Australian Counter Strike Shooters 508
jaronc writes "News.com.au are reporting an Australian court has been told that two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike' shot and killed a man during a Sydney home invasion in 2002. Let the blaming begin......"
Whew.. (Score:5, Funny)
But.... (Score:4, Funny)
Jaysyn
'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Insightful)
Even assuming that they became unhinged from playing too much CS, doesn't mean that we should ban it. People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...
(This is still tragic, however, and I don't intend to lessen the tragedy.)
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:3, Funny)
If they'd been running around naked, the claim would have simply been changed to "dressed in the manner of a Counter Strike mod".
This looks like the kind of situation in which it would be ridiculous to allow common sense to prevail over sensationalism.
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:2, Offtopic)
Two words: presidential election.
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Funny)
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:3, Funny)
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Interesting)
Jokes aside, any society is going to have a miniscule percentage of really, really sick people. In the past they got jobs as torturers and executioners. Now that we're civil, we've still got those people, and they're still sick bastards. We need better systems in place to catch them before they do any harm. But damned if I know how to do it.
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe there always is a slow degradation of mental balance that accures that everyone just writes off as them having a a bad day or moods. Slowly the mind folds on yourself and you become retrospective with your mind focused on one thing. Logic goes, if you ever had it, then ethics and finally morals and you've draw in on yourself with a focus like work or t.v. or games.
Nope, it always comes down to his enviroment forcing stressors on them they make small innocent bad decisions, like withdrawing from conflicts, which build until they overwelm the person. It's very sad cause it's not that hard to spot if you just take time to look at someone else. A little help at the beginning can save lives.
Life is exponential... one factor multiplies and multiplies and multiplies......
of course you can't be born a murderer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Interesting)
The test was accurate, and unchangeable. If you were a sick person at 8, you were going to be just as screwy at 18 or 28. It looked at your world view.
Anyway, telling someone, "You're values are screwy, you'll end up in jail or as a burden to society and there's nothing you can do about it" lacks a certain . . . niceness. So the idea was killed off.
Now the test is used to see if you would be a good salesperson
Psycho(o) Tests (Score:3, Insightful)
Online version (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.qis.net/~jschmitz/hvp/test1.html
Re:Online version (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel that it's really asking me "do I believe in god?".
I seem to have scored okay [qis.net], though, but I feel that many with still more developed traits will do worse. For example, a physicist might score worse than a cultist who saw design in the universe.
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:2, Funny)
I will say, however, that there was more convention made in society for the pathologically deranged. I imagine that's what we've got politics for now.
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Insightful)
That you lump these two professions together shows that you don't truly understand the distinctions between them. That's OK, you're not alone by far. In my experience, most people just assume that they're synonyms.
Here's the key distinction between the two: a Psychiatrist is an M.D., meaning that they have gone through the same 4 years of medical school as any other doctor. They are a doctor first, and have spent time in the emergency room and the ob/gyn wing and on the inpatient units. They've done surgical procedures and have likely seen patients die in the OR or ER. In most training programs, they do a whole year of nothing but medicine after they graduate from medical school.
Psychologists go to university to study theory. They have the degree of PhD. They are no more a medical doctor than your history prof or your CS prof. If I were in a car accident and there happened to be a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist driving by, I'd sure as hell rather have the Psychiatrist getting out to take a look at me while the Psychologist called the EMTs.
I don't make this distinction to denigrate Psychologists, but calling for more science in the field of Psychiatry shows that you don't really understand the field.
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:3, Funny)
True that, my Counter Strike professor was not even done with highschool yet, much less his medical degree.
==>Lazn
Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:2, Funny)
OR they were dressed up like those little brain eating jumpy thingies. In that case, I would indeed blame the game.
Legal Shortcuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Take the legal drinking age for your locality, that's set in place because it's easy to test and find out if someone is of a certain age, just math. In an ideal world, a persons habits and character would determine if they should drink. If someone will drink responsibly at age 16, why make them wait till 18 or 21? Likewise, there are people that are over the legal drinking age that are still too immature and let alcohol run their lives but by law, they can still buy alcohol. All anyone can do is give them an AA flyer and ask them to take time out of their schedule to remember the next meeting, physically drive to the meeting and suffer through the awkwardness of admitting you're an alcoholic.
