Re:Interesting gameplay
on
Tron 2.0 Game
·
· Score: 1
Sad but true about the lag -- Armagetron, which is an excellent game -- drove me nuts when we last threw a lan party. It's no fun to drive into another cycle's line when, to your knowledge, the cycle was on the other side of the board. Note that this is over a lan, all players on the same hub -- I'd hate to see what internet-length lag would do.
The Armagetron guys seem to know what they're doing, so I suspect multiplayer lightcycles won't be possible in the commercial TRON 2 or any other tron game for a while.
What a crock. MTV is sanitized, no one shows skin, its all a failure.
Wow. So anything "following the 7 dirty words and decency regulations" is automatically a "failure?" No wonder television is a vast wasteland -- we can thank these vocal people whose attention spans are incapable of comprehending anything that doesn't appeal to juvenile or prurient interest.
One wonders which came first -- the chicken or the egg. Did humanity first become so degraded that it produces children who demand "ads with breasts showing?" Or did the entertainment industry first create that demand, television changing society's tastes?
Perhaps its time we all forgot about the PVR technology and discarded our televisions altogether. Parents, care for your children yourselves; don't let Turner, AOL, MTV or Skinemax babysit your children! O flesh-seeking masses, who envy the Europeans their ads, go read, read poetry and discover romance that brings joy beyond simple lust!
The best, though, was that his weapons also transformed -- into two batteries that stored in his battery compartment! So you could take all his parts -- the robotic raptors ("Laserbeak" comes to mind as a name, though I may be wrong), his weapons, everything, in one neat little package.
The Autobots got one later -- "Blaster," but he just felt like a cheap imitation. Go figure.
One of my earliest experiences with computers was compiling a database of all my transformers. I wonder if the 5 1/4" floppy is still around, not that I have any hardware that could read it...
Re:This IS old-fashioned fun...
on
PDAs For Kids
·
· Score: 1
Memorizing poetry is a good thing. Memorizing phone numbers? Sounds like memorizing IP addresses (isn't that why we have DNS?). Perhaps PDA's and their ilk make us dependent on them by remembering numbers for us, but how much independence have we really achieved when we're so locked into the telecommunications paradigm that we memorize seven or ten digit numbers to keep in touch with friends?
Perhaps it's a bit less dependent on systems and technology just to walk over to friends' houses and speak to them. The same with our kids -- why buy them $50 gadgets to train them to use PDA's later (to train them to consume) when they could be visiting friends (of either sex, for heaven's sake -- children should socialize with both) and playing games, perhaps even outdoors.
I love this -- I'm always impressed with how happily we pat ourselves on the back when schools get The Internet and New Computers, which provide an instant IQ boost to all the underprivileged children. Because putting one workstation in a classroom of thirty to forty kids, of course, is the solution to all our educational woes.
Pie jesu, did no one ever realize that forty kids can't all use one computer at the same time? Even if the administration is wise enough only to purchase computers for computer labs, only a fraction of the students can use them at any time. And for what is the web (all we allow the kids access to anyway) useful? Easy: teaching them to "research" by pulling up those dubious sources most attractive to the eye, to ignore the resources of the library, never to read a book, an article, or any literature that might give you a broad perspective on an issue when you can nail a transcribed sound-byte in Google.
I am a teacher at a school serving free or reduced lunches to the majority of our population, one "benefitting" from increased penetration of high technology at reduced cost. It never ceases to gall me when some politico or bureaucrat congratulates himself and his corporate sponsors for "bringing computers to the classroom" and hooking up the school to the internet... gee, now the kids can look up video game cheats and the prices of tires and rims, but they still can't write a thesis statement or multiply two numbers in their heads.
If anyone should be tracked with fingerprints, DNA, or biometrics, then it should only be the criminals out on parole or with a warrant for their arrest. I can't think of any valid arguments for tracking law abiding citizens in these matters.
