You went into the meeting with the intent to abolish the WAVE website, even though you didn't think you had a chance of doing so. In essence, you aimed for the stars, but only reached the moon. While you didn't get them to shut down the site completely, what you did actually may have done something even better
Because of your meeting, they changed some things on their site around. This fact shows that they are open to out ideas and suggestions. You can't kill the site, but you can alter it for the better. Change it small bits at a time, making it better with each change. If everyone cooperates, and works at it, you might be able to turn this thing into something half-decent. And as it's been stated before, mass email-bombs is not the way to do this.
Personally, I would have thought you would have leapt at the chance to work with them. That would have given you the chance to try and change things from the inside.
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It may be a little sour for your tastes, but it's better than sucking down a raw lemon.
World-wide cencorship doesn't happen over night. It starts with little things like this. First one little community puts in the software, then all the others follow along with the mentality, "They did it, why not us?" One turns to two, two to four, and four to eight. Before you know it, people are saying, "With so many communities doing it, why not make it a state law for libraries to have censorship software?" Because of the sensitivity of the topic, a lot of people are paying close attention to what happens, and will react accordingly. And once they block one thing that someone thinks is derogitory, theey'll find another, and another. The war isn't won or lost in one battle, but many little skirmishes.
Although of course it all may just flop, and nothing will happen. Isn't life interesting?
-Sarkis- gte480e@prism.gatech.edu
No keyboard present Hit F1 to continue Zen engineering?
One of my friends spent 5 minutes either on the phone, or online (dunno which, only know he didn't stand in any line), and got bout 12 tickets for the whole group. 1220am tonight/tomorow morning.
Do I laugh, sneer, or berate those who spend hours in line? No. Why should I. How does their actions affect me in any way such that I should insult them?
That is what gets me pissed off. The complete disrespect people have for others that don't hold the same vaules or ideas as them.
-Sarkis-
Re:I want to wait for it to come out on tape
on
More Star Wars Hype
·
· Score: 1
--::No seriously after reading the critics I understand the movie sucks::--
If I had a nickel for everytime I saw a movie I loved, yet the critics said sucked....... I'd be a rich man.
The eloquence of this comment, combined with the magnifincant ability to combined meaning with shortness to get one's point across clear, quickly, yet emphatically, completely outstands and blows this reader's mind.
-Sarkis- "Sarcasm isn't an ability, it's an artform"
What kind of life do *you* have if you need to berate others for what they do with theirs.
There are so many things out there that some people become fanatic about, not just this movie. Nerds and Techies sit in front of a computer hours a day coding. People that don't know or don't like computers scream at them saying they don't have a life because they never get out that much. They don't understand that is their life.
Now very few people can claim that seeing movies is their life, but it definetely is a hobby. First off, this isn't the first time people have slept in front of ticket counters to be assured tickets to something. And this won't be the last time.
::--The fact that there are so many people out there willing to dedicate weeks of their life to camping out to ensure they see that "first show" indicates just how the masses can be brainwashed by hype --::
This has nothing to do with brainwashing, this has to do with dedication. How bad do you want something. Just because you don't think it's worth the trouble to go through, doesn't mean someone else does.
Look at other things like Furbies. No media hype, yet people were buying them for $200+. Who did the brainwashing there?
The point im trying to say is, what good is one million screaming GET A LIFE going to do except annoy everyone else that has to read it a million times over?
Personally, I could care less whether or not companies take this choice. I haven't bought software since I got the computer 2 years ago.
I really don't see why they would take this choice though. Id give it tops two days for any piece of software before numerous people post on the internet detailed instructions on how to surgically remove the ads from the program. Maybe they think this will combat pirating software in some way. Whatever.
I understand where you are coming from, and it's completely justified. This is a highly....... sensitive topic. The intentions of all these posts are to finally bring to full light the true nature of school life for many people. The problem is we are linking it to a terrible event. With what occured in Colorado, everyone's focus is on the deaths of the 15? students/teachers. With death comes the feelings of mourning, but aslo anger, hate, and rage directed at the ones responsible, and, unfortunately, the ones associated with them too.
