ESA: Water on Mars!

There is water on Mars.

Now, I'm going to play it pessimistic here. It may not actually be water. But the European Space Agency is pretty sure it is not liquid carbon dioxide or any of the other liquidized gasses present on Mars during its long winter. And it is probably just the remains of a small comet of some sort that wrecked into Mars millions of years ago.

But to top it off, the ESA believes that their Mars Express mission (the one that found the lake) has also discovered dust-covered seas

So if the ESA is right:

THERE IS WATER ON MARS. And not just "Traces" the US was looking for with Sojourner. There is a full blown LAKE, and possibly SEAS.

And with water, the possibility of life...

This. Is. Huge.

(Why the hell hasn't CNN picked up on this yet?)

Greed & Grand Theft Auto: The Lawsuits Begin

I was going to do a little essay about the nature of politicians versus the nature of true statesmen today, but that one'll have to wait until tomorrow. There is going to be a third GTA story in a row, here. I read this story on CNN today, and now I am just fuming.

Long story short: This grandmother purchased Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for her grandson. When she found out it contained "hidden sexually explicit scenes," she responded by suing Rockstar Games and Take Two Interactive. "On behalf of herself and all consumers nationwide."

Bullcrap! She did it on behalf of her pocketbook.

Rockstar is NOT guilty of deceptive business practices. They are guilty of idiocy if they thought that the sealed "Hot Coffee" content was never going to be found, and the are certainly guilty of spinelessness for blaming it on the modding community when it was discovered and put back in. But deceptive? Not really.

Now that's not even what burns me. This woman is upset about sexual content in a game that is meant for seventeen year olds or older that she purchased for her fourteen year old grandson.

The game is rated M. There is a great big M in the lower right hand corner on the back of the box. Right next to the damn M are the phrases "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs." Right above the M, it says “Mature, 17+.” There should have been no question the game was not appropriate for her grandson!

You regenerate your health by visiting hookers, for the love of God! In the actual, unmodified game! Sexual content was already in the damn thing! Along with the violence, blood and gore, language and drug use! It said so on the back of the box by the great big fucking letter M! Jesus Christ Almighty!

IT IS A MATURE THEMED GAME ABOUT FUCKING GANG WARFARE! What did she think it contained? Pony rides?

I really hate to talk about a grandmother in a disrespectful manner, but considering she did no research on the game (and probably didn't even read the packaging) before she purchased it, she has NO RIGHT to compensation due to her own negligence!


...Okay, I'm done. Rant over. Move along, nothing to see here.

Rant: Where's the Outrage?

On the Video Game legal front: the FTC has launched an investigation into RockStar Games for deceptive business practices, the governments of several states are throwing around bills banning violent video games, Jack "I Hate Videogames and the People that Play Them" Thompson is now going after The Sims 2 because it has somehow become a "pedophile training simulation", and various Senators have vowed to get to the bottom of it all.

Get to the bottom of what? Some digitized people dry humping each other?

(In the default version of the "Hot Coffee" minigame, the one that uses strictly the on-disk content, both characters are clothed for crying out loud...)

And yet so many people are treating it like it's the end of the fucking world. "Oh, Lordy, save us from the pixilated boobs!" Asshats!

Hillary Clinton for example, (who is my personal idea of the Antichrist, quite frankly) wants "put teeth into the rating system" via federal legislation. Specifically, she wants to make selling an M rated video game to someone under 17 an offense punishable by a $5,000 fine.

<sarcasm>
Yes, there's an excellent idea! Ruin something else by binding it in red tape and crushing it in the soulless grip of legislation! Brilliant! In fact, why not have a government run agency decide which games are okay and which games are not? That way, everyone gets to play only the nonviolent video games like Mario Power Tennis. (The real Mario Brothers, you see, would be too violent due to Mario stomping all those Koopas.) In fact, let's apply it to print and film as well! HELL! Why not apply it to SPEECH! I mean, we can’t have a SPEECH loophole! Someone might be offended somewhere down the line, and we can’t EVER let someone get offended! Who needs the First Amendment anyway? Freedom? Bah! Censorship is required! Do it for the children! We have a SOCIETY to protect from THEMSELVES!
</sarcasm>

...And I say again... ASSHATS!