If you try to get a job as a schoolteacher in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, your friendly local constabulary will print you before you even see your contract. Your prints go on file with the FBI. I'm a law-abiding citizen, sure enough, but J. Edgar has my "biometrics."
That was an excellent comment. The idea of wisdom and vision you mentioned seems to me most easily summarized, however, in the concept of independence or autonomous living, which requires both wisdom and will.
Early in American history, Jefferson praised the independent spirit, especially as found in the character of American farmers who provided for themselves with inititative and spirit; these same sort of men fought for independence during the American revolution. Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and others in twentieth century America lamented the common man's decline of interest in autonomous life as administered existence began to provide a higher standard of living -- people in general would rather be taken care of and have comfort than have to think and act for themselves.
As another poster pointed out, we always tend to idealize the past; in this case, however, we see a clear regression. The average Joe is becoming less and less autonomous, more and more childlike, in response to the increased allure of a higher standard of living.
To be specific (and to avoid that offtopic mod), man once made music for himself -- he sang, he played instruments, he created. Then came written musical notation, which allowed him to copy others' inventions by playing or singing songs he may never have heard; still he was making the sounds himself. Next, recorded music allowed him to spin a record/pop in a cassette/play a CD or.mp3 without any act of creation or imagination. Kazaa (and Napster before it) made procuring these mass-produced commodities, no longer created artisans per se but produced by a recording/culture industry, even easier -- he didn't have to pay for them or even leave the comfort of his desk.
In return, he has sacrificed various freedoms, by which I mean his power over the music. First, he gave up the power of creativity; now, he gives up the power over his own computer's spare CPU cycles. Our user gets easier downloading, but he surrenders control over part of his computer and (possibly) renders himself open to attack by hackers. Taken collectively as a society of freeloaders, we may be risking a chunk of the internet for easy.mp3 pirating.
This is not wisdom, and it is not independence. Those who read Slashdot are likely not covered here -- Slashdot readers tend to be the ones who build their own boxen, who write their own code, who value privacy and who see the importance of doing for oneself. Slashdotters tend to be autonomous. The majority, however, are heteronomous: willing to surrender their independence and unwisely to make unknown risks for the sake of allegedly "better" living through false needs, such as 100-gigabyte hoards of Britney Spears and NSYNC.mp3's.
Meanwhile, the recording industry attempts to take from us the right to fair use of what we have bought legally. Between our own childishness and their greed, we risk our computers and whatever increased standard of living mass-produced music has brought us. Beautiful.
This is the progress of Jefferson's America: from our forefathers' earning with their blood the right of liberty, to surrendering freedoms so we can steal the latest Backstreet Boys hit. It almost makes me want to cheer for the RIAA -- hoping that if they win, they'll shoot themselves in the foot by forcing cheapskates like myself, and many others, to go make music instead of consuming it.
Not that ranting here is going to help things a bit -- the unwashed and.mp3-hoarding masses won't listen anyway, and most don't read Slashdot. I'm done venting now.
Long before September 11 and last year's virus-like attacks over the Internet, the United States government announced plans to train an elite corps of computer security experts to guard against cyberterrorism.
Yeesh -- the melodrama is overwhelming. Sounds like 13-year-old script kiddies wrote the article. Why do I suddenly have visions of "an elite corps" of acne-ridden guardians "against cyberterrorism" wearing black jumpsuits with a Nike logo stiched just above the US flag on the sleeve?
Why, "Yoyodyne" of course! Read Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, and revel in philosophical ramblings about thermodynamics and centuries-old conspiracies punctuated by brief musical outbursts, including several corporate anthems for Peirce Invararity's defense contractor, Yoyodyne!
Hey, Bob Dole said during his '96 campaign that smoking was merely a habit. Who are you to question anything a politician says during a campaign? Especially a Republican who later sold himself to the pharmaceutical industry AND appears in ads with Britney Spears. Anyone even remotely connected with Britney, paradigm of innocence, deserves our undying trust.