Now you said, "lets not use them as martyr to boost our cause. By doing this we're no better than the ones we're accusing of rejecting us."
Why exactly do you feel that way? The way I see it, as much as they failed the system, the system failed them just as much. Out of all the stories we have heard, the posts that have been written, we all have come to the conclusion that these kids were not just geeks, outcasts, or whatever you want to call them. We all see that there was something else deeply wrong within them, and that they had some serious issues. Now, the question is, why didn't any of the parents, teachers, or counselers see any of the serious warning signs?
There could be many answers to this, and your guess is as good as mine. Here is my view. They were all labeled as goths, loners, and all the pretty words that means they were different from the mainstream. One set idea that has been stated many times in these posts, is that those groups of people are 90% of the time misunderstood. People don't know anything about them (and don't want to), so anything and everything they do is just thrown into the class that people have labeled them as.
Now I know im explaining this horriby, and I'm trying my best to get my point across straight. What I'm trying to say, is these people need to put their prejudices aside, and get to know these "different" kids, so that everyone can tell the difference between a gothic trend, and the signs of a seriously disturbed mind.
These Colorado kids are a perfect example that the people in charge (and nearly everybody for that matter), just cannot tell this difference. The sooner people become knowledgable, the fewer of these cases we will see of schools overreacting to the actions of the "out" crowd. And, like the dominoe effect, when they start to learn about this "out" crowd, hopefully they will see exactly how bad it has gotten for them.
A lot of what im about to say has probably been repeated many times in previous posts here, but there's a lot I want say, so I may as well throw my two cents into the pot. Sorry about the length.
One thing we understand completely here at/. is that the internet/games/music is not the cause of these atrocities. A lot of you give out ideas as to where they *are* coming from, or from lack of what, but i'll get into that later.
The reason games like DOOM, and Quake....etc, are being blamed on violence, is because where ever there is a kid that shoots someone, 90% of the time, he's been known to play games like that, or listen to hard/acid/gothic rock.
Now, the more simple minded fold (read the media, and the majority of people that believe everything they hear), make the link, and do a bit of reverse logic. They end up fingering the games/music as the cause. A lot of us know better. Right now while im writing this, im listening to the Matrix soundtrack, including one of Manson's songs. I also have one of his CD's. I like his music. Am I going to pull a gun out in the middle of my work and shoot everybody in the office? Stupid question right?
My point is, the nature of this music, and these games, are intense, fast paced, and sometimes violent (the games especially). I have a ton of friends that dont like Manson, and dont like Quake, becuase they think it's too violent. If I were to force them to play/listen, would they become more violent? Again, another stupid question. The game/music doesn't change the person, the person listen/plays to it, becuase that is the stuff he likes. It *accents* his nature, it doesnt *create* it.
A violent person may like Quake, because he gets to blow stuff up. He may listen to hard rock because of the rush it gives him. Now these Trench Coat Mafiosos where by no means un-intelligent students. But that is what they are labeled when people say the games/music are the cause of what they did. Wrong answer, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
So where did this come from? Basically it boils down to Monkey See Monkey Do. What are they imitating? Movies? No, movies imitate real life (you know what Im talking about, dont go off on a tangent with this). Killing has been passed down from generation to generation. Kennedy, Lincoln, Ceaser, how far back can you go? Gun, knife, club, it doesn't matter. You don't like something, kill it. How many school shootings have there been in the past few years? It's like it's becoming a competition to see who can gun down the most classmates, "Cummon man, those guys were amateurs, we can get 50 easy." They figure, hey, it worked for those guys, why not us.....