Let me put this in a little perspective:

I could let a minor into an R-rated movie featuring violence and sex: No fine.
I could sell a minor an explicit CD with lyrics about violence and sex: No fine.
I could sell a minor a trashy novel filled with violence and sex: No fine.

But if it's a video game, OH NOES! I must be beaten down with a $5,000 fine.

Further perspective: I could sell your child BOOZE, and in my state (because even THAT is not a Federal offense, it is a State offense!) I would be subject to a maximum $2,500 fine.

Therefore, if I sold a minor a copy of Grand Theft Auto, I committed an act apparently twice as bad as selling a minor a bottle of 151 Rum (something that, in sufficient quantities, can kill them).

Bravo.

Of course, the government can focus on stuff like this! It's not as if there is anything more IMPORTANT happening! We can have politicians posturing about video games and spend millions in taxpayer dollars on inquiries because there is nothing more important right now we could be doing with it! I mean, the country isn't horribly divided over a multitude of issues right now! It's not as if we're fighting a WAR or anything.

I'm tired of it. I am tired of hearing how video game are evil. I'm also tired of hearing about how Jude Law fucked his nanny, about those stupid Mexican stamps that some found offensive, the new tower in Chicago that has barely left the "drawing board" stages, Tom Cruise losing his mind, and a mass of other crap that I really find to be NON-ISSUES. And due what seems to be an ever increasing amount of completely apathetic Lemmings who care about little but themselves, what happens is... Nothing. Not a damn thing. The media keeps treating bullcrap as top news, and the politicians keep ranting about stuff that doesn't matter.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?!

LEMMINGS! PERSPECTIVE!

The government works for US. It works for you. It works for me. It does NOT work for itself.

And the media is supposed to inform us, not merely entertain us. It is supposed to keep us informed about real issues, so when the time comes, we can make informed decisions that will affect our Republic. It is NOT supposed to blather on for hours about celebrity gossip.

Until you, as a collective group, demand that the politicians and media focus on stuff that truly matters, nothing will change. Politicians will tie this land up in Red Tape so tight you can't even fart without filling out a permission form in triplicate at your local government office, while the media will give you 24-hour coverage of the Runaway Bride (or whatever tomorrow's pointless story will be).

Remember: Apathy is the Enemy!

Now, for the love of God, get it in gear and press for change!

Thompson, GTA, and the Sims 2: I Hate Being Right

The Video Game Controversy is the Rock & Roll controversy of today. It is the demon of choice. Since Rock & Roll (along with comic books and role-playing games) is now mainstream, and cannot be blamed on corrupting today's youth, the people who would wish to hate something to find an excuse for violence have set their sights squarely on interactive entertainment.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was recently pulled off of store shelves due to content the developers had left on the DVD, but had "locked." A sexually explicit minigame (A poorly rendered one, at that) was placed in at some point, but the developers pulled it from the final cut. Rather than remove the content from the DVD, they did a slightly sloppier method of yanking the content from the game: they changed the access bits so it was no longer used. This would be comparable to having a room in your house that you have walled off to hide what was in it.

Now, an enterprising modder found this content and wrote a fairly simple patch to reenable it. This is equivalent to someone taking a sledgehammer and knocking down the wall to see what is in the room you walled off.

Now, it should be mentioned that a "Mod" (short for "Modification") is a third-party construct, usually by a non-for-profit programmer. It is not, repeat, not written by the creators of the game. Modders are people who play the game, enjoy the game, and create mods to enhance the game and simply for the fun of it. Due to specialized interest, some mods are 'naughty.' There have been nudie mods and the occasional sex mod for just about any game that had any sort of role playing or adventure element since the Nude Patch for "Tomb Raider." (Before that, probably.) Why do modders create such items? Well, frankly, because they can.

Now, GTA has been hated by anti-gaming crowds (such as Jack Thompson, mentioned below, and Hillary Clinton) for quite a while now, and a lot of bullshit has been spread about it. But the "Hot Coffee" mod (the name of the mod that unlocks the sex game) takes the cake. Without really trying to accurately explain what a mod was, this was decried as "corrupting the youth" or some other such garbage. Note to Lemmings: GTA is an M rated game. 17+ is the intended audience. That means your 12 year old is NOT supposed to be playing it!