... they called it the Tamagotchi, and we all got over it quickly. Then someone came along with too much free time and a postmodern vocabulary and refigured the social lattice-work of the Tamagotchi construction, subtly shifting the deixis from cheap kids' fad to artsy fad. Ye Gods, where are the sarcastic lampoonists of suck.com when the world needs their bull-fighting superpowers? I can just see Terry Colon's desaturated cartoons depicting an art disciple in black beret fidgeting over his key-chain pocket monster trying to teach it new dance steps with which to "challenge" and "trade fours" with some ten-year-old's ubermonsterdancer.
This lawsuit made it onto NPR tonight... I was rather amused by one spam executive saying the mail was not "unsolicited" because many users give their names to mailing lists when registering for products... "without knowing it" (exact quote... forgive the lack of attribution, but I'm sure someone can dig up an NPR transcript for around 6:45 PM EST on 15 March 2002).
My question then is this: how is the mail not unsolicited if the user doesn't know he's soliciting?
Plato's Socrates might argue, of course, following the Meno, that the user's psyche solicited e-mail advertisements before birth and merely forgot about his solicitation upon entering the world. Perhaps he would demonstrate this by having an uneducated slave register software and sign up to be notified of special offers that might be of interest to him... but then the Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock precisely because they didn't want to put up with that kind of nonsense.
This is part of the Objective Force Warrior Program. From that page: ""The Objective Force Warrior will be a Formidable Warrior in an Invincible Team, Able to See First, Understand First, Act First, and Finish Decisively." Despite the capitalization, diction, and picture, which remind one more of a video game than a project of the federal government, the page is for real and provides some interesting reading. See also The Natick Soldier Center, which hosts the OFW program.
I'm a nerd. I'll admit that -- I use Linux, my home is designed around a network, etc., but all for what I work on. But I don't need toys. I don't have a TV, a DVD player, or DSL. And I don't have a cell phone. I don't need one. I certainly don't need a GPS-enabled cell phone... maps and common sense tell me where I am. I can't even begin to fathom why I'd want to pay good money to carry around a GPS-enabled advertising device. This is just another example of technology being used to create false material needs -- the desire to consume surplus goods -- to raise our personal expenditures and consolidate our lives as individuals, as consumers, and as instruments. The notion that I would pay to carry around a telephone that would spout advertisements based on my location is worse than absurd -- it's insulting.
I'd expect 24/7 pay-per-view access
$10 and up per pay-per-view item... probably$ 200-$300 worth of use.
24/7 porno
A few nights a week at $8 per movie - another $100 or more.
I also expect an unrestricted U/L and D/L line on my Internet connection
UUNET/Sprint T1 = $800/month...
Realizing that Marcuse was right when he said, "The most effective and enduring form of warfare agianst liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence:"
Priceless.
So you get all your information from the same AOL/TW source, delivered by the same company... can you say "Vertical Integration" children?
I knew you could...
Slashdot Mirror
Sad but true about the lag -- Armagetron, which is an excellent game -- drove me nuts when we last threw a lan party. It's no fun to drive into another cycle's line when, to your knowledge, the cycle was on the other side of the board. Note that this is over a lan, all players on the same hub -- I'd hate to see what internet-length lag would do.
The Armagetron guys seem to know what they're doing, so I suspect multiplayer lightcycles won't be possible in the commercial TRON 2 or any other tron game for a while.
Wow. You made my point for me, and quite elegantly. Almost as if I'd been trolling for juvenile responses...
What a crock. MTV is sanitized, no one shows skin, its all a failure.
Wow. So anything "following the 7 dirty words and decency regulations" is automatically a "failure?" No wonder television is a vast wasteland -- we can thank these vocal people whose attention spans are incapable of comprehending anything that doesn't appeal to juvenile or prurient interest.