The legal system blames the video games because it's easy to convince parents video games are bad because parents aren't going to blame their own kids for violence they may create, they'd rather blame something or someone that cannot defend themselves. To make headway in hedging violent video games to kids, it's easy to slap a violence rating on a game and make every retailer ask for ID to anyone buying the game than it is to perform intense psychological tests to see if that person understands the difference between reality and fantasy, and if they will or will not take cues from videogames.
When I'm a parent, I know my kid is going to be exposed to things I wouldn't, but I'm going to make sure they can put the things into the right perspective and let them make good decisions for themselves.
people are historically myopic (Score:5, Insightful)
as if before videogames, there were no violence
the concept also undermines personal accountability: "the devil made me do it"
if you pick up a gun and shoot someone in real life, you are 100% to blame, it doesn't matter if you have been playing fps games for 10 months straight, it just plain doesn't matter
if you believe in the concept of personal accountability, you can not blame the media for anything
Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Informative)
For the statistically inclined, the relationship is exellently explained by the wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]. Basically the theory goes that there may be some hidden or lurking variable that was not tested.
So in this case it could be that some violent criminals play CS, and many who play CS are violent. There may be some other factor involved though. I could even conjecture that perhaps crazy people do violent things a lot [detnews.com], and sometimes this includes video games.
Hmm. Nah, maybe it's the gum thing.
Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Informative)
Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.
completely wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
or does the violent movie placate the violent tendencies in us all?
does the pornography turn the normal guy into a rapist?
or does pornography take antisocial urges and empty them in a magazine instead of a real woman?
so i take your "media influences" and throw it right back at you: if media does influence, then it takes our violent and antisocial sexual urges and provides a harmless outlet for them
even if, even if you somehow show me some normal gu
Re:completely wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:completely wrong (Score:2)
He said that you were being too black and white about it, not that you were wrong.
Of course the media affects what we do and who we are TO SOME EXTENT, to say otherwise would be pretty naive, but the question is, what is the effect and how large is it?
It's something more than 0, but almost certainly a lot less than the amount required to turn a well adjusted person into a killer.
And likewise, the effect will vary from person to person, some people might be affected in a positive m
Re:completely wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again you're being black and white. I don't believe a single violent movie will turn any normal guy into a killer, but I do believe that violent movies can be one of many factors that leads to violent actions.
I believe that both are true. Media can provide an outlet for some people. It can also encourage antisocial behaviour in others. I think for most people that both are true at the same time. Cogitate on that one!
I think I "got it" several decades before you even started thinking about it. This isn't a new argument. It predates my birth by at least a few 1000 years.
Yes.
That does not follow from what I believe. You are not thinking clearly.
Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Insightful)
If that were true, wouldn't there be many, many more crimes in developed nations than there currently are? Millions of people have seen the thousands of violent movies that have been available in the United States over the last fifty years, and violent video games regularly sell millions of copies there, and that's just in one country alone. If Counter-Strike made people crazy, wouldn't, at the very least, HUNDREDS (if not thousands or millions) of people be dressing up in military fatigues and "killing the hostages" in their neighborhoods all across the world, rather than just a couple of nutjobs in Australia?
There are a lot of crazy whackjobs out there who will kill people, regardless of whether you give them a Grand Theft Auto game, a copy of Mein Kampf, or just Curious George Goes To The Hospital. This is as true now as it was before the discovery of electricity and its subsequent gifts of TV, movies, and video games.
But before video games... (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly in the UK, before videogames it was "Video Nasties" that was corrupting the youth into violent deeds. Today, nobody seems to care that kids watch "Zombie Blood Massacre III". I'd imagine in a decade there will be some other piece of technology being blamed by some for the downfall of society.
ban alcohol then (Score:5, Insightful)
shouldnt it be banned first then?
Next up (Score:5, Funny)
Some guys dressed as the Mario Brothers come to fix the pipes.
Let the blaming begin.
Re:Next up (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh*
Why don't women from Duke Nukem come and offer me some sweet loving?
Re:Next up (Score:5, Funny)
Mario may be more dangerous than you think.... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, these reports were back in the early 90s when there were fewer FPSs to blame everything on.
Re:Next up (Score:2)
Personally, I have always committed my murders while hoverring in the air wth my arms sticking out of my ears.
I find the sight of the victim scuttling back and forwards in panic as I slowly float down making `thrump, thrump' noises most entertaining.
I'm sorry but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a question for you... (Score:5, Interesting)
~UP
Re:Here's a question for you... (Score:3, Interesting)
During the middle ages, certain literature was deemed inappropriate and were censored/banned for being the cause of several problems of that time.
