Slashdot Mirror

"If you have ever played casual games on the internet -- chess, hearts -- you are familiar with how rude and impersonal people are to each other," Harvey said. "Anyone who has ever met people and socialized in a compelling (virtual world) knows that people act differently when interacting as avatars than they would if they were interacting in a chat room with text alone. The visuals matter. You treat people as people, instead of as screen names."

This is the only part of GIM that seems like it could actually be useful.


-Colin

Homer Simpson: Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel.


-Colin

People don't explode in a vacuum


-Colin

1) because the Electoral College allows the *individual states*, not the popular vote, to elect the President. This actually *helps* keep California and New York from completely dominating, say, Wisconsin.

From the US census, as of July 1, 2003:

Resident Population California: 35,484,453 4.8
Resident Population New York: 19,190,115 1.1
Resident Population Wisconsin: 5,472,299

From Project Vote Smart:

Electoral Votes California: 55
Electoral Votes New York: 31
Electoral Votes Wisconsin: 10


Electoral Votes Per Person:

California: 1.5x10^-6
New York: 1.6x10^-6
Wisconsin: 1.8x10^-6

Give me one good reason why my vote should be worth more than a Californian's just because I was born in New York, and why a farmer's in Wisconsin is worth more than mine.


-Colin

3. The french people and the rest of the world all hate him most.

So if your sister was dating a guy who abused her, would you be happy to see her keep dating him just because the family hates him?


-Colin

George Bush freed all those Afgan and Iraqi people. Personally.

I must have missed the part were GWB went into Iraq by himself and -- matrix style -- fought his way past Sadam's Republican Guard, and then stole the key's to Abu Ghraib and let everyone out.


-Colin

While I don't agree that the rest of the world should be able to vote on the president of the United States, I will agree that since I moved to London and have been exposed to people from all over the world it seems that non-Americans know more about America than Americans do.

I remember once having a conversation where a French friend of mine explained all the details of the California Recall vote to me. I didn't have the slightest idea how it worked : \

Now that's a quite a goal for a civilization to aspire to: forever being thrown back to square one because of short-sighted thinking. : \


-Colin

... slashdotters will spot the magic phrase "RFID", and remember that this is something the hivemind has told them they're against

Is Apple involved in anyway? If so RFID is then OK : )


-Colin

Might I direct you here: Bill Gates: Killing Africans for Profit and P.R., by Greg Palast

The short summary is he cost them more because of IP laws than he gave back.

-Colin

While this sounds good in theory, it's too easy for powerful organization (unions, corportations, etc...) to sway elections by paying people for voting by having them turn in thier voting receipts after an election.

`Bring in your vote for Bush and get a free Liberty Burger!' is what I'm afraid of.


-Colin

No idea, but this is the first time I've seen the red hell BSD colors. Glad I've always passed on the BSD stories.


-Colin

Not close at all. The Oort cloud is really far away.


-Colin

How many terrorism related deaths have there been in the US since 9/11... The War on Terror needs to be fought, maybe differently than it has been, but in terms of the US, things are going pretty well.

"There's not a single bear in sight--the 'Bear Patrol' is working like a charm".

"That's specious reasoning,"

"Thanks, honey,"

"According to your logic, this rock keeps tigers away"

"Hmmm. How does it work?"

"It doesn't."

"How so?"

"It's just a rock. But I don't see a tiger, anywhere."

"Lisa, I want to buy your rock."


-Colin

I'm very happy to be living in within a structure of a decentralized broadband access where each individual state dictates the best method of communication, rather than a country tell me that only DSL or CABLE is available.

You must not get out much right? You do know that most nations in Europe are about the size of States in the US? It would take me about 4-5 hours to drive across my new home, England and it took me about 7-10 hours to drive accross my old State, New York.

7. Take a few classes for personal enrichment.

I can't agree with this advice more, though I will add that if it's possible, get a second major in a different an area you like as well. I went to college to get my physics degree, but also picked up a sociology degree because I really like the classes and the teachers. The reason I suggest the major is it gives you something concrete to put on a resume to show that you are a diversified person. My physics degree will get me a job, but that additional sociology degree catches peoples' attention and has helped me stand out.

Plus, it was nice to go from classes where there were only two girls out of twenty students to classes where I was one of only three guys out of fifty students.

-Colin

Here
Hereand Here

I'm not the grandparent poster, but I too have found orkut to be useful for meeting real-world friends.

Here are my experiences

See also The Long Now Foundation.

