GTA vs The City of Chicago

Honestly, I think that Fox News is making a bigger deal of this than it really is. I can understand why Chicago’s transit authority pulled the ads. There has been a significant spike in violent crime and the GTA series has always been associated with violent crime.

Am I one of those people who think GTA is evil because of the violence? Absoulutely not, I’ve owned several GTA games and I enjoy them, but I can understand that there are a select few people in the world that can’t see the difference between a game and reality, and it’s these people that will commit violence acts in real life. It’s also these same people that may play GTA IV and get the wrong impression.

To me, it’s no different than if they pulled posters for an action movie in which they brandish various guns and seemed to ‘glorify violence’. The comment, though, from the Fox anchor pretty much shows their bias.

clipped from www.gamespot.com The local Fox affiliate is reporting that the Chicago Transit Authority plans to pull an advertising campaign for the latest criminal action game from Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive. The Fox report–available as a video clip on the station’s Web site–begins by noting this past weekend was “an especially violent” one for Chicago, which left dozens of people shot and six dead. “And what did we spot on CTA buses and platforms,” anchor Andy Roesgen asked. “Advertisements for the unapologetically violent video game Grand Theft Auto.” Roesgen then recaps a 2004 stir over CTA ads for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PlayStation 2. In that incident, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (whose game restriction legislation was declared unconstitutional, much to the expense of the state’s taxpayers) criticized the CTA for accepting the $90,000 ad campaign, but the ads were set to come down anyway by the time the issue drew attention.

11-inch lcd FOR $2,500 and an Armani TV

Consumer Reports just published their take on Sony’s XEL-1 LCD. Yep, it’s 11-inch and it costs $2,500. Will it sell well? I doubt, but just like most other consumer electronics companies, they do this thing just to prove they can, much like a concept car. I expect these new wafer-thin TV’s to hit a more reasonable price in about 2 years. I believe Hitachi had a much larger TV that was also pretty thin.

Samsung has partnered with Armani again, this time to make HDTV’s. I don’t see anything special about the TV, other than it’s Armani. It does, however, have a refresh rate of 120hz, which is pretty speedy. It will start selling in parts of Europe and Asia soon.

Technorati Tags: Samsung, Armani, OLED, Sony, HDTV, plasma, LCD, flat-panel, television, high definition, hi-def, blu-ray, HD-DVD, XEL-1

(images from Yahoo! and consumerreports.org)