Slashdot Mirror

Some clarification from http://www.uwec.edu/career/online_library/illegal_ques.htm :

"May ask about legal authorization to work in the specific position if all applicants are asked."

So if you must legally be a US citizen for the job and everyone is asked, it's OK.

Even then, the link is to the last page. Here's a slightly better page.

Anyway, on-topic, do you really want to work for a company that requires you to know your legal status prior to a job interview? Discrimination is disgusting, and as much as it may hurt, you're better off being knocked back for the job than having it present 40 hours a week.

People need to feed their families, but degrading one's self respect by accepting work where it happens is only inviting more trouble.

That's a worst-case analysis. A neat one, though. If you don't insist that the algorithm guarantee> a solution within some error bound, you can get much faster results. There are, however, pathological cases that will take longer. Non-deterministic algorithms usually come in at O(N^2). See "A Survey on Travelling Salesman Problem".

It will "suck when Yellowstone blows" in the same way that it will suck if an asteroid a couple of hundred meters in diameter hits Earth. The Lost Creek eruption of ~630K years ago put about a half meter of so of ash over about 2/3rds of what is now the US. Reference and maps here

Where top Bush administration types meet the members of the family of Usama bin Laden.

"If they apply "widely used principles of UI design", why, for example, is the file save dialog so different (and much worse) than in Windows, OS X or KDE ?"

"Testing the interface on "real people" is fine, but are they exclusively doing this on people who have next-to-no computer experience ? Testing what these people find useable for their first few days of computing experience with a new environment is fine, but everyone learns things in time, learns their own preferred way of doing things, and is able to absorb more and more functionality."

Behavioral and Personality Type tests are becoming almost standard for larger companies (read, ones that can afford them). Whether or not they add value is debatable, and whether you should "move on" obviously will be a personal choice. If it's a job you really want, you probably should consider taking it.

I don't consider these tests harmless, especially since many companies allow too much weight to the results. I wonder how many industry leaders today would get "passing" results.

All that said, if you're interested in what they're looking for and some info on why, and what you might do to improve your results visit this site.

For a perspective from the "hiring" side, you might want to look at this article.

Also, here's an article that describes what behavioral interviews/tests are. It claims (I won't agree or disagree):

..., behavior-based interviews are said to be 55 percent predictive of future on-the-job behavior, while traditional interviews are only 10 percent predictive. They can help hiring managers get more objective information about a candidate's job-related skills, abilities, interest and motivation, and make more accurate hiring decision. Currently, 30 percent of all organizations are using behavioral interviews to some degree.

It's mostly voodoo garbage (no offense to voodoo practicers) but is a fact of life in the interviewing world.

So the US steel industry is entirely at the whim of market forces is it?

Apparently not:
http://www.freetrade.org/issues/steel.html

Or what about $600million subsidy to the Lumber industry which the US Federal Government reported to the WTO?

Or agriculture subsidies?

Now, whether or not subsidies are good or bad is another issue. However, there's very little point in either the US or the EU bitching about the other's subsidies -- they're each as "guilty" as the other.

Where on earth did we get the notion that nuclear warfare has not been used since WWII?

Iraq & Our Energy Future - Depleted Uranium Use in Iraq

"During the first Gulf War in 1991, weapons containing depleted Uranium were used for the first time in combat."
http://www.uwec.edu/grossmzc/anderkel.html

Weapon of Mass Deception What the Pentagon doesn't want us to know about depleted uranium "Over the past 15 years, the Pentagon has become increasingly dependent on DU weapons and armor. The 1991 Gulf War was the first major conflict in which DU weaponry and armor was used. Almost 320 tons-an amount equal to the weight of five Abrams battle tanks-were fired in the Iraqi desert. About 10 tons of DU munitions were used in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia in the '90s. DU weaponry was reportedly used in Afghanistan in 2001 as well, but reliable estimates are not yet available."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Health/WeaponMas sDecepton_DU.html

WAR CRIME! - U.S Use of Depleted Uranium -"More Deadly than Gas" "When this war ends, George Bush will have caused the poisoning of hundreds of thousands more humans than he said Saddam Hussein poisoned."
http://www.stopthenato.org/m/zit/id_ses/a5cf1047/i d_p/10/opt/read_e/id_s/148.html

Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops "DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering."
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Death_by_slow_burn _050302.htm

"It's not a matter of being lucky, it's a matter of being disciplined. $20 a month for the last 20 years, plus income tax refunds, plus money recieved at Christmas & birthdays, plus bonuses from work, etc.."