Because the content was "merely unlocked," it made the Hot Coffee mod somehow "different" from every other mod. Rockstar Games was blamed on "tricking" the public and the ESRB. In the media-driven backlash, the ESRB pulled GTA and re-rated it AO, "Adults Only." And I knew exactly what was going to happen from this point. Today, Jack Thompson, the virulently anti-videogame lawyer who has blamed everything from Columbine to the Beltway Sniper to them (not to mention compared video game programmers to Nazis), has issued a statement saying the "Sims 2" features cheat codes and mods that feature fully detailed nude Sim characters. He called it a "Pedophile training game" or some such.

Now, the problem (for Jack) is that he is wrong. The Stock Sims 2 game features no such nudity. It IS implied. For example, if a Sim takes a shower, there is a blur around the Sim to cover up the "naughty parts." It IS possible to enter lines of code in the command console of the game to remove the blur, but all you find is that the Sims are like Barbie and Ken dolls. They simply have no features from neck to knee. No reproductive organs or mammary glands are visible.

Alas! There ARE nude Sim mods available. Mods called "skins," which change the way items or characters look (and hence, can add nipples and genitalia), are available online. But UNLIKE GTA, these are NOT the creation of Maxis or Electronic Arts.

That doesn't bother Jack, though! By supporting the mod community (because the mod community also creates hundreds, if not thousands, of non-sexual mods for various games per year and generally enhances the game play in ways the creator did not have time to do) these nude-mods are somehow Maxis's "Fault." THEY are at fault for someone else's work, and THEY should be held responsible for such.

This is rubbish. Holding game developers responsible for the modifications of others is simply not right. It wasn't right for Rockstar, and it sure as HELL isn't right for Maxis.

Imagine, if you would, I purchased a book from a bookstore. I wrote a disgraceful sex scene using the characters of the book, stapled my chapter into the book, and then gave the book away. Now, imagine if you would, that when someone finds out about my modification of the book, they boycott the author of the book. Doesn't make much sense, right? Well, it doesn't make much sense to hold Rockstar responsible for Hot Coffee, or EA responsible for naked Sims.

To sum up my points:

- Video games are entertainment, not murder simulators or sex-crime training devices
- Twelve year olds should not be allowed to have M-rated games
- Game developers are not responsible for objectionable content created or unlocked by minors
- Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton need better hobbies.

But I'm done being frustrated for now. Time for bed. Or maybe some more GTA. :)

(…no, definitely sleep.)

Rock on!

Bah!

Ever been volunteered for something you really didn't want to do? I am all the time. Today, I am fixing the computer of my father's coworker's brother. Nice guy I'm sure, but I don't know him. Why am I fixing his computer?

Self-diagnosis of a computer problem is also pretty aggrivating. He said "My hard drive is broken." Well, the hard drive works fine. After a week of trying to find a hardware problem, because I thought he meant something physically broke, I find out he merely meant it had spyware that needed cleared off. Bah!

So, lesson learned: Always ask really specific questions when someone says their computer is broke.

I should get it done, but I have work tomorrow. Besides, I'm fixing it for free, so he can be patient.

Rock on, kids.

Thunder!

Well, it was inevitable. Stop posting every day, and sooner or later people would stop reading it. Pretty straightforward.

Not that I can reverse this trend at the moment. Nice big lightning storm going overhead; and last time I stayed on a long time in a storm, my monitor went ...well... Boom.

So I'm gonna take a nap. Yes, sounds naptastic. I recommend naps all around.

Take two naps and call me in the morning.

Rock on, kids.

Exhaustion

Wow. Tired. So tired. I think I'm getting old.

Should a guy under 25 years of age feel like he's getting old? All I know is I used to go on a few hour's sleep a day for months at a time. Now if I don't get lots of sleep for more than a few days, I have trouble with that thing known as "Thinking."

This stinks.

I'm sure helping my friend move in this sweltering weather didn't help much.

Humidity is bad.


Anyhoo, rock on, kids.

The Subjugation Will Not Be Televised

A rather disturbing trend has begun.

(Wait...which one? So many disturbing trends, how can anyone keep track?)

