Yes.

The difference is that painball doesn't simulate killing someone, but only shooting color-filled balls at someone. It's not realistic at all. Games are at least potentially realistic - if you think about photorealistic textures, models and environments.

And the parent wasn't talking about going amok, but about losing control for a short time. It's different in the amount of sanity (which is a whole definition problem anyways) "required".

Even though I'm completely upset by current discussions of German ministers to ban "killer games" (as they call CS for example) this point seems very valid to me.
Sitting in front of a monitor is quite different from walking around, but once mankind develops some kind of neural interface (which will definitely happen in the next 100 years) the barrier between virtual and real will be much blurrier. Sure, a sane, stable person should know the difference, but if your consciousness is tricked into believing that a game you play is reality (which doesn't happen with a keyboard, mouse and monitor setup, but might be the case if you control a game with your thoughts and nerves), than that awareness might suffer.

Good idea to think about this before arch conservatives do.

What comes with Windows, that makes it very desirable to many people, is the ability to install and play real, professional games.

Also, I'm using Ubuntu because it only provides a single program for one task (one media player, one browser, etc.). Other distros install a bunch of programs leaving the newbie to decide what the heck could possibly be a good program - which is a terrible situation!

But Ubuntu rocks anyways, even if you have to install codecs (which don't come preinstalled - DVD or mp3 anyone?) and need Windows for real gaming.

And my KT400 board with a VIA chipset worked really well at a FSB of 133 MHz. :)