You are missing the point, by setting dividend taxes to zero the government is rewarding you for one and only one form of economic activity. In the process they are nearly forcing everyone to invest in the stock market and forcing companies to pay out everything possible in dividends. As massively as the Bush administration has tried to pump the stock market it should be doing a lot better than it is. Its not because of the huge budget and trade deficits which are pulling it down.

Regrettably the stock market, especially in the modern era has become more a form of high stakes gambling than sound investment.

Thanks to corporate corruption its often a huge gamble. Talk to people who invested everything in stocks due to booming returns in 1929 or Enron employees who were massively incentived to invest all their savings in to Enron stock and have been wiped out financially. Its not entirely rational for the government to compel and reward people to put all their savings in the stock market which is EXACTLY what they are doing. Wall Street loves it but its destroying diversification and sets Americans up for disaster in the event of another market crash.

Its also compeling people to stop investing in saving accounts so American's dont put money in to interest bearing accounts anymore. The returns are low AND its taxed in to the ground.

Thanks to online trading and low fees on stock trades many people are in fact using stock trading as a form of legalized gambling with all the volatility that produces.

So you didn't answer the question why should you be special and get untaxed income from dividends while someone who invests in saving accounts, bonds, or actually does real work is taxed in to the ground.

"The fact is, the number of 'very wealthy' is vanishingly small. Even if we taxed them at 100%, the total amount would be a drop in the bucket of the Federal budget."

That is absurd, some charts showing wealth and income distribution and how wealth is concentrating in the hands of the upper class at a disturbing rate.. The upper 1% of American control 40% of its wealth. The upper 5% control 61.4% of its wealth. After tax income for the richest 1% has went up 87% from 1980 to 1990 during Reaganmoics. After tax income went down 5% for the poorest 20%. I'd sure like to see the same charts for the last 5-20 years. It would be sickening.

The simple fact is the wealthiest 5% of American control most of its wealth, and they pay most of the taxes and that is that is they way it should be. If they aren't progressively taxed eventually they will control all the nations wealth. It is inherent in capitalism. If you have money is extremely easy to make more money, the more you have the more you make.

Sorry but I see zero rationale for the world's richest man, Bill Gates to take in some $3 billion dollars in untaxed dividends while we are running huge deficits and working people are losing at least 30% of their income in to income and payroll taxes.

The facts of history indicate peace isn't something the USA has ever been interested in, a nation can change but i dont think it will be soon.

The price is aproximately $0.01/kwh per the article. The cost to produce and store (for calm days) the electricity is not included. In reality, every buyer of electricity in Colorado is subsidizing the manufacturers and operators of wind generators.

Taking into consideration operation costs, a turbine life span of 30 years, and the initial investment in for a commercial turbine, the estimated cost of electricity generated is seven cents per kWh each (Pimentel, 2002). Other reports found wind energy costs ranging from 3.9 cents per kW in sites with ideal wind, to over 5 cents in less ideal locations.
http://www.uwec.edu/grossmzc/elquiscl.html

in that case they should drop the shiny XP icon and replace it with the trusted win95 MyComputer icon. ;-)

No, no, you're thinking of Vietnam...

I know I must be hitting a few nerves when someone has to resort to implying I'm crazy rather than defend a situation.

Prone to illusion of persecution, specifically.

I think it's more likely you're just willfully blind to the fact that America stopped being a real democracy quite some time ago

America never was a 'real democracy', it founded as a 'republic' or 'representative democracy'. In contrast with (what I take you to mean by) a 'real democracy', we choose representatives to act in 'our' interests. However the constituency (county, congressional district, state, etc.) being represented usually have a variety of conflicting interests. When a rep steps up to the plate on any given issue, it's going to make some people all warm and fuzzy inside and it's going to piss some people off.

Now if you're a rep trying to decide what slant to take on an issue, are you more likely to listen to some ranting dork in bubble wrap, or someone who's willing to form a Political Action Committee and put their money where their mouth is?

You are only one vote, and it's all about keeping the majority, not your particular vote.

Yeah, that's pretty much the notion of democracy. The majority wins, with certain checks to built into the system to protect the minority, such as the bicameral legislature and Electoral College. Whether those checks are insufficient or give too much power to a minority of people is another debate altogether.

The vote is a sham to keep select people in a visible position of power, while the corp financing pretty much dictates what actually happens.