This trend is a direct attack on the First Amendment, the one we should all hold most dear to our hearts. Slowly, but surely, this pillar is being chipped away. A piece here for national security, a piece there because of social pressures, another piece off the top for this or that reform... Each part lost, a wound across the face of liberty; each chunk taken away, something precious gone that is almost impossible to replace.

(Wow, am I being dramatic or what? Hey, I'm allowed, this is the Internet.)


I knew this was happening, but it really came onto my radar when the FCC began trying to crack down on 'Bloggers as a part of "Campaign Finance Reform." It seems that many people in Congress were concerned with the "Undue Influence" that readily accessible media such as weblogs presented. In other words, some of the Oligarchy in our government has decided that a form of media that can be written by anyone about anything, including such things as the virtues of lesser known candidates or the dissatisfaction with the current representation, is too much of a wild card in their 93% reelection rates. It also tends to make certain businesses uncomfortable when they screw over customers, as weblogs give an even more effective and easy to use outlet to express unhappiness and frustration with the services they received. Businesses getting nervous translates to money being passed around, and those officials, easily coerced by cash and already nervous for their own positions, go off on a small war that they try to keep as quiet as possible.

First, Bloggers are sued into revealing their sources. Because they are not "Real Journalists," the ability to protect their sources do not apply.

Then, the FCC states that it wants to regulate blogs under certain campaign finance reform acts ...ones forcing them to stop talking about the election, supposedly so that richer candidates can't pound poorer ones into the ground through "soft money"... (It fails to work, by the way.) ...because Blogs are media and should not be exempt.

So now bloggers are members of the media, but not real members of the media...

This is still bouncing around in the system, and is on shaky legal ground... but that doesn't stop people with a lot of influence trying to silence people through legal fiat.



Most recently, NYT Reporter Judith Miller was found in contempt of court for refusing to testify and reveal her sources on a CIA leak. Instant repercussions occurred, as I've heard at least two instances where newspapers have refused to run stories because they were afraid of the government suing them!


The government has begun to beat down hard on Free Speech...

..The subjugation will not be televised... There won't be anyone with media access left to report it.

Moon Mapping

This is cool. NASA is sending a satellite to orbit the moon in full detail. It'll also be picking up images of the Apollo landing sites for the first time in decades.

About time. We need to get back there already. Seriously, sheesh, it took them long enough.

Anyway, here's the link for ya.

Rock on.

The Cloudstrider Community

Not really a whole lot to talk about, just busy. I wanted to point out a new blog though, a Community Blog that includes yours truly. (Only I'm called "The Errant Knight" rather than "Knight Errant." Ah well.)

A few of my friends got together and put together the Cloudstrider Community over on LiveJournal.

A "Cloudstrider" is a term created by a friend of mine to more or less describe people who try to rise above petty trivialities and take the long view (as if looking at the world from a higher point of view). World citizens, if you will. Ones who are particularly interested in disseminating knowledge and understanding while protecting the freedoms we hold most dear as a democratic society.

It's still pretty new. Right now, aside from a post I made taken directly from this blog, it's still in the "Hey, Buddy!" phase where we're still getting a grip on where we're going. That should smooth out over the next few days and weeks, however. So please, visit, read over it, leave comments. And if you would like, petition to join. We'd be glad to have anyone interested in free thought and political and philosophical discussion. :)

Cheers, folks.

Primaries: Why Moderates Can't Win

Political parties have been around as long as politics. Where there is more than one opinion, there will be more than one group. As opinions have hardened and formalized, so have the groups. Hence, our modern day political parties.

Now, the United States, it seems, has always favored simplicity. The system it takes, direct election, means that we vote for a particular person rather than a particular party. While I like that, as we vote for a real person and can pick and choose, it unfortunately favors bicameral systems (For the Lemmings, "Bicameral" means "Two parties").

In case you’re interested in the other main system, the Parliamentary system, that works by you voting for a particular party, not a person. The votes are tallied, and the party gets a number of seats on parliament equal to the percentage of votes received. This has the disadvantage in that the party chooses the individuals that actually sit in Parliament, but has the decided advantage in that it's multilateral, and even the smallest party usually can win at least one seat, thereby representing their specific opinion.

