Video games have absolutely jack to do with agression and anxiety in kids, they are a reflection and an expression, but that doesn't mean there isn't increasing youth violence and that other more obvious causes exist.
They probably create a secondary reinforcement of other influences already in the culture. As such, they are part of a feedback loop. So, by themselves, there is probably no such effect. However, we are not living in a vacuum here either.
Is the experience of many violent games a contributing factor to violence in later years? Does it predispose a person to violence? Does it make a person more tolerant of violence? More apathetic regarding violence? more accepting of violence?
Does it contribute to the idea that violent solutions are more acceptable and viable than other solutions. Does it promote a violent sense of politics?
Does it contribute to an ability to confront and handle violence, and the artifacts of violence, such as guns, weapons, and social consequences of violence? Does it create an independent citizen, bane of ditators everywhere?
Do these factor effect people equally? Or does it "merely enhance" these bad characteristics in people who are already predisposed to them because of other factors, social, enviromental, and genetic? Does it only enhance the "bad seeds?
I imagine that it has each of the above effects, and many more, depending on the particular individual, and the factors that they find themselves in as they grow and develop. It is a specific application of the "nature vs nuture" debate, as applied to a specific element in the experience of the person as they grow up. Of course, other things, such as television, also apply. The fact of whole generations growing up in an environment where nuclear weapons are the rage (1950s and 60s, etc) is likely enough to throw a wrench in the works.
This actually can be traced back to WWI, which has been said to have had an incredible traumatic effect on the culture. The innocent sense of civilization they had before the war was fairly well shattered with the death of millions of men in modern warfare, each side proudly proclaiming "God is with us". The cascading effects and reactions to this have been with us ever since.
People are still acting this out in the games they play, with the echoes of other wars. But without resolving the actual source of the issue, they might only unknowingly reinforce the very elements that they say they object to.
Those usenet postings are just a search away on Google groups. Sometimes I pull a few up just to shiver at what an idiot I was. Heh, maybe in 15 years I'll be Googling my old slashdot posts. Posting on the internet is like getting a tatoo only a tatoo is easier to erase.
Which is why it is useful to use some sort of alias. Unless you really have a reason to be known by your real name.
you know that some of this is going to be the typical clueless reporter nonsense, along the line of
"Could you outline all of your secret projects, and everything that you do not what your competitors to know about?"
On the other hand, the tight lipped approach seems to have worked well for them, giving them a certain strategic advantadge. Other wise Microsoft would get wind of their IOS project. y'know, the secret Internet Operating System project.
What? they haven't said anything about this?
ooooops. nevermind. forget about all this. these are not the droids you are looking for.
The American Constitution has no mechanism for correcting this except impeachment. Somehow, I do not expect the Republican led House and Senate to display the moral backbone needed to say "OOOPS" and just do the right thing.
I could ramble on about how the electoral college is not really independant, with the party system and all, but I need to get some work done. You get the idea.
The point should not be to have your finger in everyone's pie. The analogy should be closer to a hospital with a senior surgeon, vs a manager of managers.
That said, if everything is working well, you become the buffer between the sysadmins and the rest of the world.
You get to be the one that goes to HR and complain about Clueless User #69 in cubicle 18 with his inappropraite visit to the wrestling website that installed spyware for a solid hour over lunch. You would also get to run the pilot projects before they role out company wide. You test the new toys, using the other sysadmins in fair rotation as project managers for the test.
You also get the really big headaches, like when Clueless User #69 is the incredibly cute and hot granddaughter of the boss, or some such thing (who never does anything wrong. No. Really.)
what are you going to do with physical security? 1000 persons walking around with laptops is going to be sweet for any thief.
You get out a large 1.5 inch/ 4cm drill, put a hole through the laptop case, and attach a large chain with an appropriate weight or lockset to the laptop using said hole. Bolt the other end of the chain to a desktop or tabletop. Use very long chanins.
This ensures that thieves won't want to steal them, among other things.
What many folks are looking for is Star Trek like technology that will just do it for them. Heck, I've had people ask me if Celestia was using realtime graphics for their pictures of Saturn. So why should it surpise me that people would use technology unintelligently?