Later on, it was the radio and how it was spreading bad cultural values. Television followed, and people find the need to censor Internet now.
Games are just another target, I remember that in some Asian country, a board game was banned because there was an element where you would end
Re:Here's a question for you... (Score:5, Funny)
An unidentified man in his mid to late 50's was charged Tuesday with the bludgeoning death of another man. The man possessed no identification, and gave his name as only "Professor Plum."
After several hours of investigation, the police determined that Plum brutally attacked Mr. Body with a candlestick. They haven't determined whether the attack took place in the Billiard room, or the Dining room.
Mrs. Scarlet was present during the attack, but as she was armed with a revolver, police have ruled her out as a suspect.
In other news, a thimble has just purchased an upscale stretch of real estate along Boardwalk Ave.
Definitive proof! (Score:5, Funny)
How the hell did they get weapons though? It's not like you can walk into a shop and press 'b', and i'm sure that l33t h4x0rz1ng the shopkeeper is gonna get you funny looks and nothing more.
This is like the recent Melbourne gangland murders (Score:2, Funny)
Erm... which character? (Score:5, Interesting)
Counterstrike 'characters' are just people dressed in common attire that you would most likely see someone on a killing spree wearing...
Now did these guys play counterstrike?
As for let the blaming begin It amazes me how quick people are to strike down something they have no comprehension of.
For one thing, you strike down all media blame of computer games prompting violent behaviour (and films etc) and you simply pass it off as 1+1=3 in thier minds because you play violent games and you don't murder people.
That doesn't mean to say there is or isn't a connection, and there are no conclusive studies that some people who are a little socially eclipsed that are affected by continuous and sporting presentation of killing.
Now I am not saying either way, but I am not sarcastically throwing down the gauntlet for possible ridicule either.
These people must have been capable of this murder prior, and the fact that somehow (I do not know how, unless they jumped aorund whilst firing saying "I pwn you b1tch3s!" like most server players - or used an aim bot) the relationship between clothing attire and a computer game (shakey to me) just muddies the fact that someone got shot, and what was the motive for these people.
One day people might start trying to use computer games as a defence... or worse, it may be the cause, we do not know yet, but the portrayal of real violence and death in italy (see Gladitor flick) is sickening, and we are on the verge of that popularisation of gore and death (see Bad Boys 2, which was a shit aweful film for gratuitous violence, to an almost comedic extent)
I actually had flinching urges to try car jacking after playing GTA2 for 48 hours solid (better than studying at the time). Maybe I am weak.
Errata... (Score:2)
The gladiatoral matches that were common entertainment were attrocious, and the glamourisation of all fighting sports, and by my reckoning the over violent nature of Hollywood (I mean, punisher is a marvel comic, yes comics are violent... but I found the violence in that film too graphic for an audience that would comprise of people who think, oh another comic>screen movie, like spiderman I bet..) I am not saying we
Re:Erm... which character? (Score:2)
The fact that just about everybody on
Re:Erm... which character? (Score:2)
Dressed like what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, so you see guys like this [iggy.co.kr] only in computer games like CS?
I don't see where the game comes in. If one wants to play the blamegame, why not blame a movie [sonypictures.com] or a book [amazon.co.uk], for instance?
Re:Dressed like what? (Score:2)
They were wearing pants, boots and a shirt (Score:2)
Oh my good, they were wearing pants, boots and a shirt!
(Counter-Strike outfits have nothing-particular except that they look pretty similar to what you can find in reality.)
Blame? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Blame? (Score:2)
You can't keep on blaming everything on Bill Gates!
Although I do tend to get more violent after Windows on the server freaks out and doesn't do what I tell it to do than after playing Unreal.
uniforms (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't realise Counter Strike uniforms had those wide bimmed hats with the corks on strings.
Who overplayed CS? (Score:5, Insightful)
On a more serious note (Score:2)
You might want to read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Lepine
The blames roll on... (Score:2)
Hmmm, hasn't this kind of behavior happened pre-video games? It's convenient for the media to blame a scapegoat (video games, France, crack babies, etc) than to actually have an informed factual discussion of the underlying issues.
I know the next time an orange hopping creature with a horn nose
Re:The blames roll on... (Score:2)
Next story.... (Score:2)
News from down under...
camper (Score:5, Funny)
Rumor has it he was camping.
