Link takes me to another thing on the site.

Yeah, not sure they have posted it yet. Not on their RSS feed or Main site that I can find.

So? I love opinionated rubbish that I agree with.

Great article, Dennis

I have to agree with you here Dennis. Despite what the posters on Joystiq said your article was timely and it was important.

Looks like I am in for some fun reading when I get home.

Can't wait to see what the people on Joystiq think.

It dose raise some points that make you think...hhhmmmm...

@Vinzent

He doesn't like them, but he's more or less happy to let the industry police itself.

I wonder how Romney would feel if we waterboarded him..

Oh, I'd make an exception for John McCain though.

@King James

Always makes me think of that 'Red vs Blue' introduction to the internet...

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2778175

Yeah i loved all those Mitt Romney R movies that were made into video games, they are the best ones ever!!!

GP Disclaimer: Dennis hates Mitt Romney

how is romney not agreeing that waterboarding is torture a video game issue exactly?

GP: In and of itself, it is not. However, if you read the article - and I'm assuming that you did - I am contrasting his acquiesence to real-world torture with his position on violent video games.

And just what kind of message is that for the kiddies? That our potential leader is okay with torture? Whatever happened to the moral high ground? This country used to stand for something...

@scot

cause he (romney) says that waterboarding is something to be decided yet has said that video games are part of the sea of filth that today's youth is swimming in.

in other words, waterboarding isn't out right bad/evil but video games are.

@Zero Beat

"Remember, kids, if you attack Republicans, you’re a left-wing liberal communist"

How'd you know that..?

@ Pixelantes

Yes I do. I love a good laugh in the evenings. It helps break the mundane effects of work.

I'm rather torn with this editorial.

On one hand, "Oven" Mitt Romney pulls out the "those darn kids" routine, just short of shaking a cane and telling people to stay off his lawn with the "Digital Bogeyman" tactic.
I know better that most of that is just a load of hokum and doesn't win a lot of points with me, especially when I work in that "evil industry that corrupts the youth" he frequently rants about.

On the other hand, we mention torture as an example that should be reviled, and that he didn't want to outright denounce it. While it is a horrible practice, it should be viewed more or less as a necessary evil, no different than justifiable homicide.
Just the same as I'd do whatever in my power to protect my life and the lives of my friends, family and neighbors, if torturing was the only quick method to get information that could stop some horrible act of destruction out of a criminal, I'd be first in line to pull the switch.

My father told me one time why he allowed me to play all the violent video games that everyone told him would make me more anti social was because those games were about heroes. Sure, there's plenty of icky stuff in the Resident Evil games, but Chris, Jill, Leon and the others try to do the right thing. In short he taught me that "context, instead of content"- It's not what the act is, but what the act *was about*.

While harming another and taking a life are two horrible things, I'd rather have those factors over my head then to remove important tools that, when used sparsely and judiciously, ensure safety and security.

With that said, I agree with GP's closing statement, but can not agree with the method on how he got there.

I also read those comments on Joystiq. About 75% of the posters (no, I did NOT do the math) are being total idiots.

@ Gp

While it's a big stretch to say your completely unbiased dennis, you are a pretty fair guy in most cases. That being said, I can't really argue with ya on this issue, this hyporacy is rather obvious, almost to the point of being blatant.

Rommney is a self serving line towing Republican, through and through. Arnold has made a clear and vested intrest in trying to seem "family oriented" since he was elected to office, which is no suprise to me. To do so, he had to dump his violent action hero past so that he could avoid having it used against him. Lets face it, he got alot of heat for it when signed the game law, and got more when he vowed an appeal. Odds are he's gonna lose the appeal anyway, but at least it makes him look good for the Fundies and the Family values crowd.

Lets face it dennis, almost all politicains, rep and dem alike are liars and hypocrites, Hillary, Obama, Mc Cain, Bush. Not one has ever really served the People of the usa, but always focused on there own pwersonal intrested and power.

Nothing ever changes.

@Wirebrain
A Necessary Evil... i find that to be rather questionable when it comes to torture. I mean, when i think about it, it does not seem to be at all a good method of getting accurate information. If the Prisoner truly knows nothing they will say so... but ofcourse such an answer is not satisfactory and as such they would be tortured until they spoke... but since they know nothing they only thing they can say is "i don't know" or outright lie; and i'd imagine they would lie just to end the torture. If the prisoner does know something, then the question is how to get the truth out of him... you have no way of verifying what they say in the short term so much like an innocent prisoner they can just lie to get out of it in order to protect the information... and after you find out they lied you try to torture them again and they lie again... eventually it gets to the point where you don't know if he's telling the truth, feeding you lies and covering the truth, or if really doesn't know anything; if he gave you the truth could we even tell that it really is truthful?... All in all, in either case, torture sounds like it could be very ineffective at gathering information and sounds like it would only throw us off track with false information instead of helping us better protect our people. Maybe torture might work out in a few cases, but i'd imagine it failing in most cases.

