Very interesting point about the idea of classes. One problem with the sci-fi model is the egalitarian nature of technology. If you have some sort of "super-duper body analyzer/healer" that just requires a scan and a few clicks to use then what is the point of having, say, a "medic" class? Anyone could use it with with a few skill points. Same goes for weapons, even a child can pull a trigger on a machine gun (with ugly proof of this in Africa today). Since RPGs generally revolve around personal combat and interaction the skills that required years of training in swords & sorcery rpgs, like archery, are gone in a world where anyone can learn to shoot reasonably well in a few weeks. That is why we can have armies of conscripts today.
Pretty much anyone can be a jack-of-all-trades in sci-fi. The only place classes would show up is in advanced professions but then how interesting would it be to play the "chemical plant manager"?
As Arthur C Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
Thanks for giving me another reason not to go to the library. Before it was mainly due to the banker's hours that seemed more for seniors than for working adults. Now you've crippled one of the few helpful utilities in the library. Of course the right-wing has a simmering hostility towards education and knowledge in general (damn those intellectual elites!) so this doesn't come as a surprise.
I guess the bad men will have to do their stalking from home, like they do now, or through proxies.
It is a hell of a leap to go from seeing a large gap in a ring of dust around a quasar and a glow from the inner edge to saying that all black hole evidence is wrong. To make this leap they'd have to be pretty clear about how debris builds around compact objects, which they aren't. They only made observations in the optical wavelengths (according to the article). Even the fact that they used gravitational lensing in a new way may have skewed their results. Other events may have occured that swept out a gap around the object. Maybe another dense object fell in and swept out a gap before the evidence of it was consumed.
All the comments about "But the universe is weirder than you think" are fine but the universe isn't free of any rules. It is complex but not completely chaotic.
I actually called Sir-Tech software for help with Wizardy I or II when I was a kid. Another kid actually answered the phone (for free!) and helped me out. I swear it felt like I was talking to the owner's son.
By the way, when you think of how many hours you'd have to play to become good enough at a game so that you can sell your knowledge it probably works out to less than you'd make bagging groceries.
Coach: Thank you for hiring "l33t ski11z Game Coaches". I understand you need help with Battlefield?
Cust: Yes
Coach: Ok, work your way to where the enemy spawn point is. Camp there and kill anyone who appears before they can orient themselves. Thank you for hiring "l33t ski11z Game Coaches".
"If you quit you become a regular joe again doing the same stuff as everyone else."
This sounds just like the comment made by the narrator near the end of "Goodfellas". Who'da thought that gangsters and WoW gamers had something in common?
"That's because very few of them have any obsessive compulsion to watch TV. You put them in a room with a TV and they'll watch it... its the path of least resistance to entertainment for a lot of people; for most of them its just lazyness."
For me it is frequently just a nightlight or like having the radio on in the background. I may have it on but I'm not always watching it.
I haven't seen your book but did you contact Maressa Orzack at McLean Hospital in Belmont MA who is doing reseach on game/internet related addictive behavior? Her work might be of interest to you.
Ah, blame everything on the 60's. Too bad that doesn't explain the behavior of people born after the 60's who are parents themselves or before the 60's. People abused drugs like mad in the early part of this century and alcohol abuse was severe in cities in the 1800's (gin mills, etc). People have always been self absoarbed, it isn't something that was invented in the 60's & 70's. Read comments from the 50's about comic books ruining kids, or rich English parents from the Victorian era who sent their kids to private schools to turn them into perfect English gentlemen. If things seemed calmer in previous generations it was because they didn't record cultural trends or personal stories like they do now. It was hidden and forgotten.
I wouldn't be surprised if the parents had issues of their own that kept them from putting their foot down. They may need to feel constant love and affection from their kid (like when they were babies who didn't talk back) and can't bear to have them get mad and fight with them, ever. So they let the kids indulge themselves to avoid the stress and pain of having to confront them.