Corporate interests do indeed have a lot of influence and, amazingly enough, they represent a lot of people! However, there are a lot of groups that similarly have a lot of power without being aligned with corporate America or having an enormous warchest of money (the ACLU is one example, although I believe they are more focused on working with the judicial than legislative branches of government).

Bottom line, just because the majority is against you doesn't necessarily mean that they are controlled by some dark master. It could mean, however, they are actually committed to their views and are willing to spend resources to gain support for them, rather than just bitching on a chat board.

No, actually, 2nd world was the Soviet Bloc. 1st world was the West. Everything else was 3rd. here's a cool map

except for illustrating how the Gitmo situation is not in keeping with 200+ years of stated american policy, i.e. no indefinite imprisonment.

200+ years you say? Check your facts.

60 years ago
160 years ago (PDF file)

But, how dare you sir, to question my comittment to trolling. Here are the pics as promised:

Getting my robes lit.
Ouch. That's gonna take a while to heal.
Fire!
Picture taken from the third floor balcony of the food court
It hurt like hell at first. Then shock set in.

Don't let anyone say that I'm not hardcore.

Not so much sun directly as much as the businesses in the surrounding area in the college donate money to the computer science program and thus are given some influence on what languages are taught.

Myself, I am a CS student at UWEC and the businesses in the surrounding Chippewa Valley area do donate big bucks to our computer science program, because they always come to our campus to recruit, and they want Java programmers. So indirectly... take this for what you will.. Sun does have some influence on what is taught at Universities.

Looks like you've misunderstood the term "second world."

To be a 2nd World country you have to first and foremost be communist. See here

In truth the 2nd World has all but disappeared. You might argue there's still China, but if that's all that's left you might as well just use the term "China".

THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

See here for picture.

THIS????

The above s-expression "(psychoanalyze-pinhead)" is an Emacs builtin which takes the output of one "bot" (Actually nothing more than a generator of random quotes from the Zippy the Pinhead cartoon strip) and feeds it as the input to another bot, a version of the original Eliza program by Weizenbaum, which simulates a Rogerian psychoanalyst. (This is a note of explanation, since the guy who moderated the above as "-1, Overrated" when it was still sitting at the default score of 0 (no score +1 bonus) perhaps didn't realise what it was about!) Oh Well, Mark

I know that a press assistant putting a blue cloth backdrop behind the AG when he speaks to provide better photos isn't as funny a story, but hey, the truth isn't always as amusing as fiction.

Then he must be standing out there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, because according to the New York Times, that's how long the curtain stays up.

In addition, if he cares so much about how he looks in pictures, why did his spokeswoman make the statement, "He doesn't look at his press coverage a lot, himself", when asked about the issue?

Sounds like my university.

If you liked Ad Verbum, you should hunt around for a copy of an old Infocom title:
"Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of it"

The wordplay puzzles in "Nord and Bert" offer more variety and depth than "Ad Verbum". There are puzzles involving spoonerisms, puns, and every other type of word play. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Also, for scholarly research and lots of great Interactive fiction links, check out Prof. Dennis Jerz's Interactive Fiction pages.

In 1979, someone named Kevin MacKenzie suggested the symbol -) for "tongue in cheek". It's not a "smiley", of course, but it serves the same function. I've archived the exchange that included the post: http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/English309/emoticon.txt

Now you can enjoy both Portman and hot grits in the privacy of your own kitchen, at the same time!
http://acm.cs.uwec.edu/~hoymb/portman.jpg

Let's not be hyperbolic here.

famine n.

1. A drastic, wide-reaching food shortage.
2. A drastic shortage; a dearth.
3. Severe hunger; starvation.
4. Archaic. Extreme appetite.

plague n.

1. A highly infectious, usually fatal, epidemic disease; a pestilence.
2. A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasturella) pestis, is transmitted primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms.

Damn straight. Disney is largely responsible for the sorry state of the public domain today. Hopefully, some of the tenants of the OSS movement will start to wear off on them. I actually just finished a paper last semester about how the OSS movement will reviatlize the public domain. The damage Disney has caused to the public domain was one of my major arguments for copyright reform. Here's a .pdf version of my paper.
Share and enjoy!

Agreed. For a group that is driven by community development, we aren't always willing to offer community support to our favorite companies.

> If I was not unemployed (get into computers, they said in the '70s. It's the wave of the future, you'll never be out of work! Yeah, right), I'd pay Mandrake for their distro.