What's with his name? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is one small clue, however. Look at his name. Is Sophear Em really his birth name?
Re:What's with his name? (Score:2)
That's Nothing (Score:4, Funny)
Forget Video Games. The american military causes violence, let's ban that instead.
Some people just don't care.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Too bad about the wife. Her husband was murdered and she became a widow.
The 'Counterstrike' angle was just used by the killer(s) as a disguise.
Some people cannot or will not separate reality from virtual reality in video games.
Yeah, such games can be (great) stress relievers but when you start feeling compulsion to do deadly stuff from the games in 'real life', you should think about stopping playing that particular game and play something more abstract like the (
Wait a second (Score:2, Interesting)
Where'd they get the guns to do this?
LK
Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Insightful)
Just goes to prove my point that people who want guns will find them on the black market anyway, so restricting law-abiding citizens from owning them only serves to strengthen the positions of gun-wielding criminals.
Re:Wait a second (Score:2)
So you rather have some junkie break into your house, grab your gun and then use it to kill other people?
Restricting guns means less guns that can be used to kill. The real criminals will find a way to get one anyhow, but it will prevent the average Joe Blow freaking out and using one.
Only in a society with levelheaded people that wouldn't be a big problem, and frankly, the US for instance isn't one of them. I don't even want everyone here in The Netherlan
Re:Wait a second (Score:2)
The problem is that pro- and anti-gun groups are very extreme.. the pro group wants everyone to own a gun and be able to walk around with it, while the anti-group wants no gun to exist on this world.
Guess what.. they're both wrong and the best way is somewhere in the middle. I'm in Belgium myself and like the Netherlands, I think there aren't many problems with gun ownership. Although here in Belgium there's n
Re:Wait a second (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want a black market handgun in Australia, you are looking at a price tag of several thousands of dollars. The same gun in the US would be, $50 perhaps. That price tag is the key - what down and out crim can afford that? It's unrealistic to think that we'll ever remove all illegal guns from circulation, but free market economics mean we don't have to.
Yes there are sti
Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
$50 my ass. If you ever buy a gun for $50, you'd better have a good emergency room nearby, because that gun is going to explode in your hand.
Incidentally, in the aforementioned Port Arthur tragedy [crimelibrary.com], the individual possessed an AR-15, and an FN FAL, guns that easily command a price tag over $1000 dollars each (even in the post-ban United States). So much for a thousands-of-dollars price tag deterring crime.
Re:Wait a second (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a slight problem - gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced. Registered firearms have very rarely been used in crime in Australia - as far as I recall only ONE registered handgun has ever been used in a murder in Australia. Generally crime is committed using unregistered (illegal) firearms, fancy that.
Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Insightful)
gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced.
So? Do you think the gun laws are the only factor in gun crime? Of course not. Crime and gun crime is a complex issue, depending on all sorts of social and economic issues.
So the issue is, if there were not any strict gun laws, would the rate be rising faster or slower?
Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Informative)
There is a slight problem - gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced.
I think you are ignoring some facts [nsw.gov.au] yourself.
Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Interesting)
Just goes to prove my point that people who want guns will find them on the black market anyway,
That strikes we as something of an oversimplification. You are saying that no matter how difficult or expensive it is to get a gun illegaly, criminals will end up with as many guns?
Gun control laws aren't going to stop every crinimal getting a gun, but aim to stop some getting guns.
so restricting law-abiding citizens from owning them only serves to strengthen the positions of gun-wielding criminals.
And
Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Informative)
It is very, very hard to keep things out of Australia - just like keeping drugs out of America, there is just too much unmonitored coastline to watch. A friend of my former Sydney employer is retired and sails around the world for fun - in January this year he sailed from Fiji directly into Circular Quay (past the Opera House) without being stopp
Slashdot fodder (Score:2, Funny)
Let the blaming begin..... (Score:2)
Dungeon and Dragons [slashdot.org] style adventure is fucked up. Someone who drives around in a swamp and tr
zaa (Score:2, Insightful)
tv makes people kill people.
video games make people kill people.
rap music makes people kill people.
the only thing that is safe for our children is books... on something completely unreleated: has anyone read that book by Tom Clancy were that one guy crashed that plane into the whitehouse? that so cool and impossible to emulate.
Re:zaa (Score:2)
Re:zaa (Score:2)
premeditated. (Score:2, Informative)
Dam them terorists! (Score:2)
In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)
culture of violence (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, this is an anon post. So flame/mod down at will because I am sure a great deal of
Healthy, happier place? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if you assume that a world in which I don't beat my sister round the head with heavy objects is healthier...
