DeepChrome lead me to a section of Greg Martin's website previously unexplored by myself. This section contains tutorials, and while what I have been making based on the Star Field tutorial pails in comparison with his beautiful works of art, they are a great starting point.

Also, Jack is a liar, he seems to never have meant to donate that money, and has withdrawn his offer, thankfully, the guys at Penny-Arcade made a $10,000 donation in Jack's name.

Rant coming up

I have been working on a Jack Thompson essay/rant for a bit, in a rather on and off fashion. I think I will be completing it this week or the next, mainly because of this.

To keep yourselves amused in the meantime, go read Dominic Deegan, Oracle For Hire, all of it.

And for some more fun, my Windows XP desktop:


Widgets (CAST pattern): Silica Weather, Silica CPU and Drive meter, Omni Analogue, Wireless signal strength, Rainlendar with the Rewind Mode 2 skin.

Skin: Arrow, part of WindowBlinds 5

Dock: ObjectDock Plus (flyout menus) using the SkyAero Skin

Wallpaper: Winter Mist II by Greg Martin

Good news for peoples rights!

The topmost court in Australia has ruled that modchips in PlayStations are not against copyright. These mod chips, among other things, allow one to circumvent Regional Coding on DVDs, which the court says restricted competition and consumer rights.

Way to go guys! I hope we get something similar here.

Origional article can be found on The Register.

Firefox 1.5 beta 1 issues with flash

If you are having issues with flash showing in Firefox 1.5 Beta 1, try disabling adblock, it seems to have a few problems so far in 1.5.

Beta 2 will be out on the 5th according to Mozilazine.

Happy browsing!