What a morning already! Via the article on Slashdot comes an article on GamePolitics.com about how Jack Thompson is trying to get Halo 3 declared a public nuisance! Basically, he wants to use legislation (aimed at closing down brothels and rowdy gambling joints) to stop a video game from being released. I can understand why… there’s always been a very real danger of kids dressing up in armoured suits and shooting aliens with sci-fi weaponry, and THIS GAME MAKES IT SEEM LIKE FUN!
Bastards. Those Bungie guys… what were they THINKING? Alas, poor Covenant… I knew them, Horatio!
The thing in the article at GP that doesn’t actually work for me is this:
More troubling by far are the long term implications of this action. Thompson apparently feels emboldened to invoke Florida’s public nuisance law against any video game he desires to target. That is the essence of censorship and the video game industry cannot allow it to continue on any number of grounds – legal, moral or creative.
I would have to say that the video game industry needs to let ol’ Jacky-boy have his fun, because the only thing that will finally shut him up, is for him to ruin his credibility so often that no news organization will print his name ever again (nay, not even when reporting his inevitable disbarment), and he can reflect upon his life with a lonely bottle of whiskey as the world goes to pot around him. Or something like that.
But my point is: don’t try and shut Jack Thompson up. He is his own worst enemy, and it’s much more entertaining to see him dig his own grave.
I choose to believe this article on Breitbart.com about parallel universes existing. In a nutshell:
In Everett’s “many worlds” universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out – in its own universe.
A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.
The reason this theory being somewhat reputable is important to me is because it allows many of the stories I am writing to be considered somewhat plausible (like The First 10%, which depends on this heavily). I also very much enjoy the idea of exploring ghost stories through that lens… it almost makes the paranormal somewhat normal.
True or not, it’s quite cool. It means I can feel a bit more like a smart person, and less like a loon. A bit.
After posting that last entry about pixel-stained technopeasants, the ads along the side of the page read in part:
God -total Union with God
Why Jesus is the Only Way to Union? The Answer May Surprise You.
Know how the Lord comes?
The Lord has come to China hiddenly Judgment has begun at God’s house
Your Free Gift From God
Jesus Has a Free Gift For You. Do You Want It?
It’s very interesting to see those particular choices on a page on my blog… not the kinda thing I’d have expected. What I don’t know yet is which side of the copyright debate Jesus is on… but he’s apparently very involved in some fashion.
I feel vaguely uncomfortable now.
Boing Boing has a post by Cory Doctorow about yon pixel-stained technopeasants, and the debate between Howard Hendrix and Scott Sigler on the subject. While I agree with the entirety of Cory’s post, the thing that actually jumped out at me the most was this bit:
Part of Howard’s argument seems to be that big corporations profit from the free circulation of materials online — ISPs, telcos, search-engines, hosting companies, etc. This is undoubtedly true, but not endemic to online solely. Bookstores, phone companies, newspapers, publishers, shipping companies, and so on — they’ve all profited through the ages from writers’ activity.
Now that’s an interesting concept… I mean, if I’d written a book and it was sold in a bookstore, and that bookstore received or shipped the book via FedEx, does FedEx owe me money for being involved in the distribution of the book? Should writers sue shipping companies for a portion of profits earned from the transportation of merchandise, because otherwise they’re earning money off a writer’s work without compensation…
Then again, this is an industry that thinks libraries are houses of infringement and must be shut down, so I suppose their ultimate goal is to make the world less-well-read, so that whoever has the best marketing budget will be read, and the rest will die in obscurity. That’s certainly a much better scenario than letting people read things for free…
In my continuing quest to avoid thinking about planes and losing altitude, I would like to point to a show on Channel 4 in the U.K. called “The I.T. Crowd”. Originally, I thought it was a geek-only sorta show, but my wife (who hates all geeks with a passion) actively waits for the new episodes to arrive each week. Check out the regular Boing Boing posts on the episodes for information on acquiring your own experiences.
And since we’re on the subject, the creator of the show, Graham Linehan, has a very wonderfully-done blog which is the perfect example of how I want to run this site one day. Or sorta like that. My show’s not nearly as funny. But it’s not s’posed to be.
Aw never mind.
