Wrath of Dagon

Don't think that's how it's going to work this time, Republicans have to make a stand or they'll lose all credibility. If the revenue varies wildly, there should be some money in current accounts, the debt ceiling is about long term debt, not short term fluctuations. Governor Moonbeam is back!

Here's an article which shows the responses, not just the questions: http://kotaku.com/5679655/highlights-of-to...video-game-case Quite interesting, it's actually a thoughtful discussion. The court is having a problem with the vagueness of the law, which I thought was the industrie's best argument.

There's a saying in Texas that no one's life or property is safe while the legislature is in session. Thus the legislature is only allowed to meet every two years.

The movie industry is backing the video game industry in this. Also it's not just California that passed this kind of law, it's just that the California case got to the Supreme Court.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101102/ap_en_...ent_video_games Interesting that this may not be the usual liberal/conservative split.

You and the entire male tea party membership.

Never underestimate the dumbness of politicians, especially the ones elected by mad as hell voters. Having said that, I still think a shut-down is unlikely, for the reasons you stated. But refusing to increase the debt ceiling wouldn't cause a complete shut down, it would just suddenly force the government to operate with a lot less money, which probably does mean some kind of partial shut down.

Judges who are elected normally do belong to a party. Certainly there are problems with election of judges, but there are problems with election of any officials. I still prefer that to the judicial tyranny on the federal level. May be the answer is to appoint lower court judges, but elect the superior court ones, who are the ones that control how laws are interpreted. Then again, because judges are elected here, they tend to be very tough on criminals, which is something that I like.

Republicans are expected to win big in the House, but Democrats are expected to hang on to the Senate. Should be the start of some exciting fights. Here's probably the first big one, increasing the debt limit: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44528.html

Read it again, it doesn't say that. It's saying that was the reasoning of lower courts, but for some reason the Supreme Court wants to take another look. They could've just accepted the Ninth Circus decision and that would be the end of it. Edit: I bet if you polled legal experts before the corporate free speech decision, most would have said the court would rule against the corporations. Btw, it's interesting that the people who were against corporate free speech are probably the same people who say games are protected free speech. But aren't games made and sold by corporations?

I'm not sure they're actually claiming games are different from other media in First Amendment protection, just that the law applies to games only at this point. Here's what looks like an objective legal analysis, althought I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6191...on_and_the_.php

Saw this earlier. Now don't you feel dirty being in bed with Rush? (btw, I'm not a big fan, the guy is too much of a blow hard) Edit: I noticed the caller misrepresented the case also, he never mentioned the games are only being regulated with respect to children buying them, not that they're not protected under the First Amendment.

Yeah, I never actually said it's a good idea. Actually I'm pretty neutral on the law, because I don't think it's much more than a political statement. I just tried to objectively correct some of the distortions and scare tactics I see in the gaming media on this subject.

What loophole? And I did make a distinction, the penalty for selling obscene movies to minors would actually be much stricter than the penalty for violent video games under this law. Anyway, you haven't explained how such a distinction would make a practical difference, except for the usual defensive gamer paranoia. Looking at the actual law, they set the threshhold of prohibited game so high, it really would only conceivably apply to only a few games, may be Postal and Manhunt 2, and even there defense could probably claim artistic merit, so in that respect also the law is a political statement rather than an effective public policy instrument.

That guy is a genius. First he says that video games will be treated like obscene material, then he says obscene material is illegal to sell to anyone, then he says videogames will be treated like Hustler. So is Hustler illegal to sell to anyone? There's a big difference between this law and the obscenity law. It's illegal for anyone to provide obscene material to a minor, even a parent. Under this law parents could still allow their children to play violent video games. As far as all that bull about retailers being afraid to sell legitimate games to minors blah blah, why aren't they afraid to sell R rated or even unrated DVD's? A prosecutor could certainly make a very plausible case that some of that stuff is obscene and the penalties for selling it to minors are much higher.

Saying Bush lied is a lie in itself. You have no evidence of that, and no one came out and admitted that.

Yeah, if the law actually had any effect, it probably would affect the "creative" direction, because it's well known M rated games are normally targeted at the 13+ demographic. But the law even if upheld will have close to 0 effect, so it's not going to affect anything.

OK, I finally figured out how to do it. You go into KSE and select a save game before the battle on Telos. Click on +globals, then +numerics. Find 262_hk_factory, and set it to 1. Click apply and then commit, it'll then overwrite the savefile. Then after you're done with Atris, you'll get HK at the factory.

It's just ESA's case to the court, it doesn't prove anything. I know they put it all back, and it's still rated M. It was never rated AO.

No, you're wrong. You can't restore content in a free patch and keep the rating, ESRB would jump all over them. They modified the American content at the request of Atari, and did not submit the original to ESRB at all. Later they released the Director's Cut or whatever it's called, but it still has the M rating so far as I know. Too bored to read all of your link, but looks like industry bull as I'd expect.

Except that R rated movies don't have the same fines chasing them around as this law is trying to impose on M rated games. (Which is exactly why people are trying to stop this). Then it's just a slippery slope to censor all sorts of violence. Everything is a slippery slope. And again, it's not censorship if it only applies to sales to children. If they make R rated movies illegal to sell to children, I wouldn't cry over that either. Edit: Btw, the counter argument has been staring us in the face all this time. In Britain it's illegal to sell games below the age they're rated, have 17+ games disappeared from stores? Edit2: Just came across this article about some stuff Yee said: http://www.vg247.com/2010/10/29/yee-esrb-i...se/#more-126740 It shows he's pretty ignorant, and is quite unfair to the ESRB. Of course the article also made a mistake, The Witcher never got an AO rating.

Bad PR has nothing to do with something being illegal, bad PR is exactly why most retailers don't carry porn, not because it's illegal to sell it to minors. So long as they carry R rated movies, they'll carry M rated games. Unless you believe people will stop watching R rated movies. Edit: Bad PR is exactly why most small video rental shops would carry porn, but the big chains wouldn't. Had nothing to do with being afraid of the fines, they were simply trying to protect their image as a family-friendly place to rent.

This Dagon, I know for a fact that gamestop will not sell Adult Only games because the hassle of having to deal with the rating is to much. IF they did, they would still be accepting and selling the original print of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, which got re-rated AO after hot coffee. What's the hassle? They have a policy of not selling M rated games to minors anyway, no? The other thing to realize is that none of the consoles will allow AO rated games, at least in the US. And Gamestop isn't too interested in selling PC games anyway from what I hear.

The law isn't based on rating, but on specific definition of violence. It's not illegal to sell AO games to minors, it's illegal to sell obscene games to minors. Most AO games probably wouldn't meet that definition, since a game gets an AO for stuff that a movie only gets an R. Btw, I think Gamestop once said they were considering selling AO games.

You have no evidence that regular retailers would've carried obscene materials if they were legal to sell to minors. Retailers carry plenty of stuff that's illegal to sell to minors, as I pointed out before.