that's sort of what i was tryong to say. the teenager makes the character, the 30 year old yuppie buys it. I just wasn't articulate enough to spit it out that clearly!
mtv's death of irony
on
Isn't It Ironic?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
MTV's president didn't declare irony dead. Robert Thompson did on a Viacom program (which may or may not have appeard on MTV, it might have been VH1). I remember this because Rober Thompson is a media whore of the first order and anytime he pops up, I know the program using him was put together with a minimum of effort.
If you pay attention, you will see Thompson show up with eerie frequency any time a peice about the current culture is done. A quick Google news search for "robert Thompson" and Syracuse (the university at which he is employed) turns up 50 articles with quotes from this guy.
All this guy must do is sit around and answer the phone all day.
I agree. there has to be moreto it than, "he couldn't go to new york" what is the longest it could take to do whatever ultra hi res scans they need? 2 days? now what is the expence of finding a new guy to be max? it would seem easier and cheaper to just pack up the equipment and go to sam lake than organize interviews, check out head shots, have potentials come in, the whole mess that it would take to find a new guy. seems fishy to me...
I've been thinging about this since this article was originally posted. the common sence explanation holds true, most EQ players are men, so male characters are more in demand. However, on further contemplation, there are a couple of other things going on here. Looking at the original article reveals that only about 20% of teh characters for sale are female, thus that should make up for the difference in demand. But if this makes up for the differnece in demand, we need to think of other reasons why female characters sell for less. Some possibilities might lie in looking at the whole process of buying and selling a character in teh first place. It seems to me that the process of leveling up a character just to sell it seems something a bored teenaged boy would be likely to do, rather than a)teenaged girls or b)older people of either gender. Then there is the question of who is buying these characters? beyond the resaonsable assumption that most of them are male, what kind of men are they? It seems that someone who would buy a premade character is looking for a sort of status item, a vanity character so to speak. Sounds like some mid-30's former buisness major to me. Anyway, it seems that this fact that female characters sell for less than male has more to it than it would first appear, and it would be neat to seem a bit more research done on the buyers and sellers themselves, rather than just what they buy (of course our possessions speak volumes about our identity, but that is another post...).
While it is a pretty good design and all, from watching the presentation, it seems as if there is only room for one internal optical drive, something that may tick off a lot of people. Of course for years now apple has been preaching the use of firewire periperals and such. Also of note, no mention of how easy it is to open the case. they made a huge fuss over the fact that theere was just one latch on previous powermacs, now there seems to be no such latch , and there is a plastic panel inside that also needs to be removed.
I love this game. I played the heck out of the demo and when i bought the full game (which they got to me in just a couple days) I play it even more. For those that don't know its a space exploration game tht is designed to be playable in less than 20 minutes. It has replaced solitare and minesweeper as my short coffebreak game.
there have been timer things like this for years. there have been times like this for watching tv, the only thing i see different is the card swipe ting. guess what, no one bought them then, no one will buy them now...
this guy was on techtv a little while ago. He does tons of these videotaped tutorials all for free. If you don't have braodband he will burn a copy for you and mailit to you for free. An amazing ammount of work that he is doing all for free.
I know this is a pretty late responce and you probably won't even read this, but I was an english major math minor, taught high school, recieved my masters degree in cultural studies and an going to be starting my phd in the fall. I write. I don't do experiments, or do statistics, or anything else that would require table for figures. I've used a million footnotes and appendixes by to the best of my recollection never a single graph or table.
I don't know what kind of pocuments that you are makeing, but all I use a word processor for is to write papers. I'm a college student. Nearly all of my friends are college students. I am the most computer savy of all of them and I have never so much as added a table to one of my documents and openoffice flawlessly opens every document that I have ever made. I think that the vast majority of people who use microsoft office use if for things like i do, writing papers and writing letters. For things like this openoffice works wonderfully.
As a casino employee, I can tell you that casinos are some of the most depressing places in teh world. It is amazing that these people come back, some of them every day (one customer told me he has been there every day for 18 months) and lose and lose, but when they win the sligtest bit they feel like winners. Hey moron, I just watched you put a ton of money in that machine and you're excited about $250? Wow, you're only down $300 now! The thing about casinos is that people think, oh maybe I'll win the nix spin/hand whatever, so they keep playing. Then when they do win, suddenly they thing they're "on a roll" and poof their goes the money they just won plus some more. You want to know what is even more amazing? At least half of the people who work there are just as adicted to gambling as teh customers. You would not beleive how many of my fellow emploees spend their days off at the casino down the road. See, a lot of them were former customers of the casino i work at, lost a bunch of money and were forced to get a job, so they got one at the casino. One would think that this would cure them of their addiction, but I suppose it is like an alcoholic working at a bar. Long story short, don't go to casinos. if you do leave your credit cards and checkbooks at home.