Here is the big part where parenting comes into play (or lack of it). School is by far one of the most stressful parts of a kids life. Not everyone is in the 'cool' cliche, some could care less. The thing is, outsiders/loners/etc. are almost always picked on, made fun of, or basically alienated from the rest of the school more so than they do themselves. The funny thing is, a lot of parents have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what goes on at school, how their kid reacts to it, or what s/he feels about it all. What happens? The more aggresive outcasts just straight up get into fights. A few bloody knuckles, a broken nose or two, and a few days of in-school. "If there where more bloody noses, there'd be less wars." It's the quiet ones that usually are the danger, espeically in groups. They are the ones that will hold their anger in. They won't tell anyone, or show the anger and tension they are feeling. Sometimes they can contain it all, or find other outlets to relieve this anger and tension. Other times, it boils over, and stuff like this happens, and it happens a lot easier than many people think.
It's funny watching the news, how schools are thinking of tightening up security, giving teachers self-defense classes, putting in cameras/metal detectors. I even heard one school is thinking of making students wear ID cards. The dont understand NONE OF THIS will prevent something like this from happeneing again. Whoop-de-freakin-do you have metal detectors. When the two kids walk through, guns blazing, the beeping and sirens will be drowned out by the gun-fire. And who cares if they are wearing ID's or not, they are firing their ID's at you right now. If this is the way they want to prevent indcidents like this from happening, schools are going to turn into near prison-like atmospheres. Things like this will keep happening, and I guarantee, grades will be severly affected. The most *schools* can do, is teach the students, and, more importantly, teach the parents and let them know what goes on during school hours. The latter is more important, because any "awareness" classes ive seen are jokes, and get no attention paid to them.
The key to stopping this (as youve guessed it and said it many times over) is at home. The parents actually have to give a damn about their kids. Mindlessly driving them to school, and mumbling 'be good' everyday isnt going to do squat. Faking apathy and asking your kid how school was everyday when he gets home isn't going to cut it either. Parents think their kids "snap all of a sudden", becuase when they ask everyday, they get the same response, everyday, of "school was fine". The kid (especially if he thinks at all that you dont care) isn't going to say crap. The parents have to know their kids, and recognize when something is wrong.
This doesn't just *happen*, this means the parent actually has to spend time with the kid while s/he grows up. The parents actually have to spend time in the kid's upbringing. That's the only way the parent will know bobby is pissed at something when he comes home from school. Then they have to face the problem, and not think it will take care of itself, because all too many times, it *does* take care of itself, like what just happened.
I've ranted enough now. Hopefully one of these days, rantings like these and others on/. will actually be listened to. While they aren't end-all, fix-all solutions, the ideas presented here could prove helpful. The sad truth is that people already know a lot of this, but don't want to face the facts, so they fool themselves and others into believing whatever alternate reality they can come up with that seems semi-plausible and points the blame at anyone else except themselves.
Why would it have to be Earth sized? Why not bigger? Or smaller for that matter. Life on this planet was a fluke. A billion to one chance that something went right creating just the right environment. Maybe had the earth been bigger or smaller, the situation would not have been just perfect, and we wouldn't be talking here right now.
The thing is though, a billion to one oppurtunity in the universe is really good odds. It's when we start to narrow it down to fit our wants that the probablity goes down........: Well, it has to be within a certain distance of us........it has to be a form of life we can recognize......how evolved it might be.
Like it's been said many times, the chances that there is some form of "life" out there is probably high (no one really knows). But whether we will find it now, later, or ever is the question.
-Sarkis-
Q. "What is the avg. population of the Universe?"
A. "Zero." x = infinit planets , y = finite habited planets y/x = 0, as the limit of x approaches infinite.
You know the funniest part of the article? The claim that the kid had an "extraordinary" shooting ability because of playing the game.
Instead of spending mass amounts of time, money, and energy running psuedo operations to train soldiers, why not just let them play Quake and Doom 24/7?
Slashdot Mirror
You went into the meeting with the intent to abolish the WAVE website, even though you didn't think you had a chance of doing so. In essence, you aimed for the stars, but only reached the moon. While you didn't get them to shut down the site completely, what you did actually may have done something even better
Because of your meeting, they changed some things on their site around. This fact shows that they are open to out ideas and suggestions. You can't kill the site, but you can alter it for the better. Change it small bits at a time, making it better with each change. If everyone cooperates, and works at it, you might be able to turn this thing into something half-decent. And as it's been stated before, mass email-bombs is not the way to do this.