We have no idea how a FTL drive would work, and thus have no grounds to speculate about side effects
I think that it is fair to imagine that there is either a push effect or a pull effect for achieving the desired speeds. The Patent mentions something which implies fields of some sort, since this is not merely a rocket, or similar newtonian thrust mechanism. For the amount of energy needed to move the mass with the appropriate speeds and acceleration, it is hard to imagine that there would be no side effects or atmospheric effects whatsoever. If this involves large amounts of electricity, magnetism, or nuclear forces to achieve the described result, then the effects should be "interesting".
For some reason, I am reminded of the villinous government agency in "GhostBusters"
Anonymous Coward, You have presented an excellent satire. You have also applied the rules of formal English, such as seen in the example of the speeches of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, etc. to a contemporary conversational medium.
To clarify: Penmanship should be legible. You have a mis-understanding of the word garbage, in that in this case, the definition is: "Of such insufficient quality for meeting the requirements for which it is intended, that it should therefore be thrown out as the most efficient and proper method of handling and usage." Legibility, and the ability to put words together into semicoherent sentences is important.
Regarding Mouse actions: Where you click a mouse, there are in fact two control signals that are sent out. One is sent out when the pressing of the button down, the other is for the following return to an up position. When you click on an Internet link with the primary mouse button (i.e., Left Click), the start of the mouse button up signal initiates the chain of events that takes you to the next web page, etc.
When you submit a comment, and press the Submit Button, the release of the button is what sends the signal to submit the comment. If you press on the Submit button, hold it down, then move the mouse pointer to some other location, then release the button, the Submit request is not processed.
The use of the phrase "primary mouse button" is useful, because some people are left handed, and reconfigure the mouse to switch the functions of the buttons.
The phrase "not immediately intuitive" is useful in that it informs the person that there are elements that are not obvious, and that might require some work to master. It provides the psychological function of permitting the person the freedom to feel uneducated in a particular subject area, without feeling stupid. This permits easier learning.
Some folks blow things off as being too difficult if the subject matter is not instantly mastered, or spoon fed to them. The second aspect to using the phrase "not immediately intuitive" is the ability to break the subject at had to the several basic, fundamental, and relevant concepts that are needed to provide reasonable understanding for the task at hand. Basics and fundamentals are not always the same.
For example, your comment about the mouse click reveals an rather complete understanding of the basics of using a mouse while missing some of the fundamentals, which are not immediately intuitive.
And you'll need to seriously check for people with disabilities that could penalize them in this, especially if typing will be the normal and satisfactory means of entering text at work in any case.
In which case, I do have an IBM Seletric in the attic.
Sadly, it may be a sobering experience for yourself as well. Depending on where you're located, this bar may be impossibly high for too many applicants, and you will have to settle.
I do live in a high population area, rumored to have educated persons. Of course, I could be wrong. This is the USA, after all.
The last thing I need is someone for whom I am doing a substantial part of their job, or who I have to walk through a procedure on a regular basis, etc. Thus this sort of thing actually saves me from doing the job of several people, and paying them for the privaledge.
I have decided that when I hire techs, I am going to ask them to write an essay, using pen and ink, giving the intructions on how to use a mouse for someone who is a computer beginner. (Think your grandmother). No internet research allowed. This tests several things.
Penmanship. Can I read their writing or their field notes, or is it all garbage?
Their technical understanding. Mouse operation is a common and simple task, but elements like right click, down button vs up button actions, etc. are not immediately intuitive.
Their ability to communicate. Can they communicate something they understand in a clear and concise fashion? Especially to someone without expertise or substantial experience in the field.
Can they get to the point, or is the essay filled with lots of technical fluff, jargon, and assorted filler?
Of course, I'll test for other things as well. Unfortunately, this may be a humbling experience for some applicants.
You're confusing this real warp drive with fictional hyperspace and warp drives.
Assuming this one is real; this at least is a real design even if it does not work.
Of course, it a cobbling together of parts in an imagined configuration, borrowed for a well known fictional source, without having actually invented any of the needed sub components, except for the usual nuts, bolts, screws, etc. But not really. There is not real confusion, as the concerns from fiction might be based in actual possible Very Bad Side Effects(tm), among other things.
Interaction of drive fields with atmospheric particles may produce wierd radiation, among other things. What happens when these are manipulated by a drive designed to move heavy objects at trans-light speed? Can you say Enviromental impact statement? Significant numbers of these acting in atmosphere might be enough to incrementally remove atmosphere from a planet (by acceleration of atmospheric particals past escape velocity). This would be a Bad Thing(tm). Like hitting your head with a hammer, this is not something you want to do on a repeated basis.
Relativistic effects tend to show up only when you are moving fater than one half the speed of light (rough estimate) Maybe the time-space warpage needed to produce thrust can only be achieved at relativistic speeds. Similar to a ram jet, it would need a booster to get to the appropriate speeds for start up conditions. This concern is Subject to Test(tm), and, of course, would be hard to achieve in earth orbit, or from a standing start at Area 51.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Of course, Arthur C Clarke is credited with the invention of the Communications Satellite, based on a detailed technical destricption he wrote in a magazine, back in 1947.
(If I recall correctly)
Won't there be a problem if they try to operate it inside the atmosphere, or at the bottom of a gravity well?
Just speculating on the availability of appropriate test facilities, to prove that the device actually works. Good try on the part of the alledged inventor.
Obviously, this is a potential explanation for the stereotypical little old ladies who live with their several dozen pet cats. The bug keeps putting out the chemicals that gives rise to the feeling "CATS GOOD". A more generic feeling would be "Predators Good".
A variant on this would be used to explain any number of possibly undesired behaviors, such as war mongering, etc. This has political ramifications. At least one political talk show host routinely calls the philosophy he is opposed to a mental disease. The obvious question there is "who is actually diseased?" Are Repubilcans and Democrats infected with different bugs, for example?
A more generic impulse would be towards religion, the big thing in the forest, in the Mountain, in the sky. The idea of a mechanism compelling non-survival behavior is similar to the ideas propounded in at least one religious group, although it is not their particular explanantion for the phenomena.
The politically incorrect will jump on this as an explanation for groups like PETA.
You have been assigned by the emperor to rule over a far-away province, and to make it managable. Your pay is a cut of the proceeds you send back to empire central. The province is unruly, for the population is a stiff necked people. It is your job to keep the peace, put down rebellions, and eliminate the usual troublemakers. The Emperor is sending you in because it needs more taxes collected for massive expansion projects, and to maintain the borders. Do well, and you'll retire a rich man. Your Name is Pontius Pilate. Good Luck.
Alot of SCORE types are retired business execs who have little computer sense or ability. Which makes them horrible for evaluating business ideas.
This also is seen in the banking culture in different parts of the country. Shop one in in the Ozarks and you may get one result, vs shopping it in Silicon Valley. Some advisors only know a certain type of industry, so you want an advisor with experience in the area you are interested in. And even then....
The retired former owner of a car wash chain might not be the right person to advise you on your web startup.
Sound like the Pointy Haired Boss who knows just enough about programming to be dangerous is making the rules, and this guy is just parroting what he is being told.
Then, when everyone chops him up, he can point to this discussion as evidence of what experts in the field think of the situation. Which comments are going to be true enough regardless, even if the boss doesn't believe him.
But there is something worth mentioning. Digg is similar to Slashdot, but the key difference is the manner of selection of stories. At slashdot, the stories are chosen by the editors, to the amazement of the readership, who may or may not agree with the choices. At digg, the submitted stories are voted on by the membership, and those that score well enough make the frontpage. This is not always a good thing.
Thus you have the choices of a few, who have attracted a following for whatever reasons, vs the choices of the many, for whatever reasons. The tastes of both will differ, and alot depends on the taste of the original crowd. Digg has an obvious enough url.
Slashdot Mirror
They probably create a secondary reinforcement of other influences already in the culture. As such, they are part of a feedback loop. So, by themselves, there is probably no such effect. However, we are not living in a vacuum here either.
Is the experience of many violent games a contributing factor to violence in later years? Does it predispose a person to violence? Does it make a person more tolerant of violence? More apathetic regarding violence? more accepting of violence?
Does it contribute to the idea that violent solutions are more acceptable and viable than other solutions. Does it promote a violent sense of politics?
Does it contribute to an ability to confront and handle violence, and the artifacts of violence, such as guns, weapons, and social consequences of violence? Does it create an independent citizen, bane of ditators everywhere?
Do these factor effect people equally? Or does it "merely enhance" these bad characteristics in people who are already predisposed to them because of other factors, social, enviromental, and genetic? Does it only enhance the "bad seeds?
I imagine that it has each of the above effects, and many more, depending on the particular individual, and the factors that they find themselves in as they grow and develop. It is a specific application of the "nature vs nuture" debate, as applied to a specific element in the experience of the person as they grow up. Of course, other things, such as television, also apply. The fact of whole generations growing up in an environment where nuclear weapons are the rage (1950s and 60s, etc) is likely enough to throw a wrench in the works.
This actually can be traced back to WWI, which has been said to have had an incredible traumatic effect on the culture. The innocent sense of civilization they had before the war was fairly well shattered with the death of millions of men in modern warfare, each side proudly proclaiming "God is with us". The cascading effects and reactions to this have been with us ever since.
People are still acting this out in the games they play, with the echoes of other wars. But without resolving the actual source of the issue, they might only unknowingly reinforce the very elements that they say they object to.
Which is why it is useful to use some sort of alias. Unless you really have a reason to be known by your real name.
An excellent source of information to fill the form with
I for once would continue the under promise and over deliver angle
"Could you outline all of your secret projects, and everything that you do not what your competitors to know about?"
On the other hand, the tight lipped approach seems to have worked well for them, giving them a certain strategic advantadge. Other wise Microsoft would get wind of their IOS project. y'know, the secret Internet Operating System project.
What? they haven't said anything about this?
ooooops. nevermind. forget about all this. these are not the droids you are looking for.
I could ramble on about how the electoral college is not really independant, with the party system and all, but I need to get some work done. You get the idea.
That said, if everything is working well, you become the buffer between the sysadmins and the rest of the world.
You get to be the one that goes to HR and complain about Clueless User #69 in cubicle 18 with his inappropraite visit to the wrestling website that installed spyware for a solid hour over lunch. You would also get to run the pilot projects before they role out company wide. You test the new toys, using the other sysadmins in fair rotation as project managers for the test.
You also get the really big headaches, like when Clueless User #69 is the incredibly cute and hot granddaughter of the boss, or some such thing (who never does anything wrong. No. Really.)
and the usefulness of a laptop will a large hole drilled through it is?
;-)
You get out a large 1.5 inch/ 4cm drill, put a hole through the laptop case, and attach a large chain with an appropriate weight or lockset to the laptop using said hole. Bolt the other end of the chain to a desktop or tabletop. Use very long chanins.
This ensures that thieves won't want to steal them, among other things.
;-)
Like this hasn't happened before. Ever.
Entry level position, must have 5 years experience in .net 2.0, 4 years in perl 6, ....
and so on for an absurd laundry list of arbitrary skils which tell me that the people hiring are either clueless or insane.
When did "hire" become a noun? See this link for American English, Hire is a noun, probably for at least 10 years, if not since at least WWII
I think that it is fair to imagine that there is either a push effect or a pull effect for achieving the desired speeds. The Patent mentions something which implies fields of some sort, since this is not merely a rocket, or similar newtonian thrust mechanism. For the amount of energy needed to move the mass with the appropriate speeds and acceleration, it is hard to imagine that there would be no side effects or atmospheric effects whatsoever. If this involves large amounts of electricity, magnetism, or nuclear forces to achieve the described result, then the effects should be "interesting".
For some reason, I am reminded of the villinous government agency in "GhostBusters"
To clarify: Penmanship should be legible. You have a mis-understanding of the word garbage, in that in this case, the definition is: "Of such insufficient quality for meeting the requirements for which it is intended, that it should therefore be thrown out as the most efficient and proper method of handling and usage." Legibility, and the ability to put words together into semicoherent sentences is important.
Regarding Mouse actions: Where you click a mouse, there are in fact two control signals that are sent out. One is sent out when the pressing of the button down, the other is for the following return to an up position. When you click on an Internet link with the primary mouse button (i.e., Left Click), the start of the mouse button up signal initiates the chain of events that takes you to the next web page, etc.
When you submit a comment, and press the Submit Button, the release of the button is what sends the signal to submit the comment. If you press on the Submit button, hold it down, then move the mouse pointer to some other location, then release the button, the Submit request is not processed.
The use of the phrase "primary mouse button" is useful, because some people are left handed, and reconfigure the mouse to switch the functions of the buttons.
The phrase "not immediately intuitive" is useful in that it informs the person that there are elements that are not obvious, and that might require some work to master. It provides the psychological function of permitting the person the freedom to feel uneducated in a particular subject area, without feeling stupid. This permits easier learning.
Some folks blow things off as being too difficult if the subject matter is not instantly mastered, or spoon fed to them. The second aspect to using the phrase "not immediately intuitive" is the ability to break the subject at had to the several basic, fundamental, and relevant concepts that are needed to provide reasonable understanding for the task at hand. Basics and fundamentals are not always the same.
For example, your comment about the mouse click reveals an rather complete understanding of the basics of using a mouse while missing some of the fundamentals, which are not immediately intuitive.
In which case, I do have an IBM Seletric in the attic.
I do live in a high population area, rumored to have educated persons. Of course, I could be wrong. This is the USA, after all.
The last thing I need is someone for whom I am doing a substantial part of their job, or who I have to walk through a procedure on a regular basis, etc. Thus this sort of thing actually saves me from doing the job of several people, and paying them for the privaledge.
Of course, I'll test for other things as well. Unfortunately, this may be a humbling experience for some applicants.
Of course, it a cobbling together of parts in an imagined configuration, borrowed for a well known fictional source, without having actually invented any of the needed sub components, except for the usual nuts, bolts, screws, etc. But not really. There is not real confusion, as the concerns from fiction might be based in actual possible Very Bad Side Effects(tm), among other things.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Of course, Arthur C Clarke is credited with the invention of the Communications Satellite, based on a detailed technical destricption he wrote in a magazine, back in 1947. (If I recall correctly)
Just speculating on the availability of appropriate test facilities, to prove that the device actually works. Good try on the part of the alledged inventor.
A variant on this would be used to explain any number of possibly undesired behaviors, such as war mongering, etc. This has political ramifications. At least one political talk show host routinely calls the philosophy he is opposed to a mental disease. The obvious question there is "who is actually diseased?" Are Repubilcans and Democrats infected with different bugs, for example?
A more generic impulse would be towards religion, the big thing in the forest, in the Mountain, in the sky. The idea of a mechanism compelling non-survival behavior is similar to the ideas propounded in at least one religious group, although it is not their particular explanantion for the phenomena.
The politically incorrect will jump on this as an explanation for groups like PETA.
Actually, the game would be something like:
You have been assigned by the emperor to rule over a far-away province, and to make it managable. Your pay is a cut of the proceeds you send back to empire central. The province is unruly, for the population is a stiff necked people. It is your job to keep the peace, put down rebellions, and eliminate the usual troublemakers. The Emperor is sending you in because it needs more taxes collected for massive expansion projects, and to maintain the borders. Do well, and you'll retire a rich man. Your Name is Pontius Pilate. Good Luck.
Alot of SCORE types are retired business execs who have little computer sense or ability. Which makes them horrible for evaluating business ideas.
This also is seen in the banking culture in different parts of the country. Shop one in in the Ozarks and you may get one result, vs shopping it in Silicon Valley. Some advisors only know a certain type of industry, so you want an advisor with experience in the area you are interested in. And even then....
The retired former owner of a car wash chain might not be the right person to advise you on your web startup.
Then, when everyone chops him up, he can point to this discussion as evidence of what experts in the field think of the situation. Which comments are going to be true enough regardless, even if the boss doesn't believe him.
I assume that this was meant as a joke/troll
But there is something worth mentioning. Digg is similar to Slashdot, but the key difference is the manner of selection of stories. At slashdot, the stories are chosen by the editors, to the amazement of the readership, who may or may not agree with the choices. At digg, the submitted stories are voted on by the membership, and those that score well enough make the frontpage. This is not always a good thing.
Thus you have the choices of a few, who have attracted a following for whatever reasons, vs the choices of the many, for whatever reasons. The tastes of both will differ, and alot depends on the taste of the original crowd. Digg has an obvious enough url.
other than that, YMMV