Another Hump-day Crushed!
Jul. 28th, 2005 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptOr something like that. Today was surprisingly productive, half at work, half spent rummaging around, watching silly videos, cooking microwave and stovetop meals, seeing Fred "Piro" Gallagher at the local library giving a talk on creativity (MT Book #2 sketched in - only one to go for now). The panelists were good, keeping mostly to topic, and also asking for a little bit of a drawing demonstration. Sketched a bit myself, but I still can't quite capture his style even close.
But I did do some things that were okay. Nothing that I'd put up and let you guys shred, but it was playing with expressions. Some of them turned out well, although for one I think I needed to add the apron before it worked. Anyway. The Threat Level of LJ may have risen a bit while I was out and about, but I think things have settled again.
Lending more credence to the idea that preference is a gene thing (if you read between the lines of this argument), it appears that genes play a bigger role in deciding mates than we thought. It might not be the kind of thing that swings the argument all the way to one side, and the researchers are cautioning against over-interpretation. Still, that suggests that it's not necessarily completely a matter of choice in deciding who to partner up with. Let the battles continue.
We knew this was coming, we knew this was coming. We hoped that people would prove to be more intelligent than this, but the lure of money and infamy is too strong. An individual is suing Rockstar over "Hot Coffee". A game that he bought for his fourteen-year-old grandson. An M-rated game, intended to be played by those seventeen and up, for a fourteen-year-old. Now, he may have been a mature-in-mind fourteen-year-old, but GTA really does deserve the rating. Naturally, the grandfather was unaware of the mod, and is now suing Rockstar, claiming that they were deceptive in advertising.
Okay. Once more, for the idiots. Fact: The sexual minigame was cut out of the final game. Fact: It requires modification of the executable code through third-party software to access this minigame. Fact: Based on the game submitted, GTA is an M-rated game. The rating was changed because the mod became popular. Which is stupid. Suing Rockstar because someone else made a mod is also stupid, and makes no sense. If you're going to sue someone, sue the guy who mad the Hot Coffee mod - he's the one who permits the kids to be exposed to the porn. But you shouldn't really sue him. Rockstar could, claiming he broke his EULA by making modifications, but you really don't have much business suing him. The ESRB changed the rating because the mod became popular - the government was breathing down their necks. Then again, the government was going to take this as an excuse to get involved anyway.
For those up on their gaming lore, does this sound familiar? Doom, perhaps? The government was just about to get involved there, and the ESRB was created to avoid that fate. Now, even with them, the government is going to do what it wanted to anyway. The question is whether this means just effective ratings or that video games will forever be stuck as children's fare, suitable to be grown out of at age 10. In the name of decency, the government will censor everything they think they can get away with. If they think they're stopping the school shootings by doing this, they're wrong. If they think they're stopping people from becoming violent, they're wrong. If they say they're preventing untold amounts of violence by children, they're lying.
There, now that I've expunged that vitriol, I feel like going to bed. Tomorrow may yet be as productive as today.
But I did do some things that were okay. Nothing that I'd put up and let you guys shred, but it was playing with expressions. Some of them turned out well, although for one I think I needed to add the apron before it worked. Anyway. The Threat Level of LJ may have risen a bit while I was out and about, but I think things have settled again.
Lending more credence to the idea that preference is a gene thing (if you read between the lines of this argument), it appears that genes play a bigger role in deciding mates than we thought. It might not be the kind of thing that swings the argument all the way to one side, and the researchers are cautioning against over-interpretation. Still, that suggests that it's not necessarily completely a matter of choice in deciding who to partner up with. Let the battles continue.
We knew this was coming, we knew this was coming. We hoped that people would prove to be more intelligent than this, but the lure of money and infamy is too strong. An individual is suing Rockstar over "Hot Coffee". A game that he bought for his fourteen-year-old grandson. An M-rated game, intended to be played by those seventeen and up, for a fourteen-year-old. Now, he may have been a mature-in-mind fourteen-year-old, but GTA really does deserve the rating. Naturally, the grandfather was unaware of the mod, and is now suing Rockstar, claiming that they were deceptive in advertising.
Okay. Once more, for the idiots. Fact: The sexual minigame was cut out of the final game. Fact: It requires modification of the executable code through third-party software to access this minigame. Fact: Based on the game submitted, GTA is an M-rated game. The rating was changed because the mod became popular. Which is stupid. Suing Rockstar because someone else made a mod is also stupid, and makes no sense. If you're going to sue someone, sue the guy who mad the Hot Coffee mod - he's the one who permits the kids to be exposed to the porn. But you shouldn't really sue him. Rockstar could, claiming he broke his EULA by making modifications, but you really don't have much business suing him. The ESRB changed the rating because the mod became popular - the government was breathing down their necks. Then again, the government was going to take this as an excuse to get involved anyway.
For those up on their gaming lore, does this sound familiar? Doom, perhaps? The government was just about to get involved there, and the ESRB was created to avoid that fate. Now, even with them, the government is going to do what it wanted to anyway. The question is whether this means just effective ratings or that video games will forever be stuck as children's fare, suitable to be grown out of at age 10. In the name of decency, the government will censor everything they think they can get away with. If they think they're stopping the school shootings by doing this, they're wrong. If they think they're stopping people from becoming violent, they're wrong. If they say they're preventing untold amounts of violence by children, they're lying.
There, now that I've expunged that vitriol, I feel like going to bed. Tomorrow may yet be as productive as today.
