| [Spotsy Rants: Anti-Video Gaming Groups] |
[30 Aug 2006|09:18pm] |
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I know this is pretty much an old case, but having talked to a friend, Binary Megamix, about this made me want to write something about it in my livejournal.
Being a gamer myself, I have to pretty much say that I disagree with those people. While video-games may have an impact on youngsters, I have to say that video-game companies shouldn't be taking the heat of this, it's the children's parents that should be taking it. Video-Game companies, in no way, should be held responsible for the acts of those children who kill, cause shootings and stuff like that who appear to have played games from said companies.
I believe it's a fact that if those children played those games and it impacted them in a negative way, their parents obviously haven't taught them that these video-games are not real and that they're not real-life. That, or their parents obviously don't pay attention to what kind of video-games they play.
For heck's sake, if you do not want your kid to play violent video games, even so impacted by them then at least do one of the following:
1) Do not let them play these video-games. If you want to know if the video-game is suitable, have you ever heard of ratings? Check the friggin' ratings on the game's case. They should tell you whether if the game is suitable or not.
2) If your kid is going to buy a video-game, at least accompany them or have someone older that can accompany them there to check the video-game they buy, whether if it's suitable, etc.
3) If you buy your kids a game that has some violence in it, whether it be toon violence or any kind of violence.... Observe them while they play it. If they show any violent behavior that you believe the game might be behind, take the game away from them. (Props to Binary Megamix for suggesting this one)
4) This one's self-explanatory. Teach your kid that video-games are not real and don't reflect real-life in any way.
Keep in mind that different minds take things differently. For me, I have played FPS and violent games at a young age long ago, but they've not had a negative effect on me. Why is that? It's because I knew those things weren't real, nor they reflected real-life in any way.
I'm sure you all have heard of this one guy, Jack Thompson, who has made several arguments against some video games. Personally, I disagree with his views. As most of these cases, if you look at it from the common sense view, it's the fault of irresponsible parents.
And about those mods that say, for example, change a G rated game into a 17+ game? You can't hold a grudge against the video-game companies for that, because they were not made by company itself. They were made by other players for the game, and if you don't want the kid to use those either, simply observe what they download, too. Again, irresponsible parents should be taking the heat in this, too.
Now, go take a look at this site . It has a lot of good points on some of the stuff those so-called Anti-Video Game people say. Espically on this page . Most of the articles on that one single page has a lot of good points about video games and the truth behind them. I totally agree with one of the articles on there that talks about how parents like to take the easy way out of such problems and want to have someone else fix their problems.
Binary Megamix has also mentioned that the U.S shouldn't be wasting their money on such a silly case, because the game companies shouldn't be at fault for this. Instead, they should spend their money towards much more important cases.
Point is; you can't blame a video-game or a video-game company for the behaviours that your kid shows. It's your responsibility to construct them and observe what they do, what they watch, what they play, etc. It's all a matter of responsibility. The whole Anti-Video game thing needs to go down the drain because it's pretty much useless.
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| [Political Ranting] |
[30 Jul 2006|08:34pm] |
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"Lifelight" - Andy Hunter |
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Careful, this entry contains a political ranting. If you do not like political ranting, just don't read this at all. You have been warned.
Alright, so this afternoon at my course, they made us watch this movie called "Promises" . Long story short, for those of you who don't want to go to that link... Basically, it just shows different opinions on the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict from about seven children, some of them who are Palestinian, and some who are Israeli. It got me thinking a lot, espically since I myself am Palestinian by nationality, live in Israel and attend a programming course that attempts to solve the conflict through technology.
After I came back home and told my mother about what happened today at my course, she had to break out stereotypes and say things like how I shouldn't trust any American or Israeli just because of what they've done in the past. I disgress, because not every single American/Israeli is like that. I mean, for the love of God, I know a lot of Americans and Israelis I could trust in real-life or online. Heck, I even date an American, too, and I know I can trust him (You know who you are). These I know who aren't even like what she steretyped them as, per-se.
This is where my rant comes in.