Your argument is pretty much the same one that Dave Grossman uses to assert that videogames make people killers. Well, the fact that the marines use videogames isn't necessarilly proof that videogames cause x, y, or z. The marines also make people march and make their beds. So are we to assume that marching and making beds makes one a better killer? Of course not, these activities have other purposes, like discipline and such. So maybe the marines use of videogmaes has other purposes as well and is not simply about desensitizing.
Laws of this kind that have started showing up since 9-11 make me sick. You want to make a law preventing children from buying violent contnet, fine. I don't agree with it. It is just another case of the government making up my parenting decisions for me. But WHY is the law only restricted to violence against law enforcement officials? So assuming that one buys into the idea that videogmaes make people do violent acts, it is ok for a minor to buy a gmes that is, for example, Teacher Killer 2K4, but not Cop Killer 2004 Season? What logic is that? In my opinion, it makes just as much sence as making a law that applies to videogmaes but not movies, books music or any other form of popular entertainment...
I find it interesting that we are getting this news of xbox live updates, but still no news on what the fee structure will be like after the year expires. One has to wonder if there is some serious debate going on over this up at redmond.
A high school I taught at also has very stupid censoring software. It would censor language out from emails, but it just looked for combinations of letter without taking into account things like spaces or punctuation. so things like "and as such..." would turn up in out going emails as "and uch" because "as" and "s" looke dlike "ass" to the program even though there was a space between the two s's.
number of incidents of violence that you have heard about occuring at LAN parties. _________________
number of incidents of violence that you have heard about occuring at sporting events. _______________
which one seems more likely to spur violent reactions? ________________________
other gaming blogs/sites of interest
on
Got Game?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
There is a growing number of other sites that have the same goals in mind. here are a few of the one's I visit pretty regularly:
Probably my favorite is Gonzalo Frasca's Ludology.org.
Also occasionally of interest is Lars Konzack's Ludologica Greg Costikyan's Games * Design * Art * Culture has gotten a fairly good amount of press. and to toot my own horn, there is my blog Popular Culture Gaming.
IF I recall the details of that story, the judge that decided that fax.com could send jumk faxes did so under the reasoning that it was free speech. the judge? Limbaugh, the same one that declared that videogames WEREN"T deserving of first amendment free speach protection...
OK, So I'm not deneying for a second that game testing is tedious or not fun, but there are lots worse jobs that have equally long hours and pay less. You think that middle aged woman who is at McDonalds at midnight on Friday night is having fun? You think the people who work 3rd shift at non-union factories standing in fromt of an assembly line are having fun? You think the farmer who is trying to get his crops planeted before it rains again making his fields a muddy mess is having fun? You think the people who work at the meat processing plant are having fun? Sure game testing is not a great job. It's probably pretty crappy. but there are a lot of other crappy jobs as well.
A couple of years ago, I did a google search for what most people usually call me. Imagine my surprize that nearly all the hits were for a male escort (who was later featured on an MTV True Life "I am an escort" special and got arrested during the filming) There were pictures of him washing cars, and in cowboy outfits and as mardi gras boy. Needless to say, since I am trying to make a name for myself in the academic comunity, I have started going by my FULL name on everything I get published to eliminate confusion. I can only imagine someone reading a paper of my and then looking my name up on google only to find mardi gras boy....
A few months ago, I opened up my spam folder to check to see if any non-spam messages had gotten in there by accident and found that in one particular instance, a spammer had sent out a message and when one person replied to it, it went to everyone who had gotten teh original message. It was kind of funny. All sorts of people saying "Stop sending me this spam!" "I didn't send you anything, you sent it to me!" "No you both sent me spam!" it was funny how many messagees it too some of these people to figure out what was going on.
I have often wondered why schools don't decide to write open source textbooks. textbook licening fees are pretty hefty. it would save cash strapped schools a ton if they could download and custom tailor at book free of charge. some classes would lend themselves to this more than others, but still it would be a good thing if only they were aware of the conept...
97x bamm! the future of rock and roll. www.woxy.com independently owned and operated in oxford ohio for 20 years. they had a commercial on a little while ago saying that on other radio station in the nation plays more new music and that "wasn't just an opinion, but a fact" It was also featured in the movie Rain Man for goodness sakes!
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that's sort of what i was tryong to say. the teenager makes the character, the 30 year old yuppie buys it. I just wasn't articulate enough to spit it out that clearly!