Computer games have saved me on two occasions when I was literally seeing red. It doesn't happen much but, when it does, shooting the proverbial out of a terrorist bot is about the best therapy I've come across. For comparison, the time I didn't manage to get to a computer resulted in a big hole in the plasterboard, which was certainly not healthy for my fist.
I have a very irritating sister. Thanks to computer games, this state of affairs continues.
Damn lawyers (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean.... they didn't even tag the ground!!!
They would have got away with it (Score:2, Funny)
Such is freedom (Score:2)
Even if we are disgusted with, or just plain tired of, games that idealize wanton violence and nihilistic solipsism, at the end of the day we should just put those feelings aside and join the cro
Re:Such is freedom (Score:2)
Even if we are disgusted with, or just plain tired of, people who leap to blame violent criminal behaviour on computer games containing violence with no evidence to back up thei
2002 ?!?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
News is starting to irritate me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers
Stor
Some Guys Dressed Up Like... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh wait...
Shooter was a member of a Lebanese gang (Score:5, Informative)
The Flemington Markets (where the victim worked) have always attracted a criminal element, as silly as it sounds more than a few of the produce stall vendors there have a connection to organised crime (note that in this city "organised" crime is way down the ladder in severity from the American Mob.)
I live in out in the midst of all this, and have seen first hand the way these guys operate. Make eye contact and they will literally go berserker on you. I watched three carloads of these guys stomp the living shit out of a scrawny 19 or 20 year old guy because he told them to "fuck off" after they threw fireworks at his girlfriend. I've seen brawls outside my apartment that could be called small riots and I've been attacked myself after one of these macho dickheads sexually assaulted my girlfriend in front of me. One new years eve I was in a crowd at Darling Harbor counting down at midnight, right on the stroke of midnight a gang of these guys linked arms, charged the crowd and just started wailing on anyone they could catch. Minutes later they'd fled. It's not politically correct to identify a gang by it's ethnicity but a large degree of their behavior arises out of environmental factors, especially their treatment of women and their gang-culture of machismo-on-steroids violence. Drive by shootings are a new phenomenon in this country and nearly all of them in this city are internecine warfare between rival groups of Lebanese and Arab young men, typically over the drug trade. In 1998 a police station was shot up with a fully automatic weapon. [ci-ce-ct.com]
Which brings me to my point that if they were dressed in paramilitary gear it was probably more to do with that than any exposure to Counterstrike. This wasn't some random assault by kids "corrupted" by some computer game, it was more than likely a gang reprisal where the assailants were known to the victim.
The rise of Lebanese gangs in Sydney [tinyurl.com]
Sydney police besieged in their own station by Lebanese gang [tinyurl.com]
Serial gang rapes in Sydney [free-definition.com]
Bilal Skaf, the leader of the rapists converted to radical Islam in jail and has openly avowed his support of Al Qaeda and sent death threats to the judge and witnesses at his trial.
We need the next new medium (Score:3, Insightful)
So what we obviously need is the next medium so we have something new to blame all violence on. I suggest iPods: All that music all the time, the glare of the white headphones, and now the thousands and thousands of pornographic images that teenagers carry around with them everywhere just have to have a bad influence. When will Australia finally live up to its moral responsibilty and ban them? And now that Bush has been reelected, shouldn't Ashcroft finally do something to save American's children from Apple's murderous grip?
I always thought Steve Jobs is smiling just a little to brightly when he holds up those things...
Details (Score:3, Funny)
Dressed as what? (Score:5, Funny)
They're called Special Forces in some countries and Terrorists in others, unless they're talking about the Chickens, then thats just bizzar.
Re:Which gun? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Which gun? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Which gun? (Score:2)
Probably an old centrefire rifle, or even a .22, which are possible to get (but still very difficult). Perhaps a handgun, but they are very heavily restricted.
Re:Numbers just don't support the blame game (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously though, are we supposed to be impressed by a freshman english paper that you can't find?
Actions influence thoughts. Thoughts influence actions. And you can add in speech, as well. This doesn't mean that X hours of CS will make you a murderer; it doesn't turn you into a zombie. But, IMO, violence begets violence, whether it is abstract or concrete, real or imaginary.
There is always the matter of degree, and because most of us can distinguish between a game and r