I'm in the same boat. Although I'm using Debian at the moment, I would pay for the Mandrake club just to support as what I perceive as the other great distro. Unfortunately, as a recent MIS graduate, I can't find work and I'm about to sell my winter jacket here in Wisconsin just to afford next month's rent. I now realize the folly of my ways (hindsight is 20x20), but I remember them selling me on the idea of majoring in MIS five years ago because I would be gaurenteed to find a job and could expect to earn a lot of money. Horse pucky! I consider myself "above average" and on-par with most of the CS graduates through job experience and personal persistence and I keep getting turned down due to lack of experience. I particularly loved this quote from my alma mater's web site on why to study MIS:

> Well paid. The annual salary range for an entry-level MIS trainee with a bachelor's degree is $45,000-$52,000.

Note "entry level". I visit that page once in awhile for a good laugh. EVERYONE, even entry level, wants experience. Everyone.

It would be cool if someone would organize a class action lawsuit. Too bad I'm a lazy bitch and lack hard evidence.

The 1920 Czech play, _Rossum's Universal Robots_ features the creation of Robots that take over the world. It's the source of what has become a science-fiction cliche.

Oddly enough, the Robots in the original play were biological.

http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/RUR/index.html

Our campus implemented it poorly. They implemented limited access to "try it", and now the same limited access is acting like a reason not to implement it further. There are a lot of holes, and you have to be in specific places to use it (which nobody seems to know where they are), so you can get disconnected by wandering to the wrong place. Also, the different colleges within our University are beginning to develop their own networks (because they want a piece of it too), so there are different SIDs with ZERO communication with the Help Desk. Students will come to out Help Desk looking for assistance, and we can just tell them "Try finding a professor in that college. They might know." Sad. Plus, the University will ONLY support Cisco cards, which are far too expensive for the average student. If you're looking for the wrong way to implement wireless, try UWEC.

Take these figures with an extremely large grain of salt. One of my English Profs maintains a webpagepage about Jupiter and their "research." Lots of links to other stuff on Jupiter too. They have a long and sordid history. At long last, Cosmic Banditos has been reprinted! Signed copies available Cheap.

I like Asimov as well as the next guy, however he was not first. The term robot was coined by Czech writer Josef Capek, popularized in his brother Karl's 1923 play, "Rossum's Universal Robots".

For the term "robot," try Lem instead.

Here is one translation of the Czech play.

• Last time this came up here I believe the firm consensus was that the
• 
  Erasmatron is not particularly interesting and the demonstration games are
  terribly embarrassing. Crawford is about 15 years too late, for a start.
  
  For more interesting and worthwhile work related to IF and personality
  I'd look at Emily Short's Galatea or Adam Cadre's Varicella.
  

In an effort to come to terms with what has happened, I posted the following website, which examines that theme:
World Trade Center: Reflections on the Disaster

If you're not already there (perhaps under a different identity), you might want to try checking out the archves of rec.arts.int-fiction (the interactive fiction newsgroup), where threads like this pop up frequently. Some good discussions in the last week or so have involved AI for simulation vs. "good enough" NPCs for storytelling. Parser issues, how to do exposition, and the form of the prologue have also been covered.

I'd also recommend recent interactive fiction by Emily Short and Adam Cadre. They've both coded complex stories involving NPCs that "remember" and have emotional states. This is different from the Oz Project or similar character-based efforts where there's no story (just bits of scripted behavior) and no PC per se (just a bunch of NPCs). If you'd like to try out an Emily Short character study, try Galatea, which is light-years ahead of Eliza (though not quite up to the standards of HAL). For sheer gameplay, with a heavier emphasis on puzzles, try Graham Nelson's works.

As for recent commercial computer games with story elements... already people are saying that hundreds of hours worth of computer-based stories are boring. Perhaps authors simply haven't found the right combination of skills and subject matter that unlocks the power of the media.

When the average person finally gets access to tools that can create lifelike graphics of people, the stories that people will build with those tools will be richer and more engaging, thanks to the experimental work of amateur interactive fiction authors, beta-testers, reviewers, archivists, etc. We'll know what to do with the Holodeck once it goes mainstream (which is something commercial computer games haven't done).

Of course, like most people, I don't always want a story when I play a game.

We invited Scott to join a panel that was part of an English Department festival, for cryin' out loud. And any panel has to have a focus; so we focused on one aspect of games: the storytelling.

Nobody's trying to smack the control pads out of anybody's hands.

