Ive been an avid player since I was 6, so I am all for games. But letting your 5 year old play CS, is just parenting epic fail. I wouldnt even let my 5 year old watch this game. There are games that teach your child eye to hand coordination at least as well and they are not about killing people.

We will see more of those kids, though. Too many idiot players out there who have nothing else in their life and can only teach that to their children. Heres hoping that most of them will never have any children.

I'm an avid Obama supporter and I think the cover is great. The Daily Show got it exactly right: the media is upset because it attacks them and the groupthink they propagate. And it is a shame the Obama camp misplayed their response. Of the 47 odd issues of the New Yorker I get in the mail each year I usually save one or two. This issue will not find its way to the recycle bin.

>> ^legacy0100:
Just because MarineGunrock is an avid gun lovin' sand blastin' deer huntin' engine revvin' hot blooded man from midwest doesn't make him a rube


I'm not really sure what a rube is... and I'm from Maine

That's right.

Just because MarineGunrock is an avid gun lovin' sand blastin' deer huntin' engine revvin' hot blooded man from midwest doesn't make him a rube

I'm really late to the party!

My name is Shane, I'm 32 and I have lived near beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada all of my life. I've been married to my beautiful wife for 8 years now and we have a wonderful 5 year old son. I work as a Network Administrator at a University and have for the last 10 years. I've been in the IT field for 16 years.

You may know me as the Dark Lord of the Sift, but I'm usually a pretty nice guy . When I'm not sifiting I love to spend time with my family, play badminton, play volleyball, read (Fantasy mostly), watch movies, play PC Games, the usual geek stuff.

I'm an avid hockey fan and dream of the day when my Vancouver Canucks hoist the Stanley Cup... Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath.

If you want a long read with some info about me check out persephone's great siftography.

This guy's just ignorant...I've used an AVID system, and I've worked with every Mac ever introduced.

They are fast...and they DON'T crash. My Windows laptop spontaneously combusts every time it has a "driver incompatibility," and shuts down the whole computer and I lose EVERYTHING!

My $1199 iMac 20" computer has more power than my boyfriend's top of the line Dell (he was a programmer at Dell). I've even switched it over and run Call of Duty natively in Windows XP with Bootcamp...it ran circles around his computer, and oh-by-the-way I didn't have to install some over-priced video card to get it to work.

Loser boy!! You just hate Macs because Macs make people happy.

Go home to your little Vista machine and just be obnoxious.

>> ^reiz:
As an avid gamer I hate to say this, but I won't be surprised if some kids will try to emulate this with tragic consequences.
I mean, just watching that makes me want to go run around on rooftops, and I'm an old fart with severe vertigo.


LOL yes
I am afraid that follows the same line as "But you can do that in the Matrix!"
Parkour is an interesting sport though

Also, kids, emulate....thats what kids do...

>> ^reiz:
As an avid gamer I hate to say this, but I won't be surprised if some kids will try to emulate this with tragic consequences.


That would be evolution in action my friend.

As an avid gamer I hate to say this, but I won't be surprised if some kids will try to emulate this with tragic consequences.

I mean, just watching that makes me want to go run around on rooftops, and I'm an old fart with severe vertigo.

>> ^spoco2:
>> ^Lolthien:
Actually I think that is a shot against Mrs Clinton herself. She's one of the most avid proponents of federal regulation of the gaming industry. Basically, she wants the feds to tell you what you can and can't play..
Not that I care personally, as I'm over 21 and can play what I please... but seriously, she uses GTA games as a speaking point every chance she gets.

Just be glad you can play whatever you want, I'm 31 and apparently I'm not allowed to play GTA4 unedited. Yup, because Australia had NO R rating (our 18+ rating, similar to your NC17 I guess) for computer games, anything that would be rated higher than MA15+ (restricted to over 15 yr olds) is banned.
It's completely ridiculous.


I call fascism on Australia.

Aussie here.

I used to love American action films (still do), my dad let me watch them but felt the need to balance me out with little historical tidbits. I vaugely remember getting told one about the US abandoning some freedom fighters while I was watching Rambo. I cant remember the details, but they were coaxed into rising up against their masters with the promise of US support which was withdrawn. They were pleading for help from the radio station as tanks burst through the walls. Pretty hard to reconcile that with what hollywood told me

In 1999 I was an avid Counter-strike player/mapper/modder and got to know allot of the boys on the forums quite well. The NRA came out with an ad which included a sound bite of some old tosser in Australia somewhere who had confronted a burglar.
"If I had a gun I would of shot im" - I laughed at how obviously misrepresentitive it was of Aussies and forgot about it. But in the forums all the gamers had rallied behind the ad. I posted a simple and clear message saying Australians almost all are anti-(personal) firearms. Well I got flamed like I have never experienced. People were telling me I was wrong, telling ME how Australians felt about gun control. All these regular guys I knew, suddenly turned utterly hardline. It was so weird and scary.

And then there is the religion thing: those stats about US views on evolution etc are scary.