In our system, we get to chose the individual. But the bicameral system favors extremes, not specifics. It is very sad to watch our politics devolve into "You suck!" "No, YOU suck!" "No, YOU suck" "No…" ad nauseam.

Now, of course, when you get extremists in politics, it gets ugly fast. The line gets drawn in the sand even on issues where compromise is possible. And when you consider someone "the Enemy" long enough, hell breaks loose even on issues that they should agree on for the betterment of the society they’re supposed to be governing.

In my point of view, the single biggest problem that keeps cooler-headed moderates out of the election process is the Primary Elections.

Since it is ideal for a candidate to have a majority win, each party cannot just field as many candidates as possible for the General Election. So Primaries are held to find out who they are going to put on the November ballot. Everyone from a particular party who has put their name into the hat runs against their fellows, and the victor moves on to the General. Now, this is all good and reasonable, as it knocks a dozen people from the parties down to a more manageable two or three (depending on if an independent or third party candidate managed to jump through the added hoops they have to go through…).

Now, this is pretty straightforward… So what is the problem? Well, the voters in the primaries are obviously limited to voting for the people from their own party. This gets sticky, because the people from the party aren't going to think "Who appeals to me while at the same time appeals to our political opponents? Who could bridge the gap?" They typically think "Who best represents the extreme ideologies of my party?" So when it comes down to the General Election there are no moderates, and it just turns into a vicious battle of Red versus Blue. Like a two player video game, only with less cool action hero characters, and more old guys.

This is problematic. A nasty chain reaction sets in. Without moderates, no common ground is sought. With no common ground, very little gets done. And when very little gets done… Well, the citizenry gets turned off, and they view their governmental representatives as self-interested goons our for their party rather than the people as a whole. Which is ironically accurate, because they typically ARE self-interested goons out for the party interest rather than the public good!

And self-interested goons are never a good thing for a Republic!

Of course, how do we solve this? Well, demanding to lessen the restrictions on third party candidates would be an excellent start. With more players on the field, there is a better chance of a "Good guy" getting elected for a change.

Also, a massive realignment of thought in that a person's vote HAS to be for a Republican or a Democrat. There has always been the tendency for Two Parties in our system, but they haven't always been Republicans or Democrats. Ironically, the original Big Two weren't even Republicans or Democrats! Our major parties were upstart third parties once upon a time. And even if you looked at the "Original" Reps and Dems, you wouldn't recognize them. Their goals have shifted over time, and will likely continue to move around the board.

So: Lessen the hoops that independent and third party candidates have to jump to get on the ballot
And: Vote for third party candidates.

Unfortunatly, while this is a good start, it is not nearly enough!

So, I put forth KnightErrant's first open ended question:

What do you think, as average citizens, we could do to calm the rift in American politics, and how do we bring cooler headed moderates and alternative opinioned third parties into the mix?

If you have an answer, let me hear it! Short ones can be commented below, and go ahead and send bigger ones to modernknighterrant (AT) gmail.com .

Rock on, folks!

Apathy Is The Enemy

So... It has been 229 years since those gentlemen in Philadelphia signed that immortal document declaring the United States a free nation.

What better time than this holiday to take a moment and point out something I am overtly concerned about with modern society.

This problem, which I consider to be the single biggest trouble of the United States (and quite possibly the world) today, is apathy.

It is to the point where during a typical U.S. election, you'd be lucky to get 30% of the eligible population of 124 million to vote. This past presidential election, one of the biggest and most contested in history, only saw slightly over 60%.

SIXTY PERCENT.

These people can't be bothered to spend one hour in a year to wander down to the voting booth to check a box, but most of them watched with rapt attention as Katie Couric interviewed the Runaway Bride, or strained to see if Michael Jackson wore his pajamas to court again as the trail wound down. They spend all their cash on video games and entertainment centers, but never make a donation of a single dollar or take a single hour of their time to volunteer for a charitable organization. They make sure they never miss their favorite TV show, but they don't get involved in any way shape or form with the betterment of American society, or the Human race as a whole.

And they complain about how bad stuff is, all the while marching off the cliff like good little Lemmings.

AND IT DRIVES ME BONKERS!