I read their book in college and, though it is a bit pie-in-the-sky, I thought it raised some interesting ideas. One of their projects was to build a clock that could last a thousand years. When I moved to London one of the first things I did was go to see the thousand-year clock in the National Science Museum. There it was, it all it's broken-non-time-telling glory. About a month ago I checked up on it again. Status: still not fixed : \

because there is just no substitute for a media that cost cents

What about media that cost tenths of a cent?

-Colin

What's that sound? It's hundreds of responsible wikipedians clicking `revert' to hold back the flood of slashdot trolls.


-Colin

Really? I thought it was some of the most poorly executed action sequences I've ever seen. The worst was when the squids break into Zion. That scene should have been 15 seconds long at the most. The squids, if they were truly intelligent would have broken in, swarmed the defenses and taken down that whole big chamber in an instant. That, I think would have been breathtaking. But, not. Instead we get all the squids filing up in a line and flying head-first into gunfire. Lame.

-Colin

It is interesting to note that one of the founders of greenpeace has turned against them.


-Colin

Grandparent: Couldn't it also be argued that every single one of these games contributes on some level to the message "America is great - it's those foreigners you should fear and hate. Stay at home son, and join the US Army!" ?

Parent: Games in which you can only follow the glorious patriotic line are just not complete. You've got to have the chance to be the bad guy once in a while.

I think your use of the phrase 'bad guy' serves to reinforce the grandparent's comment, not contradict it.


-Colin

Grandparent: The job of the editors is to post stories which generate hits to the site. Slashdot plays the self serving FUD game just as well as your favorite evil mega-corp.

Parent: Most insightful comment I've seen posted here all day. There's a damn good argument to be made that Slashdot is best served when the stories are inflammatory and riddled with falsehoods.

It's something that's always bugged me about slashdot, and I used to not post to stories out of some kind of vague principle. I figured that I was generating content (thus money -- albeit a small about) for them without getting anything in return and I didn't like it. I did however work on projects like Wiktionary, and smaller wikis like the open guide to London because no one was making any money off my labor in that case.

But, eventually I did start posting to slashdot when I started my own website. I figured the publicity that I could get from this site for my blog far, far out weighed the amount of money my comment on slashdot was worth. So it's a good deal for everyone, I make self-serving links to my own sites and get many regular readers from slashdot, and slashdot gets my own little contribution to their content pile and thus their coffers.

Still though, it does annoy me that it is in their best interest to have stories that end in either inflammatory or inaccurate comments.

But: do you want to meet people on the Web at all?

I didn't think I would, but yes. When I moved to London, I didn't know anyone in the city and had to bootstrap myself a new social network. Graduate school helped, but after a while I wanted more than one group of friends so I turned to Orkut. I've been to a bunch of meetings and generally my experiences have been positive.

For those interested, I wrote about my first orkut meetup on my blog here.

I always wondered why the security was soooo poor: while it has changed slightly now (better usernames/passwords) it used to be the case that your username was your SSN and your password a number code (!). I am sure most of you will agree with me that this is scary...The nicer ones even give you credit-card-size RSA password generator which is combined with a calculator you can keep in your pocket. Hence my question: are others also worried about poor security of online banking in the U.S.? Are there banks which are better than the ones mentioned above?"

Seriously, what is up with your punctuation? We have a colon where there should be a period, an exclamation mark (in parentheses) followed by a period, an ellipse that touches the first word in the next sentence, and conclude with a quotation mark that doesn't have a partner. You also seem unable to decide on one space or two between sentences.

I try not to be a grammar nazi because I know that I often get it wrong in my own writing, but this was so tremendously obvious and distracting I couldn't read the article.


-Colin

Would the Japanense who dislike Americas for the atmoic bomb ever get over it? Death solves many problem including this one.

Perhaps if human life was eternal, we would be less inclined to drop atomic bombs. In a strange sort of way, I think the value of life becomes more important when people live forever. Kill someone now and you take away 60 years, kill someone in the future and you have stolen an eternity.


-Colin

And true ambidexterity is rare.

Well, this is something I wonder about and hope that a more qualified person on slashdot could provide an answer to. Is there any such thing as a naturally ambidextrous or left/right handed person? I'm asking because so many of the things people do with their hand are practiced skills. For example I'm right handed and thus have always shaved with my right hand. But if I were to try and shave using my left hand would my left-handed shaving be any better than the first time I tried to shave with my right hand?

I'm just curious because I have an Aunt who says she's ambidextrous, but I think it's because when she learns something new, she makes an effort to learn it with both hands. IE, when she learned to play tennis, she switched hands every few hits. Also, for my [shameless plug] London Journal[/shameless plug] I usually write the entries out long hand first. But after a few pages my right hand gets tired. Because I didn't want to stop, I decided to learn to write with my left hand as well so I could alternate hands on each page.

I just wonder if handedness is the result of the fact than it takes less energy and effort to make one one hand a specialist that is required to make two.

We prefer to be called Electronic-Americans.


What about the Robots who don't live in America?


-Colin

George Lucas is on the board. It will be a damn shame if Jar-Jar somehow works his was into an exhibit titled anything but The Worst Mistake in Sci-Fi History


-Colin

The real reason to become a member is the invitations to the exclusive members-only events. Just think of all the hot chicks who'll be there... or perhaps not.


-Colin

Giving away CPU cycles so that a multi-million dollar company can improve its product is a wholly different thing.

People pay to wear shirt that advertise mult-million dollar companies. : (


-Colin

We will never "run out" of anything. It will simply become unaffordable for almost everyone.

I'm sorry, but if it unaffordable for almost everyone that is, from a practical standpoint, the same thing as running out.


-Colin

What they say (paraphrased) is that it should not be used in situations where lives would be on the line.

I can't think of a bigger system that puts more lives on the line than a government.


-Colin

I could hear the whooosh! sound at the April 1st joke flew right over your head.


-Colin

... there is a _lot_ of high-quality music out there that is not shackled by the RIAA.

This is very true, however, I have trouble finding sorting the good from the bad. For example, creative commons has a CD of free music called Copy Me, Remix Me which has some really good stuff. But where to go from here? There needs to be a webpage that can do some amazon.com style preference aggregating to help me find new free music that I like based on my past preferences.


-Colin

Indeed. Hell, the HTML editor is the only thing I use Mozilla for.


-Colin

God can 'save' you

Moderation: -1 Fairy tale


-Colin

does anyone have recommendations for better ways to read these files?

On an old palm pilot or in the notes folder on an ipod. I found that it's the backlight of a computer screen (and on the new palms) that is what hurts my eyes when trying to read.


-Colin

Czechoslovakia

Czech Republic

Slovakia

On a personal note, I was in Prague last year, and it's really a beautiful city. Dirt cheap too.

all is needed is a leak and everyone can do it...

That's what the Anonymous Coward button is for.


-Colin

Moore's prominent presence in the news brings to light some serious questions, such as 'Can't he at least try to look presentable?


-Colin

I'm sure we'd all love to see Captain James Tiberius Kirk again, right?

No.


-Colin

Perhaps I should refer you to the earlier slashdot story on schizophrenia? Your post starts off nice and sane:

I guess this doesn't make a lot of sense to me until such time as these games start to be shown on TV, where rounds can be surrounded by ads and what have you.

Of course, this might be an interesting direction for games to go in. Unreal Tournament 2004 isn't too exciting to watch unless you're actually playing in it, so what types of games would do well on tv?

But then -- bam! -- psycho city:

Another area that I find fascinating is the potential for people to do "useful" things in games. Could gamers solve potentially large problems by the fractal differential of the quantum encoding of their movements in a game of Doom? Will games move so far into the realm of virtual lives that people physically do work there?


Colin

Mr. Lim, who trains 10 hours a day

How on earth does he avoid repetitive stress injuries?


-Colin

light-years ago

Wouldn't that just be years ago? A light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It's like saying 'I can see three inches into the past.' The only reason I can think of to say this is if you also want to indicate how far away the event was when it happened.


-Colin

I particularly like the description for Transylvania, the spin off TV show where they try and simultaneously say it will have everything to do with the movie and nothing to do with the movie:

Transylvania, a dramatic fantasy television series conceived by Stephen Sommers and inspired by the world he's created for Van Helsing, his feature-film epic which will be released on May 7, 2004.

Transylvania will be connected in spirit and style to his big-budget feature film but will not share any major characters or storylines with Van Helsing.

And, what 'world' did Sommers create anyway? Buffy has a world. Van Helsing? Please.


-Colin

it's better than nothing

Not when it screws with the entire history/timeline of the series and seriously inhibits the work any future writer could do to weave a coherent story in the Star Trek universe.

My hope for the franchise would be to take a few years off and then come back with something very different. Perhaps a show done from the prospective of one of the 'bad' alien races.


-Colin

(Link contains images of Dark Elves. May not be work safe.)

Alright people, fess up. How many of you clicked on the link because of the aforementioned-un-work-safe dark elves?


-Colin