Personally, my own opinion is that I find the whole "to whom this land belongs to" issue from where the conflict birthed from relatively stupid. I mean, sure someone has the right to live on their own land, but that doesn't mean others shouldn't be living on it, too. History says that the land originally belonged to the Palestinians and that it hasn't been stolen from the Israelis by the Palestinians.
Honestly, though? I don't give a plebe about it. I, for one, could care less about to whom the land belongs to, but the problem is that some people are glued to their own past and won't move on. If people keep on gluing themselves to their own past and not focus on the present and the future, it's not going to solve anything at all. It'd just spring up more worse than good.
What really sickens me mostly, is how some Palestinians think all Israelis are bad and vice-versa. I must admit I have been friends with some Israeli people (online, though) before actually joining this programming course, and thus I didn't really have much of a problem communicating with Israelis in real life as well. But I still say that the issue I stated here in this paragraph does sicken me. It's like saying Islam is a homicidical religion just because some Muslims are bombing up some areas. It's not true, for all I know is that in Islam, it's not right to blow up randomly in an area with INNOCENTS for no reason at all. Because it's killing innocents and suicide at the same time, which is just not right.
This leads to several theories I've thought about before:
1) You can't just generalize and say a whole group is bad just because of a certain who are bad. It's the individuals themselves and on their own decision who do the bad things, not the group as a whole.
2) You can't sterotype someone and label them as "terrorists", "haters" or anything that goes in the sterotype-division just because they belong to the race/nationality of the group being sterotyped.
Should one judge whether bad or good a person is, determining it by the person's nationality, religion, race, etc. is not the way to do it. People have different personalities that vary from one person to another. It makes no sense to judge someone by the aforementioned aspects, as to every person is a different personality. I believe the right way to do it is by actually knowing the person himself/herself.
Sadly, some people are blinded by stereotypes. It's came to my observation that common sense is not common anymore these days. People just act or say things directly without even taking a while to think about the consequences of their acts. For one, the current situation of Israel could've been avoided if Israel hadn't just declared war straight away. Now definitely a lot of innocent lives on both sides who didn't want any of this in the first place are being wasted away like that, by something that could've been so easily avoided.
Point being is that stereotypes are completely stupid and do not reflect a group as a whole because of certain individuals, and that you cannot label a whole group as "bad" just because of certain individuals. End of story.
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| [Whoopeedo] |
[14 Jun 2006|02:37am] |
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Raccoon - Oni Kidou |
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Okay. So I got my report card to- Er, Yesterday since it's 14th June here right now where I am. It was all good and I passed. Here are the results:
Religion: 96/100
Arabic: 129/150 (I lose at my mother language that it's not even funny).
English: 147/150
Maths: 200/200
Physics: 72/100
Chemistry: 79/100
Biology: 91/100
Business Managment: 97/100
IT: 96/100
Hebrew: 93/100
Total average is 92%. Just as I expected, but I'm glad I passed with being second on my class. : ) ...And yes, I'm aware we have an insane grading system. I wish it was an alphabetical grading system though, because numbers are scary.
Also, yesterday I was informed about the details of the job I may be taking during July. The only thing that I really have a gripe with is the location. Seriously, did they have to have those who cannot speak Hebrew well work in a company residing in a war-torn area? I filed a complaint to the supervisors about it and hopefully they'll do something about it. If nothing is going to be done about it, then I may as well draw out or go tutor instead (although tutoring's not really my thing). I'll just wait for an answer and then I'll decide.
That aside, I've slowly started sketching some concept art for Digital Warfare. Yes, I've decided I may as well start on that before Inner Bolt, since it's less corny anyway. While at it, I'm going to be thinking of a better storyline for Inner Bolt. At least that should keep me occupied for a while.
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| [OMG.] |
[10 Jun 2006|11:15pm] |
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Watch me Fly - Crush 40 |
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"Last entry posted on 28 Mar 2006|09:02pm"
I really have to stop neglecting my LiveJournal. That's almost 2 months and something like 10 days. Oh joy.