Alas, this is mostly preaching to the Choir, as most of the people I am actually aware of that read this blog do something with their time. However, there is still some traffic that comes here for nothing other than those Hatsumi links, as well as some random net-surfers that may or may not do anything… so maybe there are some Lemmings wandering about. The rest of you, go grab a soda and then pass up the rest of this stuff.

Let me directly address the Lemmings here:

Firstly, self interested politicians love you people. You are the reason that the current government is basically an oligarchy, with a 90% incumbency rate in Congress. They can do whatever they want, because short of murdering a crippled orphan with a puppy on the 6 O'clock news, they'll still get reelected.

Big business loves you. They can abuse the consumer however they want, because no matter how loudly you complain, you still give them your money. They could sell you a movie you could only watch once before it melts down the DVD player it's in, and you would still buy it. They could make it so that you have absolutely no ability to open up your own car to change the oil, forcing you to bring it in to an authorized dealer to get it changed for $100 every 1000 miles before some governer chip makes the car undrivable, and you would still buy the car. They could bulldoze the Library of Congress to put up a Wal-Mart staffed completely by robots, and you would still shop there.

The modern media loves you. The free press is supposed to act as democracy's guardian angel. It is supposed to look for abuses of power, and rattle cages, and keep the guys with the money and power in line. Now they just act as another one of those power-abusers, because as long as you get your celebrity interviews you don't care.

These groups could get together, blow up the Statue of Liberty, and hold a party in the wreckage (complete with a bonfire that used the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as tinder). They could televise it, and all you would do is go "Damn, that sucks," before shoveling more cheese puffs in that gaping maw of yours.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO SOMETHING! Get involved! With anything! In any capacity!

Donate money to a charitable cause! Be like Leigh Ann (the random girl from Florida who reads this blog) and join Americorp! (Or the Peace Corp for those internationally inclined!) Or spend a weekend building a house for Habitat for Humanity! Be an adult leader for a Scouting program. Be a child mentor, a Big Brother / Big Sister. Get involved in local politics, run for your school board or another local office. Write editorials. DO ANYTHING as long as it isn't sitting on your ass and doing nothing! Humanity cannot improve if everyone is sitting around and waiting for someone else to do it!

And for Pete's sake, if you do nothing else, vote! It takes, on average, less than one hour a year to wait in line and check that box. I know the old complaint that one vote doesn't change anything. This is somewhat, and sadly, true, but the point is that you're not alone! Almost fifty million people eligible didn't vote in the last election! Think of a single vote like a penny. One cent isn't worth much alone, but if I offered you fifty million cents, would you take it? (If your answer was no, you just passed up five hundred thousand dollars, by the way.)

Kids, with fifty million votes even Nader could've won. And maybe with more weight behind the voting population, we may actually get people in a positions of power that are not self-interested and corrupt!

You can either do something to improve your little corner of the world for once... Or you can keep being a Lemming.

So to those who try to change the world for the better: Good luck, and Godspeed.

And to the lemmings... i hope you choke on your cheese puffs...

Thought Showers...?

Ooo-kay, I really have to rant on this for a bit.

Ireland's Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Investment has deemed that the buzzword "Brainstorm" can no longer be used because it may offend people with epilepsy. DETI employees are to use the term "Thought Shower" instead.

Sorry, that requires mocking.

Haven't these people more better things to do with their time? Do they have a Department of Political Correctness somewhere combing the dictionary?

I don't know about you, but if I had epilepsy (I don't, but if I did), I think I would be upset, not by the buzzword, but by the fact these thought-showering idiots would believe me to be so shallow as to be offended by "Brainstorm." I can almost guarantee that the person who decided "Brainstorm" was offensive had no brain affliction other than stupidity.

This is even more dim-witted than Los Angeles County banning the term "Master" and "Slave" in reference to computer hard drives. (It worked for decades until some LA jackass decided it was offensive.) Or feminists that are offended by the phrase "rule of thumb." (It’s just a phrase, DAMN IT!!!) Or any other dozen examples I can give, but they get me too agitated for me to think about.

There needs to be a point where we step back and say, "I'm sorry you’re offended, but you are just going to have to deal with it." The sooner that point is reached, the less general sanity will be destroyed.

Now, to all you PC Hunter-Seekers… Put down your dictionaries. Stop wasting people's time and money, and get back to doing real work!