Really in the hypothetical situation of needing "quick information" to stop an act of destruction that was soon to happen, you'd probably spend to much time sorting through the lies to actually make it in time...

Necessary evil i would say can only really be considered necessary is if their were no alternatives and if the the method was actually effective... i may be speaking out of ignorance, but it sounds very ineffective to me...

@ some jabroni calling himself "hugh hefner"

The game ratings are being enforced, you ignorant fool. The Federal Trade Commission's last study(and the FTC has more credibility than the NIMF) showed that a minor was able to purchase a M-rated game 42% of the time(and 35% of the time at major retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Target), while at the same time, a minor was able to purchase R-rated movies 71% of the time. So much for "the movie industry understanding that no one under 17 can get any of Arnold's R-rated movies."

Arnold is a hypocrite for making his millions of dollars making violent movies(and even his so-called "family-friendly" movies like Jingle All The Way and Kindergarten Cop have violence), yet whining about video games.

Mitt Romney is nothing but a flip-flopper, as he's changed his opinion on every major campaign issue in the last twenty years he's been involved in politics.

There's no hypocrites in the ESA or the ECA either. They want game ratings enforced, but not when the game industry's unfairly targeted while the movie and music industries get free passes.

@ hugh hefner
page not found.
Torture only works well if you have many prisoners that your tortureing and they all give the same story (give or take).
Now lets follow the snakey road of my logic. Now torture can give some good info. But the flipside it gives terrorists more recruteing power. Like in Iraq where 1 civilian killed by american forces while fighting terrorits helps recrute 10 more to the terrorists side and killing the terrorists does little to nothing. Now torture just tarnishes the US's image (more). The tarnished image makes other nations less likely to want to help or support said nation, and gives unfriendly nations (and let us not forget about groups) more reasons to be unfriendly (or downright hostile). Plans the unfriendly nations (and groups) are going to get more likely to succed. Why? Because the people involved in the plan are not going to want to be tortured, but they do want to strike a blow against the "vile" torturer's (Ahem, if anyone remembers "___ has WMD's" to "___ tortured his own people" (yes you have to fill in the blanks)).
And thats my logic as far as I want to type (or can my mind jumps about alot and then I forget the logical path that I took to arrive at the comclusion so at times it seems fragmented but somehow it all should tie together).

In short:
Tourture can help stop one plot but the fact that you torture people helps recrute more people for other and later plots, and when they act out the plot they are just going to be more cautious, more aware, and more determined to see it through (or die so as to avoid torture).

To use a quote from another of my hobbies "Thought for the Day: Hate Enriches." Warhammer 40k rulebook 4th Edition, page 7, bottom right corner. (ps yes I went and looked for a quote to use thou to be truthful I wanted something more profound)

Now it wouldn't surprise me if this 'Hefner' really IS a JT alt... then again, we've had a couple of fakers over the past week or so...

@monte'

Then let me ask you this- Do you think terrorists will just hand out information out of the goodness of their hearts if we say we're not going to torture them?

I'm not saying let's yank any average guy off the street and reenact a scene from a Saw film. But to just say that "no, we're not going to do it at all" is stupid. The bad guys do indeed watch what our leaders and news centers say.

Honestly, I'd love to see intelligence representatives EXAGGERATE in hearings on what interrogation techniques are used to help inspire criminals to spill the beans quicker before they are even touched.

Judging by the post in the Next Generation article and this one, Hugh Hefner and William Panderlust are either the same person, or two LaRouchites sharing the same computer.

They share the same IP, but different emails, but they sound an aweful lot like LaRouchites.

Personally, I think the most stunningly hypocritical thing about Romney is that he pretends to be a small government conservative yet wants the Feds to get involved in regulating yet another thing. Let's just hope he loses the primary lest we end up with a contest between two nannies.

Though there's not many good choices either way. Just based on past votes and general positions, I would rank the candidates in this order in regards to censorship:

#1- Ron Paul. He subscribes to the 'shrink the Federal government until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub' school of thought. But he also has no chance.

#2- Fred Thompson. Makes "moralistic" noises from time to time about porn, abortion, and such, but is a committed federalist so wouldn't want the feds involved either way. Bonus points: Has voted against bills in the Senate to censor/regulate violent TV.