MTV's president didn't declare irony dead. Robert Thompson did on a Viacom program (which may or may not have appeard on MTV, it might have been VH1). I remember this because Rober Thompson is a media whore of the first order and anytime he pops up, I know the program using him was put together with a minimum of effort.
If you pay attention, you will see Thompson show up with eerie frequency any time a peice about the current culture is done. A quick Google news search for "robert Thompson" and Syracuse (the university at which he is employed) turns up 50 articles with quotes from this guy.
All this guy must do is sit around and answer the phone all day.
I agree. there has to be moreto it than, "he couldn't go to new york" what is the longest it could take to do whatever ultra hi res scans they need? 2 days?
now what is the expence of finding a new guy to be max? it would seem easier and cheaper to just pack up the equipment and go to sam lake than organize interviews, check out head shots, have potentials come in, the whole mess that it would take to find a new guy.
seems fishy to me...
I've been thinging about this since this article was originally posted. the common sence explanation holds true, most EQ players are men, so male characters are more in demand.
However, on further contemplation, there are a couple of other things going on here. Looking at the original article reveals that only about 20% of teh characters for sale are female, thus that should make up for the difference in demand. But if this makes up for the differnece in demand, we need to think of other reasons why female characters sell for less.
Some possibilities might lie in looking at the whole process of buying and selling a character in teh first place. It seems to me that the process of leveling up a character just to sell it seems something a bored teenaged boy would be likely to do, rather than a)teenaged girls or b)older people of either gender.
Then there is the question of who is buying these characters? beyond the resaonsable assumption that most of them are male, what kind of men are they? It seems that someone who would buy a premade character is looking for a sort of status item, a vanity character so to speak. Sounds like some mid-30's former buisness major to me.
Anyway, it seems that this fact that female characters sell for less than male has more to it than it would first appear, and it would be neat to seem a bit more research done on the buyers and sellers themselves, rather than just what they buy (of course our possessions speak volumes about our identity, but that is another post...).
According to , About 84% of EQ players are male, while 16% are female. So as others have pointed out, this would expain why male characters are more valuable, men want to play as men.
The same study says that nearly 48% of men have a character that is female, but nearly all of them spend most of their time playing as a male.
While it is a pretty good design and all, from watching the presentation, it seems as if there is only room for one internal optical drive, something that may tick off a lot of people. Of course for years now apple has been preaching the use of firewire periperals and such.
Also of note, no mention of how easy it is to open the case. they made a huge fuss over the fact that theere was just one latch on previous powermacs, now there seems to be no such latch , and there is a plastic panel inside that also needs to be removed.
I love this game. I played the heck out of the demo and when i bought the full game (which they got to me in just a couple days) I play it even more. For those that don't know its a space exploration game tht is designed to be playable in less than 20 minutes. It has replaced solitare and minesweeper as my short coffebreak game.
there have been timer things like this for years. there have been times like this for watching tv, the only thing i see different is the card swipe ting. guess what, no one bought them then, no one will buy them now...
too bad they didn't write a book about gifs, then it would never expire thanks to the USA's lovely congress...
this guy was on techtv a little while ago. He does tons of these videotaped tutorials all for free. If you don't have braodband he will burn a copy for you and mailit to you for free. An amazing ammount of work that he is doing all for free.
I know this is a pretty late responce and you probably won't even read this, but I was an english major math minor, taught high school, recieved my masters degree in cultural studies and an going to be starting my phd in the fall. I write. I don't do experiments, or do statistics, or anything else that would require table for figures. I've used a million footnotes and appendixes by to the best of my recollection never a single graph or table.
I don't know what kind of pocuments that you are makeing, but all I use a word processor for is to write papers. I'm a college student. Nearly all of my friends are college students. I am the most computer savy of all of them and I have never so much as added a table to one of my documents and openoffice flawlessly opens every document that I have ever made. I think that the vast majority of people who use microsoft office use if for things like i do, writing papers and writing letters. For things like this openoffice works wonderfully.
As a casino employee, I can tell you that casinos are some of the most depressing places in teh world. It is amazing that these people come back, some of them every day (one customer told me he has been there every day for 18 months) and lose and lose, but when they win the sligtest bit they feel like winners. Hey moron, I just watched you put a ton of money in that machine and you're excited about $250? Wow, you're only down $300 now!
The thing about casinos is that people think, oh maybe I'll win the nix spin/hand whatever, so they keep playing. Then when they do win, suddenly they thing they're "on a roll" and poof their goes the money they just won plus some more.