Personally, I would have thought you would have leapt at the chance to work with them. That would have given you the chance to try and change things from the inside.
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It may be a little sour for your tastes, but it's better than sucking down a raw lemon.
World-wide cencorship doesn't happen over night. It starts with little things like this. First one little community puts in the software, then all the others follow along with the mentality, "They did it, why not us?" One turns to two, two to four, and four to eight. Before you know it, people are saying, "With so many communities doing it, why not make it a state law for libraries to have censorship software?" Because of the sensitivity of the topic, a lot of people are paying close attention to what happens, and will react accordingly. And once they block one thing that someone thinks is derogitory, theey'll find another, and another. The war isn't won or lost in one battle, but many little skirmishes.
Although of course it all may just flop, and nothing will happen. Isn't life interesting?
-Sarkis-
gte480e@prism.gatech.edu
No keyboard present
Hit F1 to continue
Zen engineering?
One of my friends spent 5 minutes either on the phone, or online (dunno which, only know he didn't stand in any line), and got bout 12 tickets for the whole group. 1220am tonight/tomorow morning.
Do I laugh, sneer, or berate those who spend hours in line? No. Why should I. How does their actions affect me in any way such that I should insult them?
That is what gets me pissed off. The complete disrespect people have for others that don't hold the same vaules or ideas as them.
-Sarkis-
--::No seriously after reading the critics I understand the movie sucks::--
If I had a nickel for everytime I saw a movie I loved, yet the critics said sucked....... I'd be a rich man.
-Sarkis-
The eloquence of this comment, combined with the magnifincant ability to combined meaning with shortness to get one's point across clear, quickly, yet emphatically, completely outstands and blows this reader's mind.
-Sarkis-
"Sarcasm isn't an ability, it's an artform"
Im sorry, but this post just sort of bugged me.
What kind of life do *you* have if you need to berate others for what they do with theirs.
There are so many things out there that some people become fanatic about, not just this movie. Nerds and Techies sit in front of a computer hours a day coding. People that don't know or don't like computers scream at them saying they don't have a life because they never get out that much. They don't understand that is their life.
Now very few people can claim that seeing movies is their life, but it definetely is a hobby. First off, this isn't the first time people have slept in front of ticket counters to be assured tickets to something. And this won't be the last time.
::--The fact that there are so many people out there willing to dedicate weeks of their life to camping out to ensure they see that "first show" indicates just how the masses can be brainwashed by hype --::
This has nothing to do with brainwashing, this has to do with dedication. How bad do you want something. Just because you don't think it's worth the trouble to go through, doesn't mean someone else does.
Look at other things like Furbies. No media hype, yet people were buying them for $200+. Who did the brainwashing there?
The point im trying to say is, what good is one million screaming GET A LIFE going to do except annoy everyone else that has to read it a million times over?
-Sarkis-
Personally, I could care less whether or not companies take this choice. I haven't bought software since I got the computer 2 years ago.
I really don't see why they would take this choice though. Id give it tops two days for any piece of software before numerous people post on the internet detailed instructions on how to surgically remove the ads from the program. Maybe they think this will combat pirating software in some way. Whatever.
-Sarkis-
I understand where you are coming from, and it's completely justified. This is a highly....... sensitive topic. The intentions of all these posts are to finally bring to full light the true nature of school life for many people. The problem is we are linking it to a terrible event. With what occured in Colorado, everyone's focus is on the deaths of the 15? students/teachers. With death comes the feelings of mourning, but aslo anger, hate, and rage directed at the ones responsible, and, unfortunately, the ones associated with them too.
Now you said, "lets not use them as martyr to boost our cause. By doing this we're no better than the ones we're accusing of rejecting us."
Why exactly do you feel that way? The way I see it, as much as they failed the system, the system failed them just as much. Out of all the stories we have heard, the posts that have been written, we all have come to the conclusion that these kids were not just geeks, outcasts, or whatever you want to call them. We all see that there was something else deeply wrong within them, and that they had some serious issues. Now, the question is, why didn't any of the parents, teachers, or counselers see any of the serious warning signs?
There could be many answers to this, and your guess is as good as mine. Here is my view. They were all labeled as goths, loners, and all the pretty words that means they were different from the mainstream. One set idea that has been stated many times in these posts, is that those groups of people are 90% of the time misunderstood. People don't know anything about them (and don't want to), so anything and everything they do is just thrown into the class that people have labeled them as.
Now I know im explaining this horriby, and I'm trying my best to get my point across straight. What I'm trying to say, is these people need to put their prejudices aside, and get to know these "different" kids, so that everyone can tell the difference between a gothic trend, and the signs of a seriously disturbed mind.
These Colorado kids are a perfect example that the people in charge (and nearly everybody for that matter), just cannot tell this difference. The sooner people become knowledgable, the fewer of these cases we will see of schools overreacting to the actions of the "out" crowd. And, like the dominoe effect, when they start to learn about this "out" crowd, hopefully they will see exactly how bad it has gotten for them.
-Sarkis-
Hehe, the poor saps. I love my college Ethernet connection. Ive seen up to 4M/s.
-Sarkis-
I meant to have a...
at the head of that last comment.
>
I have never seen 400+ comments/replies summed up in such a precise, eloquent comment. Bravo to you.
-Sarkis-
A lot of what im about to say has probably been repeated many times in previous posts here, but there's a lot I want say, so I may as well throw my two cents into the pot. Sorry about the length.
/. is that the internet/games/music is not the cause of these atrocities. A lot of you give out ideas as to where they *are* coming from, or from lack of what, but i'll get into that later.
/. will actually be listened to. While they aren't end-all, fix-all solutions, the ideas presented here could prove helpful. The sad truth is that people already know a lot of this, but don't want to face the facts, so they fool themselves and others into believing whatever alternate reality they can come up with that seems semi-plausible and points the blame at anyone else except themselves.
One thing we understand completely here at
The reason games like DOOM, and Quake....etc, are being blamed on violence, is because where ever there is a kid that shoots someone, 90% of the time, he's been known to play games like that, or listen to hard/acid/gothic rock.
Now, the more simple minded fold (read the media, and the majority of people that believe everything they hear), make the link, and do a bit of reverse logic. They end up fingering the games/music as the cause. A lot of us know better. Right now while im writing this, im listening to the Matrix soundtrack, including one of Manson's songs. I also have one of his CD's. I like his music. Am I going to pull a gun out in the middle of my work and shoot everybody in the office? Stupid question right?
My point is, the nature of this music, and these games, are intense, fast paced, and sometimes violent (the games especially). I have a ton of friends that dont like Manson, and dont like Quake, becuase they think it's too violent. If I were to force them to play/listen, would they become more violent? Again, another stupid question. The game/music doesn't change the person, the person listen/plays to it, becuase that is the stuff he likes. It *accents* his nature, it doesnt *create* it.
A violent person may like Quake, because he gets to blow stuff up. He may listen to hard rock because of the rush it gives him. Now these Trench Coat Mafiosos where by no means un-intelligent students. But that is what they are labeled when people say the games/music are the cause of what they did. Wrong answer, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
So where did this come from? Basically it boils down to Monkey See Monkey Do. What are they imitating? Movies? No, movies imitate real life (you know what Im talking about, dont go off on a tangent with this). Killing has been passed down from generation to generation. Kennedy, Lincoln, Ceaser, how far back can you go? Gun, knife, club, it doesn't matter. You don't like something, kill it. How many school shootings have there been in the past few years? It's like it's becoming a competition to see who can gun down the most classmates, "Cummon man, those guys were amateurs, we can get 50 easy." They figure, hey, it worked for those guys, why not us.....