#3- Giuliani. Generally speaking, he's an authoritarian nightmare waiting to happen. But he's a big fan of the free market, so wouldn't get involved there. Not much of a consolation prize, but, err, yea..

#4- McCain. He's also voted against censorship/regulation of violent TV. But he likes government power and changes positions somewhat randomly when politically expedient. Oh, and, the McCain-Feingold political speech censorship, umm, "campaign reform" act, so, no.

Everyone else sucks.

Reading the postings at this site constitutes torture, and yet you all seem to like it. By the way, you know what a sadist is, right? It\'s someone who is nice to masochists.

Waterboarding is not torture. Its coercion. And it works.

As to the 42% failure rate documented by the FTC in the sale of mature games to kids: That\'s very high failure rate, and David Walsh\'s NIMF confirms that the failure rate has now risen to 50%. You think America would tolerate a 50% failure rate in selling booze at 7-11 to minors? Get a grip.

Finally, \"Ron Paul has a great chance?\" At what, privatizing the interstate highway system? This guy is an anarchist, who is perfect to run the ESA and the ECA.

"As to the 42% failure rate documented by the FTC in the sale of mature games to kids: That\’s very high failure rate, and David Walsh\’s NIMF confirms that the failure rate has now risen to 50%. You think America would tolerate a 50% failure rate in selling booze at 7-11 to minors? Get a grip".

Yet America tolerates a 70+% failure rate in selling unrated or R-rated movies to kids. So it doesn't surprises me if America tolerates a 42% failure rate of selling M-rated games to kids.

Heh. Soooooo glad my country doesn't have much of a video game issue. I don't think games have ever been mentioned as a political topic, only as a police issue and a children's health issue.

@ King James

[i]I’ve been on that board. Good grief. The heat on that board is terrible. Proof of John Gabriel’s Greater Internet D*ckwad Theory for sure:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total D*ckwad.[/i]

WHAT?!? This Anonymous always thought the Legion was proof enough of this theory (which I've never heard of before, will have to investigate)! Besides, this equation doesn't always equal 'Total D*ckwad' as you say, but that's another story entirely?

@ some waterhead calling himself "hugh hefner"

Did you fail reading comprehension as a child?

A 42% failure rate is still way lower than a 71% failure rate that the movie industry has in the last FTC report.

Are you that mentally deficient that you can't seem to understand that?

@ hugh hefner

check out this article.

Persons accused of state crimes very frequently were interrogated with the use of specific techniques, including the rack, the thumbscrew, and waterboarding. King James I personally described the process in The Kings Booke (1606). He would, on the advice of his officers, “approve no new torture,” but he would certainly avail himself of the existing practices. In ascending order of severity they were: thumbscrews, the rack and waterboarding. That’s right. Waterboarding was considered the most severe of the official forms of torture. Worse than the rack and thumbscrews.

Still not torture?

@Jack Pandralust Hefner Thompson

"Hypocrites? Hardly. Waterboarding, used only a few times, demonstrably saved lives. See this report at http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/11/agent.tapes/index.html."


It saving lives is not a qualifier for whether or not it is torture. You could hack off someone's legs with an ax and get the same info to save the same amount of lives.

Using torture for a military advantage, thus saving lives, is nothing new.

"Not sure what lives a kid playing GTA has saved."

http://gamepolitics.com/2007/12/14/soldier-gamer-dies-in-iraq/


"As to Arnold, the movie industry understands that no one under 17 was supposed to get into any of his R-rated movies. As David Walsh of NIMF recently proved the video game industry sells M-rated games to kids under 17 about half the time."

Oh really? The movie industry understands that? Then just why are minors able to buy violent R-rated movies, such as Arnolds 80% of the time?

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/07/mvreport.shtm

Oops, your argument just broke.

"Waterboarding is not torture. Its coercion. And it works."

Torture has been used for coercion for a long time. You have yet to prove how its NOT torture.


"As to the 42% failure rate documented by the FTC in the sale of mature games to kids: That\’s very high failure rate, and David Walsh\’s NIMF confirms that the failure rate has now risen to 50%. You think America would tolerate a 50% failure rate in selling booze at 7-11 to minors? Get a grip."

If 42% for the video game industry is high just how do you find the movie industry's 80% acceptable? I would accept a 50% failure rate to selling booze at a 7-11 to a minor over an 80% failure rate.

These Governors are hypocrites, and so are you Jack.

Mitt Romney fucking disgusts me. Let's torture people, but make sure they don't play any of those horrible fucking videogames.

Schwarzenegger is also a fucking hypocrite. I wonder how many millions of dollars he made by starring in bloody violent movies like Total Recall or The Terminator?