Your personal anecdotal evidence can only be extrapolated so far. Your story isn't necessarily applicable to everyone. You can talk to 19 people who have similar stories to back yours up but suddenly you run into that 20th person who seems bizarre. They may have an irrational personality that is prone to addictive behavior. You can't just say "snap out of it" any more than you can cure depression by saying "be happy you idiot!".
Most parents (usually with their first child) feel like they are guessing how to raise their kid half the time. The kid may even have a personality that is a bit alien to the parents and makes it even harder to figure out what to do. So anything that comes up that seems especially damaging to the family (like the kid never leaving the room so he can play games) would understandably freak them out. I'd say it was more of a case of fear being planted in nervous parents than any conspiracy.
"Think about sex for a minute, is there anyone who would truly give it up? I doubt most sane people would."
Having a a girlfriend in college who was very good in bed almost ruined me academically. Go to class or stay in bed? I guess I was a bit addicted to the sex. I have much fonder memories of her than of my classes though!
When I built my PC last year I didn't feel so good about having to do that for my 7800gt board. It is like having two PCs at once. If I have to start connecting it directly to the wall (or it's own PS) I'm calling it quits on power hungry upgrades.
I forsee a coming together of household technology. The CPU will also become the oven and the GPU will also become the water heater.
Wait until you have to switch your PC from a regular 110V outlet to a round 220V outlet like the ones they use for electric ovens.
Maybe if you had a little meter next to you that rang up how much you were paying for electricity since you turned on your pc people would be more conservative. Right now it is a bit of a hidden cost since it all gets lumped together into a monthly bill, along with your AC, fridge, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't we fight a revolution against the King of England? Is it time for another already?
Actually he plans on taking the rest of us with him. It is part of "Operation Last Term - Giant Asteroid Impact"
Very interesting point about the idea of classes. One problem with the sci-fi model is the egalitarian nature of technology. If you have some sort of "super-duper body analyzer/healer" that just requires a scan and a few clicks to use then what is the point of having, say, a "medic" class? Anyone could use it with with a few skill points. Same goes for weapons, even a child can pull a trigger on a machine gun (with ugly proof of this in Africa today). Since RPGs generally revolve around personal combat and interaction the skills that required years of training in swords & sorcery rpgs, like archery, are gone in a world where anyone can learn to shoot reasonably well in a few weeks. That is why we can have armies of conscripts today.
Pretty much anyone can be a jack-of-all-trades in sci-fi. The only place classes would show up is in advanced professions but then how interesting would it be to play the "chemical plant manager"?
As Arthur C Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
Ok, I'll probably get flamed for my ignorance but are there any RPGs based on the old pnp games Traveller and Twilight 2000? If not then why?
Thanks for giving me another reason not to go to the library. Before it was mainly due to the banker's hours that seemed more for seniors than for working adults. Now you've crippled one of the few helpful utilities in the library. Of course the right-wing has a simmering hostility towards education and knowledge in general (damn those intellectual elites!) so this doesn't come as a surprise.
I guess the bad men will have to do their stalking from home, like they do now, or through proxies.
This is sarcasm:
"His theory about how 'I could care less' is meant to be a play on 'I could not care less' is very insightful and likely correct"
No, it is just lazy English. Just like how people say "ATM Machine" instead of just "ATM" or "irregardless".
It is a hell of a leap to go from seeing a large gap in a ring of dust around a quasar and a glow from the inner edge to saying that all black hole evidence is wrong. To make this leap they'd have to be pretty clear about how debris builds around compact objects, which they aren't. They only made observations in the optical wavelengths (according to the article). Even the fact that they used gravitational lensing in a new way may have skewed their results. Other events may have occured that swept out a gap around the object. Maybe another dense object fell in and swept out a gap before the evidence of it was consumed.
All the comments about "But the universe is weirder than you think" are fine but the universe isn't free of any rules. It is complex but not completely chaotic.
"Not if you have a groundhog digging up your yard and you can't seem to chase it off."
Weren't you the groundskeeper in Caddyshack? Watch out for those Baby Ruths.
What, you didn't have to shop for condoms? Oh right...
I actually called Sir-Tech software for help with Wizardy I or II when I was a kid. Another kid actually answered the phone (for free!) and helped me out. I swear it felt like I was talking to the owner's son.
By the way, when you think of how many hours you'd have to play to become good enough at a game so that you can sell your knowledge it probably works out to less than you'd make bagging groceries.
Coach: Thank you for hiring "l33t ski11z Game Coaches". I understand you need help with Battlefield?
Cust: Yes
Coach: Ok, work your way to where the enemy spawn point is. Camp there and kill anyone who appears before they can orient themselves. Thank you for hiring "l33t ski11z Game Coaches".
"If you quit you become a regular joe again doing the same stuff as everyone else."
This sounds just like the comment made by the narrator near the end of "Goodfellas". Who'da thought that gangsters and WoW gamers had something in common?
"That's because very few of them have any obsessive compulsion to watch TV. You put them in a room with a TV and they'll watch it... its the path of least resistance to entertainment for a lot of people; for most of them its just lazyness."
For me it is frequently just a nightlight or like having the radio on in the background. I may have it on but I'm not always watching it.
Unfortunately they were all Battlefield 1942 addicts and they immediately started running around looking for a flag after they landed.
I haven't seen your book but did you contact Maressa Orzack at McLean Hospital in Belmont MA who is doing reseach on game/internet related addictive behavior? Her work might be of interest to you.
Ah, blame everything on the 60's. Too bad that doesn't explain the behavior of people born after the 60's who are parents themselves or before the 60's. People abused drugs like mad in the early part of this century and alcohol abuse was severe in cities in the 1800's (gin mills, etc). People have always been self absoarbed, it isn't something that was invented in the 60's & 70's. Read comments from the 50's about comic books ruining kids, or rich English parents from the Victorian era who sent their kids to private schools to turn them into perfect English gentlemen. If things seemed calmer in previous generations it was because they didn't record cultural trends or personal stories like they do now. It was hidden and forgotten.
I wouldn't be surprised if the parents had issues of their own that kept them from putting their foot down. They may need to feel constant love and affection from their kid (like when they were babies who didn't talk back) and can't bear to have them get mad and fight with them, ever. So they let the kids indulge themselves to avoid the stress and pain of having to confront them.
Your personal anecdotal evidence can only be extrapolated so far. Your story isn't necessarily applicable to everyone. You can talk to 19 people who have similar stories to back yours up but suddenly you run into that 20th person who seems bizarre. They may have an irrational personality that is prone to addictive behavior. You can't just say "snap out of it" any more than you can cure depression by saying "be happy you idiot!".
Most parents (usually with their first child) feel like they are guessing how to raise their kid half the time. The kid may even have a personality that is a bit alien to the parents and makes it even harder to figure out what to do. So anything that comes up that seems especially damaging to the family (like the kid never leaving the room so he can play games) would understandably freak them out. I'd say it was more of a case of fear being planted in nervous parents than any conspiracy.
"Think about sex for a minute, is there anyone who would truly give it up? I doubt most sane people would."
Having a a girlfriend in college who was very good in bed almost ruined me academically. Go to class or stay in bed? I guess I was a bit addicted to the sex. I have much fonder memories of her than of my classes though!
Just replace their consoles and PCs with big exercise wheels like in hamster cages.
You aren't safe because the company may be doomed due to poor leadership (and you'll go down with it).
When I built my PC last year I didn't feel so good about having to do that for my 7800gt board. It is like having two PCs at once. If I have to start connecting it directly to the wall (or it's own PS) I'm calling it quits on power hungry upgrades.
I forsee a coming together of household technology. The CPU will also become the oven and the GPU will also become the water heater.
Wait until you have to switch your PC from a regular 110V outlet to a round 220V outlet like the ones they use for electric ovens.
Maybe if you had a little meter next to you that rang up how much you were paying for electricity since you turned on your pc people would be more conservative. Right now it is a bit of a hidden cost since it all gets lumped together into a monthly bill, along with your AC, fridge, etc.