...is that Scott Adams finds text adventures boring...

Why does this upset me so much?

I will tell you why:

Go to the bottom of that page, and notice that he gave away copies of Return to Pirate's Island 2...

Guess what - that game, as it exists today - would not look like it does now had it not been for my direct input.

You see, during the development of RTPI2, I was a beta tester for Scott, for this game. I, among other people, signed up on a mailing list, got copies of the game engine and data modules (an Windows EXE and various DAT files) to play around with - to note what was right, what was wrong, what should be improved.

I noticed right off things to be improved - the descriptions of rooms and objects were very primitive - I asked him to change it, so that it would be more story-like. I gave him the suggestion of adding sound effects to help liven the game up a bit. It was strange, once I started making the various requests, there was a small hiatus in postings to the group from Scott, then he announced that he was going to completely revamp the engine based on my suggestions! I was floored!

I had gotten onto the list, and became a beta tester, because I see him as an influence on my early computer life - I got into computers and programming because of the early games, especially text adventures. As a kid, I looked up to him in those early days as a notion of someone who had "made it" - there were others (you don't hear much from them - like Bill Budge, etc) - but to actually get this kind of chance, well - couldn't pass it up.

But never did I expect to cause him to totally alter the game play of that new adventure. But I did, somehow.

Anyhow, he finished up the game, thanked all of the volunteers, mailed each of us an autographed piece of the game script code, and gave each of us a copy of the finished game. The list went on for a while, then was shut down (not too many months ago, actually).

But one thing he gave me (though I can't give it to anyone - at least not yet), is something that very few beta testers get - actual game code. You see, I knew what he was using for RTPI2 - Visual Basic. I offered to convert the system back to standard console mode, by first doing whatever cleanup to the VB code, then downconverting that to C, and making it portable (with a Linux port in mind for the future). Well, I got the code (and no, I will NOT give it to anyone, so don't even THINK about emailing me), and (sorry to say) - it was crap. Basically it was a VB wrapper around the old hacked up IBM BASICA source from the original game of RTPI (or was it GWBASIC?) - anyhow, it was ugly - damn ugly. I started a conversion, trying to straighten out the GOTOs and whatnot into more standard VB (and let's not turn this into a VB flame fest, alright?), but I stopped after a few days - it was horrible.

But, I still have the code, and I might still convert it, someday...

So - I can't understand why Scott says he hates text adventures - I think he might be bitter about the way things have gone with RTPI2 - as far as sales, etc - he just isn't making money there. Maybe he is also bitter about the fact that it is nearly impossible for a person to "go it alone" as far as making a game is concerned, and marketing it, and selling it.

No, I don't think RTPI2 is the be all and end all of text adventures. Infocom has already proven what really can be done. I just can't understand why it is possible for fantasy fiction authors to make a bundle, but as soon as you try to make a text adventure game, no one seems will to buy the thing for "reading pleasure" - I tend to wonder if an ebook-type system, where you could actually read and adventure, would be more of the style (think of it as "choose-your-own-adventure" or "twist-a-plot", but on steroids). Would anybody buy such an interactive book (I am also thinking of Diamond Age here, as well)?

Think of the merchandise spinoffs!

She's too busy marketing her grits to notice any of you drooling fanboys. Maybe if you buy a few boxes of these, she'll pay more attention to you.

She's too busy marketing her grits to notice any of you drooling fanboys. Maybe if you buy a few boxes of these, she'll pay more attention to you.

True, true. MP3 has had a few years to get ingrained. Look at the variety of hardware that is MP3 compatible now: portables, car stereos, home theater, etc. John Q. Public isn't going to rush out and grab Ogg because he dropped $400 on a neato car stereo that can play his Napstered Mp3s. Ogg will become the codec of choice among disenfranchised hacker wanna-be's and Linux zealots, but Mp3 will keep it's mainstream strangle hold for a while yet.

I think a good paralell here is the story CD/miniDisc. They were developed within a few years of eachother, but CD was the clear winner, despite the advantages of miniDisc. (Those being smaller size, better resistance to skipping, and better resiliency.) The CD had a foothold in the marketplace, and miniDisc never caught up.

Click here to see Natalie's Hot Grits

kaszeta wrote:

You're right, and studies of many game-driven (or at least game-related) computer science topics already are fairly common at academic conferences and meetings.