Anyway, nothing much has been going in my life, apart from the fact that I'm on my summer break. I'll only have one month off, because on July I'm going to be working as a coder for some company. I don't know the exact details about the job, but hopefully it'll go all well... Then sometime on August I'm taking a course for the exam I'm going to be taking instead of Grade 12th. It's going to be one busy summer.
Currently at this minute, I'm not doing much apart from talking to Jason and drawing stuff. Not only that, but I'm thinking about which one of two of the comics I've had in mind I should start on first... The thing is, one of them (Inner Bolt), seems a little more interesting and darker than Digital Warfare, but the problem is that I've been told that having monsters in Inner Bolt is an invitation to cornyness... I've been thinking I could maybe make the monsters a little more original than the whole concept of "Hey, look. It's a scary and dangerous monster! We have to kill it!". That'll take some while. While at it, I'm going to have to think of a more proper rating for the content of the storyline... PG-15 and Mature are a possibility, since it does contain a bit of both. Hmm...
Also been working on a better layout for my website. I've finally thought up of a better one and it's at 80% completion right now, all I have to do is make a splash page and some pictures. That and coding it. I may have to use a little CSS here because I'm sick of editing pages and having them correspond to the layout's background everytime I change the layout. The funny thing is this is the first layout that's taken longer to make than the previous ones. All that because I've been designing it at a 300 dpi canvas. Ever since I boosted my RAM up to 512 MB, I've been doing art and graphics at higher DPI's. Good stuff.
Report card is in two days. I'm hoping I've got good averages (which I bet I already did). I know my Maths average, but the rest I'll only see on the 13th of this month. I'm not looking forward to that day, though. I mean, you just get used to it as time goes by.
I guess that's all I'm going to post for now. Hopefully I'm not going to neglect this again. :D
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[28 Mar 2006|09:02pm] |
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"Move your Dead Bones" - Dr. Re-Animator |
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So I changed my mind and decided to go to yesterday's trip. I figured it would be nice to actually go outside for a change; and I was right. I have to say that I really did enjoy the trip, even though we didn't do much in it apart from taking a look at some sites of Haifa. It was nice seeing sites I've never been to before. : )
Aside from the fact that the bus' engine died out when we were going there and back home, it was a good trip. Not exactly great or anything, but it was good. I also took some landscape photographs while I was there. Keep in mind these were taken using a cell phone camera, so pardon if they look grained or too dark. I tried my best to adjust them on Photoshop. Most of them are of the Mediterranean Sea from the Haifa Coast. But here they are:
Mediterranean Sea, View 1.
Mediterranean Sea, View 2.
Mediterranean Sea, View 3.
Streetlights, because I wanted to.
An interesting view of a sunset type sky.
That's all of them. Hope you enjoy these. : )
Don't know what else I could write in here as I don't have much updates. So that's all for now~.
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| Little Update |
[24 Mar 2006|06:12pm] |
...I know I've not been updating daily as I said I would, but I have been sick for most of last week and didn't feel like typing something big and huge. But now that I recovered, expect more updates from me. Now, I just hope I don't get that sickness ever again. Having flu and phenomonia attypical(sp?) is not fun. Makes you feel all crap when you're on the edge of recovering.
Been trying to catch up on school work recently. I've missed so much during one single week. I have to retake my bi-monthly Physics exam once I catch up with the stuff I missed on Gauss' Law. I already managed to catch up on Maths and Chemistry... Even so I've did REALLY well on my Chemistry exam yesterday, and all with having to study the material on my own. I really felt happy when I've managed for once, to finish a Chemistry exam on time and without being late and did well. It really makes me wonder why I do a lot better without having things explained to me.
The upcoming week is going to be mostly off. I'm taking Monday off because there's a field trip, but I'm not going. Tuesday is off because of Israeli elections, and Wednesday is most likely going to be off because of an eclipse. Yay! *dances*
Also, I still have to finish that document for my programming project before this Sunday. ARGH! If I didn't get sick I'd have finished it ages ago. Bleh, the woes of getting sick...
I've also finally moved my Windows HDDs into my Linux case, and now I have a nice, stable 512 MB RAM computer with both Linux and Windows on it. With three fans as well, so that way I wouldn't have to bear with over-heating issues, so it's all good. I've kept my old pc though so I can take out all my rage on it and destroy it for being evil. Can't wait to do that. :)
I've not been able to draw much either... But I do have a few interesting ideas right in my mind. By interesting, I do mean interesting. *grins* Jason knows what I'm talking about. ^^
Well, that was the end of a journal update from Spotsy. Nothing more to see, move on.
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[12 Mar 2006|10:00pm] |
So today's Sunday... There were a few events today.
I just came back from my programming course meeting a while ago. Sadly we did not start on the coding, mainly because we had to do more work planning... Although without any doubt, we'll most likely start the coding next Sunday. One good thing is that I do not have to do the server coding... Instead, I'll be working on database/Object to Component conversions. I'm going to have to do some thinking of how I'm going to do it, though. Moreover, the project is turning out better than expected, which is awesome.
Also, it seems I caught a cold or some sort of sickness. Even though I'm getting enough sleep, I still keep feeling tired, and also I keep coughing a lot. Ugh. Such a bad timing for that to happen too, espically since I have exams in the next following days and I need to concetrate. Darn it. Hopefully it doesn't last for too long.
I'm also finally getting back to playing JJ2... Played two rounds of a 3 vs. 3, was very fun except for the fact that the first round sucked... Although the second round owned so much. =)
I've been doing a lot of thinking about certain things... Mainly my relationship with my lovely one, Jason a.k.a Oni Kidou. Within a few weeks, we will have officially been together for one year... Which will be on April 8th. Longest relationship I've had. This thinking caused me to have feelings I want to talk to Jason about when he gets back from his LAN party... I really miss him a lot.
That's the end of another entry. I better go get some sleep now.
This is Spots, signing off.
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[11 Mar 2006|09:25pm] |
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Yes, I'm aware I've not used this in a long while. But now that I gave it a bit of thought, I decided I'd throw my daily babblings in here. Hey, it'll at least make use of this instead of just leaving it laying around on the interweb, right? Thought so.
Okay; so... You might've noticed I've deleted all old entries from here. Why? Well, for one thing, it's freaky looking back at those entries and getting reminded of how weird of a being I was. That was the past, it's all a different story now.
Therefore, I'm going to be using this for daily (depending) updates. Also considering using this as a little sketch blog, where I would post stuff that I don't think is worth uploading to any of my online galleries. In other words; think scrapbook.
Enough LJ modifying talk for now. Um... Let's see, there's a lot of stuff to put in here that I don't even know where to start from. Eh, guess I'll just post about today and let it trail from there.
Right. Today wasn't really all that eventful, however. Had a rather boring day at school today, I'll talk about that a bit.
Math class actually went smooth. It's all about sequences and series now, which is far more interesting and fun than complex numbers. Had a quiz at the end of class... It was fairly easy, although afterwards I've heard complains from others say it's hard. It came to my shock that the majority of the class is weak in basics. Seriously, how on Earth does one go ahead and exponent two sides with a + between them to (insert number here)? It's an adding operation. Come on, that's just clearly an illegal move. Beh. Makes me wonder how they even got into 11th.
Biology was okay, but... I found it a little boring. It was about the structure of sponges. Yes, sponges. I remember learning about that back in... What, seventh grade? But this has more details and it's more boring. I don't know why, but biology doesn't really interest me unlike Math does.
Also, I have a bi-monthly Physics exam on Monday. I'm hoping to do well in that, and if possible, better than how I've done on my previous Physics exams.
I'm looking forward to the programming course meeting I'll be having tomorrow at 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM. Finally, after a lot of planning right and left, we'll be starting the coding tomorrow. :-) I have the feeling that it'll rock so much. ...So long as it's not server related stuff, because servers are a pain in the head to deal with.
I also realized something. The next upcoming weeks starting from tomorrow are a trail of events for me. Particulary because it'll be a year since those events had occured. Only a few know what I mean by this. Better not let the nostalgia suck me in the next few days.
....Enough babbles for today. More to come either tomorrow or in the next few days. For now, I must go get some sleep. I'll need it for the studying and coding I'll be doing tomorrow. *hops off*
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