Here is the big part where parenting comes into play (or lack of it). School is by far one of the most stressful parts of a kids life. Not everyone is in the 'cool' cliche, some could care less. The thing is, outsiders/loners/etc. are almost always picked on, made fun of, or basically alienated from the rest of the school more so than they do themselves. The funny thing is, a lot of parents have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what goes on at school, how their kid reacts to it, or what s/he feels about it all. What happens? The more aggresive outcasts just straight up get into fights. A few bloody knuckles, a broken nose or two, and a few days of in-school. "If there where more bloody noses, there'd be less wars." It's the quiet ones that usually are the danger, espeically in groups. They are the ones that will hold their anger in. They won't tell anyone, or show the anger and tension they are feeling. Sometimes they can contain it all, or find other outlets to relieve this anger and tension. Other times, it boils over, and stuff like this happens, and it happens a lot easier than many people think.
It's funny watching the news, how schools are thinking of tightening up security, giving teachers self-defense classes, putting in cameras/metal detectors. I even heard one school is thinking of making students wear ID cards. The dont understand NONE OF THIS will prevent something like this from happeneing again. Whoop-de-freakin-do you have metal detectors. When the two kids walk through, guns blazing, the beeping and sirens will be drowned out by the gun-fire. And who cares if they are wearing ID's or not, they are firing their ID's at you right now. If this is the way they want to prevent indcidents like this from happening, schools are going to turn into near prison-like atmospheres. Things like this will keep happening, and I guarantee, grades will be severly affected. The most *schools* can do, is teach the students, and, more importantly, teach the parents and let them know what goes on during school hours. The latter is more important, because any "awareness" classes ive seen are jokes, and get no attention paid to them.
The key to stopping this (as youve guessed it and said it many times over) is at home. The parents actually have to give a damn about their kids. Mindlessly driving them to school, and mumbling 'be good' everyday isnt going to do squat. Faking apathy and asking your kid how school was everyday when he gets home isn't going to cut it either. Parents think their kids "snap all of a sudden", becuase when they ask everyday, they get the same response, everyday, of "school was fine". The kid (especially if he thinks at all that you dont care) isn't going to say crap. The parents have to know their kids, and recognize when something is wrong.
This doesn't just *happen*, this means the parent actually has to spend time with the kid while s/he grows up. The parents actually have to spend time in the kid's upbringing. That's the only way the parent will know bobby is pissed at something when he comes home from school. Then they have to face the problem, and not think it will take care of itself, because all too many times, it *does* take care of itself, like what just happened.
I've ranted enough now. Hopefully one of these days, rantings like these and others on
-Sarkis-
Stupid transmission errors.
x = number of unihabitant planets, growing at a
rate of some number s.
y = number of habited plantes, growing at a
rate of some number t.
As is right now, x >> y, and increasing. Therefore s >> t.
If x grows at a faster rate than y, the limit as x approaches infinite of y/x is still approaches 0.
-Sarkis-
>
Why would it have to be Earth sized? Why not bigger? Or smaller for that matter. Life on this planet was a fluke. A billion to one chance that something went right creating just the right environment. Maybe had the earth been bigger or smaller, the situation would not have been just perfect, and we wouldn't be talking here right now.
The thing is though, a billion to one oppurtunity in the universe is really good odds. It's when we start to narrow it down to fit our wants that the probablity goes down........: Well, it has to be within a certain distance of us........it has to be a form of life we can recognize......how evolved it might be.
Like it's been said many times, the chances that there is some form of "life" out there is probably high (no one really knows). But whether we will find it now, later, or ever is the question.
-Sarkis-
Q.
"What is the avg. population of the Universe?"
A.
"Zero."
x = infinit planets , y = finite habited planets
y/x = 0, as the limit of x approaches infinite.
You know the funniest part of the article? The claim that the kid had an "extraordinary" shooting ability because of playing the game.
Instead of spending mass amounts of time, money, and energy running psuedo operations to train soldiers, why not just let them play Quake and Doom 24/7?
-Sarkis-