You want to know what is even more amazing? At least half of the people who work there are just as adicted to gambling as teh customers. You would not beleive how many of my fellow emploees spend their days off at the casino down the road. See, a lot of them were former customers of the casino i work at, lost a bunch of money and were forced to get a job, so they got one at the casino. One would think that this would cure them of their addiction, but I suppose it is like an alcoholic working at a bar.
Long story short, don't go to casinos. if you do leave your credit cards and checkbooks at home.
Your argument is pretty much the same one that Dave Grossman uses to assert that videogames make people killers. Well, the fact that the marines use videogames isn't necessarilly proof that videogames cause x, y, or z. The marines also make people march and make their beds. So are we to assume that marching and making beds makes one a better killer? Of course not, these activities have other purposes, like discipline and such. So maybe the marines use of videogmaes has other purposes as well and is not simply about desensitizing.
Laws of this kind that have started showing up since 9-11 make me sick. You want to make a law preventing children from buying violent contnet, fine. I don't agree with it. It is just another case of the government making up my parenting decisions for me. But WHY is the law only restricted to violence against law enforcement officials? So assuming that one buys into the idea that videogmaes make people do violent acts, it is ok for a minor to buy a gmes that is, for example, Teacher Killer 2K4, but not Cop Killer 2004 Season? What logic is that?
In my opinion, it makes just as much sence as making a law that applies to videogmaes but not movies, books music or any other form of popular entertainment...
I find it interesting that we are getting this news of xbox live updates, but still no news on what the fee structure will be like after the year expires. One has to wonder if there is some serious debate going on over this up at redmond.
A high school I taught at also has very stupid censoring software. It would censor language out from emails, but it just looked for combinations of letter without taking into account things like spaces or punctuation. so things like "and as such..." would turn up in out going emails as "and uch" because "as" and "s" looke dlike "ass" to the program even though there was a space between the two s's.
number of incidents of violence that you have heard about occuring at LAN parties. _________________
number of incidents of violence that you have heard about occuring at sporting events. _______________
which one seems more likely to spur violent reactions? ________________________
There is a growing number of other sites that have the same goals in mind. here are a few of the one's I visit pretty regularly:
Probably my favorite is Gonzalo Frasca's Ludology.org.
Also occasionally of interest is Lars Konzack's Ludologica
Greg Costikyan's Games * Design * Art * Culture has gotten a fairly good amount of press.
and to toot my own horn, there is my blog Popular Culture Gaming.
IF I recall the details of that story, the judge that decided that fax.com could send jumk faxes did so under the reasoning that it was free speech. the judge? Limbaugh, the same one that declared that videogames WEREN"T deserving of first amendment free speach protection...
OK, So I'm not deneying for a second that game testing is tedious or not fun, but there are lots worse jobs that have equally long hours and pay less. You think that middle aged woman who is at McDonalds at midnight on Friday night is having fun? You think the people who work 3rd shift at non-union factories standing in fromt of an assembly line are having fun? You think the farmer who is trying to get his crops planeted before it rains again making his fields a muddy mess is having fun? You think the people who work at the meat processing plant are having fun?
Sure game testing is not a great job. It's probably pretty crappy. but there are a lot of other crappy jobs as well.
A couple of years ago, I did a google search for what most people usually call me. Imagine my surprize that nearly all the hits were for a male escort (who was later featured on an MTV True Life "I am an escort" special and got arrested during the filming) There were pictures of him washing cars, and in cowboy outfits and as mardi gras boy. Needless to say, since I am trying to make a name for myself in the academic comunity, I have started going by my FULL name on everything I get published to eliminate confusion. I can only imagine someone reading a paper of my and then looking my name up on google only to find mardi gras boy....
A few months ago, I opened up my spam folder to check to see if any non-spam messages had gotten in there by accident and found that in one particular instance, a spammer had sent out a message and when one person replied to it, it went to everyone who had gotten teh original message. It was kind of funny. All sorts of people saying "Stop sending me this spam!" "I didn't send you anything, you sent it to me!" "No you both sent me spam!" it was funny how many messagees it too some of these people to figure out what was going on.
I have often wondered why schools don't decide to write open source textbooks. textbook licening fees are pretty hefty. it would save cash strapped schools a ton if they could download and custom tailor at book free of charge. some classes would lend themselves to this more than others, but still it would be a good thing if only they were aware of the conept...
97x bamm! the future of rock and roll. www.woxy.com independently owned and operated in oxford ohio for 20 years. they had a commercial on a little while ago saying that on other radio station in the nation plays more new music and that "wasn't just an opinion, but a fact" It was also featured in the movie Rain Man for goodness sakes!