True, but conference papers aren't nearly as valuable to the professional career of the academic. Since few humanities academics work at well-funded research centers (or at any kind of research center at all), few humanities academics can afford to attend the kind of big conferences in which the proceedings are all published (thus providing all the speakers with a "publication").

I've sat through uncountable presentations on 3D-modeling, polygon reduction, texture mapping, landscape generation, networked real-time simulations, etc., in which the author(s) made it clear that computer games were one of the primary motivations for the study.

Okay... but consider the mission statement from the Game Studies home page:

"Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games. Our mission - To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming."

Articles on computer games do get published from time to time in mainstream humanities journals such as Computers and Composition or any of the journals that focus on postmodern cultural studies, but it's true that many of them do tend to fixate on those aspects of computer gaming that support independetly existing postmodern theories, or else they look at the gaming culture as an isolated subgroup, the way an anthropologist would. Of course there are probably scores or hundreds of exceptions to the sweeping generalization I just made, but many humanities folks still think that clicking on a hyperlink is somehow more interactive than turning to page 24 of a Choose-Your-Own Adventure novel; Aarseth's book Cybertext argues strongly for the notion that hypertext fiction is not the only kind of cybertext. This is likely not news for the Slashdot crowd, of course, but professors in departments outside of CS and AI programs need to hear it.

Perhaps some of the articles in this first issue show the literary lens through which humanities folks look at computer gaming activity... but I think it's wonderful to see a journal that intends to focus on the cultural and aesthetic aspects of computer games.

Speaking more generally, and not directly in response to kaszeta, I would say that to express disappointment with Game Studies simply because it does not look like a promising place to swap AI algorithms and Quake mods is, I think, to miss the point.

Dennis G. Jerz
Department of English
University of Wisconsin -- Eau Claire
Literacy Weblog
Interactive Fiction Call for Papers

kaszeta wrote:

You're right, and studies of many game-driven (or at least game-related) computer science topics already are fairly common at academic conferences and meetings.

True, but conference papers aren't nearly as valuable to the professional career of the academic. Since few humanities academics work at well-funded research centers (or at any kind of research center at all), few humanities academics can afford to attend the kind of big conferences in which the proceedings are all published (thus providing all the speakers with a "publication").

I've sat through uncountable presentations on 3D-modeling, polygon reduction, texture mapping, landscape generation, networked real-time simulations, etc., in which the author(s) made it clear that computer games were one of the primary motivations for the study.

Okay... but consider the mission statement from the Game Studies home page:

"Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games. Our mission - To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming."

Articles on computer games do get published from time to time in mainstream humanities journals such as Computers and Composition or any of the journals that focus on postmodern cultural studies, but it's true that many of them do tend to fixate on those aspects of computer gaming that support independetly existing postmodern theories, or else they look at the gaming culture as an isolated subgroup, the way an anthropologist would. Of course there are probably scores or hundreds of exceptions to the sweeping generalization I just made, but many humanities folks still think that clicking on a hyperlink is somehow more interactive than turning to page 24 of a Choose-Your-Own Adventure novel; Aarseth's book Cybertext argues strongly for the notion that hypertext fiction is not the only kind of cybertext. This is likely not news for the Slashdot crowd, of course, but professors in departments outside of CS and AI programs need to hear it.

Perhaps some of the articles in this first issue show the literary lens through which humanities folks look at computer gaming activity... but I think it's wonderful to see a journal that intends to focus on the cultural and aesthetic aspects of computer games.

Speaking more generally, and not directly in response to kaszeta, I would say that to express disappointment with Game Studies simply because it does not look like a promising place to swap AI algorithms and Quake mods is, I think, to miss the point.

Dennis G. Jerz
Department of English
University of Wisconsin -- Eau Claire
Literacy Weblog
Interactive Fiction Call for Papers

For a link that works, try this one. Portman brand Hot Grits

What do I owe Africa?

Really?

"Fruits of the 21st Century?"

How about if Africa gets itself out of the 6th century by producing something the world wants?

And this time, try not to make it slaves, terrorists, virus es, endangered species, or diamonds to raise money to hack people to death.

--Blair
"You are only as free, happy, smart, and rich as you think you are."

The word 'robot' was invented by a Czech playwrights Karel and Josef Capek and first appeared in Karel's 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). It is derived from the Czech word 'robota', which means "servitude, forced labor".

In the play, humanoid worker robots rise up and destroy their human masters.

Ironically, Josef died as a slave himself, in one of Hitler's concentration camp in 1945. Mercifully, his brother died before the war but not before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia.