I think the leader of this group isn't very aware of himself emotionally/psychologically. He's too comfortable manipulating people. These kinds of "performances" seem to come from having difficulty in asserting boundaries and allowing other people to assert their boundaries. He's not very empathetic and expects people to have the emotions he imposes on them and he even expects them to like it and is unreceptive if they don't.
This touches on the fascination with Andy Kaufmann. Fans were interested in him for manipulating the emotions of other people with his pranks, but when they show up and he manipulates them by reading from a boring book, all of a sudden they're angry. "It's fine if he doesn't respect other people's boundaries but he better respect mine."
I'm not saying these types of performances are unethical, but at least acknowlege them for what they are.
Pranks that don't take into account the emotions of their targets are about exploiting other people for your own amusement. I don't look up to people who deny this. It just makes them more self-centered in my eyes.
I'm not sure if the quibble is about the word "Save" itself or the feeling that details of the system are being exposed in the application unneccessarily.
Operation systems commonly use the "file cabinet" metaphor for persistent data storage and I personally think that if "File" were used as both a verb and a noun, that would be more confusing than staying with the "Save" verb.
The user of a software application is typically doing work with some sort of data model. They usually expect the data in the model to have persistence between application sessions and they want to have control over that persistence.
The conventions that have developed around the notion of a "file" and the "save" function are not just historical oddities or operating system details the user shouldn't be forced to understand. They are a realization of application requirements.
A user typically operates many applications on a system. When the applications re-use the operating system's presentation of data persistence it is easier to switch between applications because the use cases for working with data are similar.
Which is easier? Explaining to a computer illiterate how Word saves their text to a "file" in an imaginary file cabinet or explaining to someone how a web browser retrieves pages from the internet and what it would mean to make an offline copy of the page (and whether that is even possible for a specific page)?
If all of our operating systems suddenly presented persistent data storage to the users using a different abstraction, then the applications would have to adjust.
But I don't think the conventions of File and Save are cumbersome nor anachronistic.
but I don't socialize with high schoolers in real life. Why should I be forced to in XBox Live?
I second the sentiment.
When I first spectated a Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow match (I did this on PC but I imagine it's similar on Xbox), one Sam Fisher put a guard in a headlock while the other Sam Fisher crouched down to put his goggles in the guard's crotch. The two young men controlling the Fishers repeated this head-lock/head-in-crotch maneuver over and over. Each time it was just completely hysterical as evidenced by the maniacal laugher I heard coming over the voice channel.
I have spent many hours playing online games without voice communication and found the immature people annoying but easy to tolerate when the communication is limited to text.
But, repeatedly, voice communications ruined the experience for me because it makes it much harder to tolerate people I don't like (i.e. tune them out).
It is a common human experience to re-experience our past when we witness literal or metaphorical reenactments of our past.
Sometimes, it is the inability to articulate what we are reexperiencing that causes us to expect other people to fail to empathize with us.
If you find a person that can connect with you emotionally about comic books or video games or some other form that is often derided in our society, consider yourself lucky. Someone that condescends to you may enjoy their feelings of superiority temporarily but the emotional nourishment of an empathetic emotional connection lasts a lot longer and is more beneficial.
Quentin Tarantino said something about enjoying B-movies more than more well respected movies because that the element of the film he enjoys about the film seems more pronounced. Perhaps that means that a movie that is "poorly made" in some respects makes it clearer to him (albeit in some esoteric way) what aspect of himself he needs to see reflected in the universe. I could see how the contrast of his enjoyment with other people's derision can highlight how his experience is shared by other people (i.e. since the element of the movie was created by the filmmaker, he and the filmmaker have a connection which may seem more universal than just a person-to-person connection because of the nature of film viewing). Viewing such a move is not a great substitute for empathy, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
I have tried stereo movies and stereo glasses for my computer games. The 3D effect isn't novel enough to outweigh an image that just doesn't look as good as the 2D image, IMHO. I get tired of trying to make out detail in certain parts of the image and trying to calibrate my monitor with little improvement. Also, I've found that the motion in the 2D image evokes enough 3D cues that the novelty of the stereo effect isn't even that satisfying.
But they still are clearly not you, so why should you care?
Perhaps the question of "why should I care" tends to come to mind to those of us that have a history (particularly as children) of being coerced into behaving a certain way to avoid being humiliated or shamed by those people we need to love us.
I think some of the motivation for spending energy pondering philosophical questions surrounding ethical or moral behavior comes from a desire to resolve emotional injuries.
Since we do not have the opportunity to be conscious of those injuries, we waste our time on questions that would seem irrelevant if we understood more about how we feel about our behavior.
which is one of the many reasons why I don't have XBox Live.
I think you denying yourself a techincally and emotionally sophisticated experience. I mean, especially with the voice communication.
When I first spectated a Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow match (I did this on PC but I imagine it's similar on Xbox), one Sam Fisher put a guard in a headlock while the other Sam Fisher crouched down to put his goggles in the guard's crotch. The two young men controlling the Fishers repeated this head-lock/crotch-view maneuver over and over and each time it was just hysterical as evidenced by the maniacal laugher I heard coming over the voice channel.
Maybe now that you know what you're missing, you'll change your mind.
Wouldn't it be funny if the movie unit pulled Nintendo games into the darkside for the purpose of reaching the teen and young-adult males?
I'm not so interested in jumping Mario across platforms, but if my reward was the opportunity to bitch-slap that annoyingly helpless Princess Toadstool, I might change my mind.
Re:No anti-virus software? Then stay off the net!
on
Am I a Spam Zombie?
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· Score: 1
If you have a Windows 98 machine with no anti-virus software, then stay off of the Internet. Period.
I've had anti-virus software for years and kept it up to date and it never once blocked a virus.
However, I've spent many hours undoing the damage done to my machine by the virus scanners themselves. And I've spent a lot of money buying new versions.
Which person is the sucker? The one who is constantly spending time and money maintaining virus scanner installations that never block an infection or the one that has to deal with an infection every decade or so?
I don't see anything wrong with making a risk assessment and deciding that you're better off without a scanner.
Keep on the lookout for a girlfriend. You won't be so sad about your lost gear when the biggest thing on your mind will be how to arrange your next private moment.
Arranging entire nights is a big effort when you're a starving college student. You might be pawning your gear for motel money, anyway.
Also, you won't believe how calm and sane you can be about flunking tests and getting Bs in math for the first time in your life when you're getting serious ass.
I guess the author doesn't remember when 3D shooters stopped offering software renderers and you were required to own a 3D hw accelerator to play.
Gamers, as a market group, want progress regardless of whether or not that helps line the industry's pockets. We WANT games that inspire and utilize new hardware.
If any particular software company leaves too many people behind with a game, then they are taking a risk with their product (by possibly making a poor prediction about how many potential customers will want to upgrade their hardware), not engaging in a conpsiracy to manipulate consumers.
Seriously. He's probably just one more casualty in a society that is ignorant with respect to the emotional nurturing of children and the lifelong effects stemming from that ignorance and neglect.
Generally, children that are respected and empathized with, grow up to be respectful, empathetic people.
However, in our society, we see a young geek without social skills and we see a person with a problem.
Barring some kind of physical origin of his problem, his real problem is most likely that he has inept parents.
Geeks should be the first people to take an interest in what impact narcissistic love and a lack of emotional nurturing has on a child.
The works of Alice Miller explain this concept (and elaborate upon it) and are easily accesssible to the lay person.
Stop dismissing your humanity because you're afraid that you're blaming someone else for your problems. To take responsibility for oneself is to identify what one needed as a human being but was deprived of.
t also removes people from social interaction, which is vital for mental health.
This is very true, but of course, social interaction negatively effects your mental health as well as positively.
I'm sure that I'm hitting close to home for many of my fellow slashdot nerds.
Why isn't it I hardly every hear nerds talk about psychotherapy? Many of us need it. And many of us have mental diseases that are unaffected by the existence of an iPod in our pocket.
He might be interested in modifying existing games or game engines. That is, he can start by modifying game content instead of starting from scratch writing programs.
You can create your own levels and such for many state-of-the art titles. It's challenging and rewarding. Some people get into the industry this way.
There are many games/engines that can be modified.
Garage Games took this mod idea in an interesting direction by taking the technology used for Tribes 2 and marketing it as an engine for a small fee. The fee is higher than the Tribes 2 price but you get more for your money.
I'd like some sort of psychology class to be a part of a video game curriculum. The idea being that the students that are drawn to video games because they had very deprived childhoods get a chance to become aware of that.
If someone had noticed what a sad state my upbringing had left me in when I was off at college, I might not have wasted 15 years of my adult life hating myself and escaping into books and video games to try and manage my depression and loneliness.
The lost opportunity for a real childhood was bad enough. I don't need to waste the rest of my life.
Of course, I know that an interest in video games does not imply anything specific about one's mental health.
Okay, Okay. I'm a whining, snivelling worm boy and I have no one to blame but myself.
Excuse me while I go reread Snow Crash and then spend all night playing Battlefield 1942.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard the This American Life thing as well.
I think the leader of this group isn't very aware of himself emotionally/psychologically. He's too comfortable manipulating people. These kinds of "performances" seem to come from having difficulty in asserting boundaries and allowing other people to assert their boundaries. He's not very empathetic and expects people to have the emotions he imposes on them and he even expects them to like it and is unreceptive if they don't.
This touches on the fascination with Andy Kaufmann. Fans were interested in him for manipulating the emotions of other people with his pranks, but when they show up and he manipulates them by reading from a boring book, all of a sudden they're angry. "It's fine if he doesn't respect other people's boundaries but he better respect mine."
I'm not saying these types of performances are unethical, but at least acknowlege them for what they are.
Pranks that don't take into account the emotions of their targets are about exploiting other people for your own amusement. I don't look up to people who deny this. It just makes them more self-centered in my eyes.
I'm not sure if the quibble is about the word "Save" itself or the feeling that details of the system are being exposed in the application unneccessarily.
Operation systems commonly use the "file cabinet" metaphor for persistent data storage and I personally think that if "File" were used as both a verb and a noun, that would be more confusing than staying with the "Save" verb.
The user of a software application is typically doing work with some sort of data model. They usually expect the data in the model to have persistence between application sessions and they want to have control over that persistence.
The conventions that have developed around the notion of a "file" and the "save" function are not just historical oddities or operating system details the user shouldn't be forced to understand. They are a realization of application requirements.
A user typically operates many applications on a system. When the applications re-use the operating system's presentation of data persistence it is easier to switch between applications because the use cases for working with data are similar.
Which is easier? Explaining to a computer illiterate how Word saves their text to a "file" in an imaginary file cabinet or explaining to someone how a web browser retrieves pages from the internet and what it would mean to make an offline copy of the page (and whether that is even possible for a specific page)?
If all of our operating systems suddenly presented persistent data storage to the users using a different abstraction, then the applications would have to adjust.
But I don't think the conventions of File and Save are cumbersome nor anachronistic.
Half-Life without a mouse is just a tease.
I second the sentiment.
When I first spectated a Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow match (I did this on PC but I imagine it's similar on Xbox), one Sam Fisher put a guard in a headlock while the other Sam Fisher crouched down to put his goggles in the guard's crotch. The two young men controlling the Fishers repeated this head-lock/head-in-crotch maneuver over and over. Each time it was just completely hysterical as evidenced by the maniacal laugher I heard coming over the voice channel.
I have spent many hours playing online games without voice communication and found the immature people annoying but easy to tolerate when the communication is limited to text.
But, repeatedly, voice communications ruined the experience for me because it makes it much harder to tolerate people I don't like (i.e. tune them out).
This is bad news for us boyfriends. You know how rich guys want prenuptial agreements?
What kind of red tape am I gonna have to go thru now to get the proper media of my woman to use when she goes on that long business trip?!?!?
Jesus Christ, I'm probably gonna have to agree to castration or some other form of fundamentalist punishment if the stuff ever leaks to the public.
It is a common human experience to re-experience our past when we witness literal or metaphorical reenactments of our past.
Sometimes, it is the inability to articulate what we are reexperiencing that causes us to expect other people to fail to empathize with us.
If you find a person that can connect with you emotionally about comic books or video games or some other form that is often derided in our society, consider yourself lucky. Someone that condescends to you may enjoy their feelings of superiority temporarily but the emotional nourishment of an empathetic emotional connection lasts a lot longer and is more beneficial.
Quentin Tarantino said something about enjoying B-movies more than more well respected movies because that the element of the film he enjoys about the film seems more pronounced. Perhaps that means that a movie that is "poorly made" in some respects makes it clearer to him (albeit in some esoteric way) what aspect of himself he needs to see reflected in the universe. I could see how the contrast of his enjoyment with other people's derision can highlight how his experience is shared by other people (i.e. since the element of the movie was created by the filmmaker, he and the filmmaker have a connection which may seem more universal than just a person-to-person connection because of the nature of film viewing). Viewing such a move is not a great substitute for empathy, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
I have tried stereo movies and stereo glasses for my computer games. The 3D effect isn't novel enough to outweigh an image that just doesn't look as good as the 2D image, IMHO. I get tired of trying to make out detail in certain parts of the image and trying to calibrate my monitor with little improvement. Also, I've found that the motion in the 2D image evokes enough 3D cues that the novelty of the stereo effect isn't even that satisfying.
And I really hate blue/red 3D.
Does anyone like this stuff?
The fine print is that you risk becoming a 5-monkey-assed human when you undergo this therapy.
Perhaps the question of "why should I care" tends to come to mind to those of us that have a history (particularly as children) of being coerced into behaving a certain way to avoid being humiliated or shamed by those people we need to love us.
I think some of the motivation for spending energy pondering philosophical questions surrounding ethical or moral behavior comes from a desire to resolve emotional injuries.
Since we do not have the opportunity to be conscious of those injuries, we waste our time on questions that would seem irrelevant if we understood more about how we feel about our behavior.
I would rather have some sort of tongue-in-cheek movie. Put Bruce Campbell's Elvis from Bubba Ho-Tep in it or something. ("Come and get it, you undead sack of shit.")
Call me a strange Doom fan, but my taste for giblets and hellspawn does not translate to the silver screen for me.
I think you denying yourself a techincally and emotionally sophisticated experience. I mean, especially with the voice communication.
When I first spectated a Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow match (I did this on PC but I imagine it's similar on Xbox), one Sam Fisher put a guard in a headlock while the other Sam Fisher crouched down to put his goggles in the guard's crotch. The two young men controlling the Fishers repeated this head-lock/crotch-view maneuver over and over and each time it was just hysterical as evidenced by the maniacal laugher I heard coming over the voice channel.
Maybe now that you know what you're missing, you'll change your mind.
Wouldn't it be funny if the movie unit pulled Nintendo games into the darkside for the purpose of reaching the teen and young-adult males?
I'm not so interested in jumping Mario across platforms, but if my reward was the opportunity to bitch-slap that annoyingly helpless Princess Toadstool, I might change my mind.
I've had anti-virus software for years and kept it up to date and it never once blocked a virus.
However, I've spent many hours undoing the damage done to my machine by the virus scanners themselves. And I've spent a lot of money buying new versions.
Which person is the sucker? The one who is constantly spending time and money maintaining virus scanner installations that never block an infection or the one that has to deal with an infection every decade or so?
I don't see anything wrong with making a risk assessment and deciding that you're better off without a scanner.
Keep on the lookout for a girlfriend. You won't be so sad about your lost gear when the biggest thing on your mind will be how to arrange your next private moment.
Arranging entire nights is a big effort when you're a starving college student. You might be pawning your gear for motel money, anyway.
Also, you won't believe how calm and sane you can be about flunking tests and getting Bs in math for the first time in your life when you're getting serious ass.
NUKEEMUP!!!! They should've had me pick.
No. This game sounds like some feverish nightmare I'd have when I'm home with the flu or something. Dragon's Lair meets Perry Mason.
I guess the author doesn't remember when 3D shooters stopped offering software renderers and you were required to own a 3D hw accelerator to play.
Gamers, as a market group, want progress regardless of whether or not that helps line the industry's pockets. We WANT games that inspire and utilize new hardware.
If any particular software company leaves too many people behind with a game, then they are taking a risk with their product (by possibly making a poor prediction about how many potential customers will want to upgrade their hardware), not engaging in a conpsiracy to manipulate consumers.
Seriously. He's probably just one more casualty in a society that is ignorant with respect to the emotional nurturing of children and the lifelong effects stemming from that ignorance and neglect.
Generally, children that are respected and empathized with, grow up to be respectful, empathetic people.
However, in our society, we see a young geek without social skills and we see a person with a problem.
Barring some kind of physical origin of his problem, his real problem is most likely that he has inept parents.
Geeks should be the first people to take an interest in what impact narcissistic love and a lack of emotional nurturing has on a child.
The works of Alice Miller explain this concept (and elaborate upon it) and are easily accesssible to the lay person.
Stop dismissing your humanity because you're afraid that you're blaming someone else for your problems. To take responsibility for oneself is to identify what one needed as a human being but was deprived of.
First 5-Assed Monkey Post!
This is very true, but of course, social interaction negatively effects your mental health as well as positively.
I'm sure that I'm hitting close to home for many of my fellow slashdot nerds.
Why isn't it I hardly every hear nerds talk about psychotherapy? Many of us need it. And many of us have mental diseases that are unaffected by the existence of an iPod in our pocket.
He might be interested in modifying existing games or game engines. That is, he can start by modifying game content instead of starting from scratch writing programs.
You can create your own levels and such for many state-of-the art titles. It's challenging and rewarding. Some people get into the industry this way.
There are many games/engines that can be modified.
Garage Games took this mod idea in an interesting direction by taking the technology used for Tribes 2 and marketing it as an engine for a small fee. The fee is higher than the Tribes 2 price but you get more for your money.
I'd like some sort of psychology class to be a part of a video game curriculum. The idea being that the students that are drawn to video games because they had very deprived childhoods get a chance to become aware of that.
If someone had noticed what a sad state my upbringing had left me in when I was off at college, I might not have wasted 15 years of my adult life hating myself and escaping into books and video games to try and manage my depression and loneliness.
The lost opportunity for a real childhood was bad enough. I don't need to waste the rest of my life.
Of course, I know that an interest in video games does not imply anything specific about one's mental health.
Okay, Okay. I'm a whining, snivelling worm boy and I have no one to blame but myself.
Excuse me while I go reread Snow Crash and then spend all night playing Battlefield 1942.
I have no interest in buying a Star Wars game where becoming a Jedi is extraordinary news.
Expect more large flares due to solar warming.
No one listens to me but global warming is due to an increase in the Sun's output. Not abuse of our environment.
When the Earth starts frying, you all will wish for the glory days of beautiful auroras and I will be smug. Dead. But smug.
I disagree that the IRS gets all the information necessary to compute the taxes we owe.
There are certain kinds of income that you are supposed to report but the IRS may never find out about it unless you do.
Also, the IRS doesn't know what to deduct unless you tell them (e.g. charitable donations).