But really, all these things are just dressing for the bigger worry, the extreme inward looking nature of huge, politically aligned swathes of the US population that give power to imperialistic policy. Thats it really. The French might get precious about the battle between French and American culture - but I think that is really a side issue.

>> ^Lolthien:
Actually I think that is a shot against Mrs Clinton herself. She's one of the most avid proponents of federal regulation of the gaming industry. Basically, she wants the feds to tell you what you can and can't play..
Not that I care personally, as I'm over 21 and can play what I please... but seriously, she uses GTA games as a speaking point every chance she gets.


Just be glad you can play whatever you want, I'm 31 and apparently I'm not allowed to play GTA4 unedited. Yup, because Australia had NO R rating (our 18+ rating, similar to your NC17 I guess) for computer games, anything that would be rated higher than MA15+ (restricted to over 15 yr olds) is banned.

It's completely ridiculous.

Actually I think that is a shot against Mrs Clinton herself. She's one of the most avid proponents of federal regulation of the gaming industry. Basically, she wants the feds to tell you what you can and can't play..

Not that I care personally, as I'm over 21 and can play what I please... but seriously, she uses GTA games as a speaking point every chance she gets.

Actually, Robert Picardo has long been an avid singer. Hew sang when he attended Yale and has done Broadway.

< wall of text >

I've recently come to the conclusion that in general, religious discussions on internet forums are futile, unless they are in-house discussions. What I mean is that an argument between an avid atheist and an avid theist always goes nowhere because neither side has any trust in the source information used by the opposite side. For example, if I try to argue that the bible can be proven true by collating the prophetic writings of the old testament and comparing them to what was fulfilled in history and in the new testament, most atheists will simply say that it's all fiction anyway, so the argument is moot. Even if I try to cite other historical documentation of said prophecies being fulfilled, their explanation becomes: "the books must have been written after the fact then since prophecy is impossible in the first place." Meanwhile if two atheists are talking or two Christians (say) are talking in this format, the sort of "language" barrier is broken down and some sort of wisdom can be gained in the discussion. The atheists will agree that the bible is impossible because what is written in it is impossible unless you first believe in God..."and we don't". The theists have decided that the bible IS possible and will try to get some knowledge out of its pages in the discussion.

It can be seen the same way with creation and evolution. First off, to be very straight forward in definitions: Evolution - We and all that is in the universe as we know it today is the result of random chance events alone. Creation - At some point in the history of time as we know it, the universe was created as we know it or in a form previous to as we know it by God or some high power outside of time.

The argument ends AT the definitions alone. A pure atheist will say that since there is no god in the first place, the ONLY option is random evolution (via good ole natural selection and drift). There is no alternative. The argument is over and the theist is left going "but there IS a God, so creation IS a possibility." "No there isn't, so no there isn't." Repeat ad nausium. So the only two useful conversations that can be had (unless you have some extraordinarily open-minded individuals who happen also to be unconvinced of either truth) are those between two atheist scientists (who will discuss how evolution occurred, and speculate as to any possible original cause they can imagine) and those between two theistic scientists (who will discuss how what they know of evolutionary science can be meshed with what they believe of biblical revelation). I've had both kinds of these talks and they both go wonderfully well and are quite rewarding. I've also had the sort I first referred to higher above and it was pointless and frustrating.

There is one more major problem that theists and atheists will always run into in science, that is "data." Science is dependent on NEW data to adapt hypotheses. When you have new data, you wire it into what you already knew and come up with the best explanation you can, then you go after more data. In religion (or at least in Christianity), the primary data set is complete and is considered to be concrete; the canon is closed. What remains to be done is to interpret it. Now you can add new data "sets" through scientific means but none will be as authoritative as the primary set by any means.

The theist chooses a primary data set that is special revelation (the bible). What we sense and what logic we think we can muster is limited to our perception and intelligence.
The atheist chooses a primary data set that is sense and logic driven... that is, up is up, hot is hot, white is white, we must trust our senses, and the Mets will never win the world series. ...ok that last one goes with both groups.

The root of the problem is epistemological. Atheists have essentially one source of knowledge, logic. Theists have two, faith and logic. The thought that any knowledge can be gained by faith is so foreign to a pure atheist that they just discount theists as either lunatics, brainwashed drones, idiots, or all of the above and then some. The assumption that your discussion partner is any of these things is a conversation ender every time. That goes both ways.

As for my personal beliefs: It's no secret I'm a Christian. I'm also a creationist at its root definition. However, I acknowledge the profoundly large load of evidence supporting evolution and therefore support it, though not so randomly as an atheist will. I have trouble directly meshing this with Genesis, but I am convinced the bible is true at this point, so I imagine that one day, the synthesis will be found and I will understand it better. In the mean time, I'm patient, and neither story is mutually exclusive given what is known today. Outside of that simple issue, I have never seen a problem between religion and science.

I will admit however, that there are a lot of theists out there that need to brush up on their science if they wanna talk and teach about it. They just don't know their stuff most of the time. Honestly though, how often does a Christian... banker let's say... need to think about evolution? Not much. The whole discussion is academic to someone who doesn't use it.
< /wall of text>