One wonders which came first -- the chicken or the egg. Did humanity first become so degraded that it produces children who demand "ads with breasts showing?" Or did the entertainment industry first create that demand, television changing society's tastes?
Perhaps its time we all forgot about the PVR technology and discarded our televisions altogether. Parents, care for your children yourselves; don't let Turner, AOL, MTV or Skinemax babysit your children! O flesh-seeking masses, who envy the Europeans their ads, go read, read poetry and discover romance that brings joy beyond simple lust!
The best, though, was that his weapons also transformed -- into two batteries that stored in his battery compartment! So you could take all his parts -- the robotic raptors ("Laserbeak" comes to mind as a name, though I may be wrong), his weapons, everything, in one neat little package.
The Autobots got one later -- "Blaster," but he just felt like a cheap imitation. Go figure.
One of my earliest experiences with computers was compiling a database of all my transformers. I wonder if the 5 1/4" floppy is still around, not that I have any hardware that could read it...
Memorizing poetry is a good thing. Memorizing phone numbers? Sounds like memorizing IP addresses (isn't that why we have DNS?). Perhaps PDA's and their ilk make us dependent on them by remembering numbers for us, but how much independence have we really achieved when we're so locked into the telecommunications paradigm that we memorize seven or ten digit numbers to keep in touch with friends?
Perhaps it's a bit less dependent on systems and technology just to walk over to friends' houses and speak to them. The same with our kids -- why buy them $50 gadgets to train them to use PDA's later (to train them to consume) when they could be visiting friends (of either sex, for heaven's sake -- children should socialize with both) and playing games, perhaps even outdoors.
The problem stems from the repetition of both "interesting" and "idea."
I love this -- I'm always impressed with how happily we pat ourselves on the back when schools get The Internet and New Computers, which provide an instant IQ boost to all the underprivileged children. Because putting one workstation in a classroom of thirty to forty kids, of course, is the solution to all our educational woes. Pie jesu, did no one ever realize that forty kids can't all use one computer at the same time? Even if the administration is wise enough only to purchase computers for computer labs, only a fraction of the students can use them at any time. And for what is the web (all we allow the kids access to anyway) useful? Easy: teaching them to "research" by pulling up those dubious sources most attractive to the eye, to ignore the resources of the library, never to read a book, an article, or any literature that might give you a broad perspective on an issue when you can nail a transcribed sound-byte in Google. I am a teacher at a school serving free or reduced lunches to the majority of our population, one "benefitting" from increased penetration of high technology at reduced cost. It never ceases to gall me when some politico or bureaucrat congratulates himself and his corporate sponsors for "bringing computers to the classroom" and hooking up the school to the internet... gee, now the kids can look up video game cheats and the prices of tires and rims, but they still can't write a thesis statement or multiply two numbers in their heads.
If anyone should be tracked with fingerprints, DNA, or biometrics, then it should only be the criminals out on parole or with a warrant for their arrest. I can't think of any valid arguments for tracking law abiding citizens in these matters.
If you try to get a job as a schoolteacher in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, your friendly local constabulary will print you before you even see your contract. Your prints go on file with the FBI. I'm a law-abiding citizen, sure enough, but J. Edgar has my "biometrics."
That was an excellent comment. The idea of wisdom and vision you mentioned seems to me most easily summarized, however, in the concept of independence or autonomous living, which requires both wisdom and will.
Early in American history, Jefferson praised the independent spirit, especially as found in the character of American farmers who provided for themselves with inititative and spirit; these same sort of men fought for independence during the American revolution. Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and others in twentieth century America lamented the common man's decline of interest in autonomous life as administered existence began to provide a higher standard of living -- people in general would rather be taken care of and have comfort than have to think and act for themselves.
As another poster pointed out, we always tend to idealize the past; in this case, however, we see a clear regression. The average Joe is becoming less and less autonomous, more and more childlike, in response to the increased allure of a higher standard of living.
To be specific (and to avoid that offtopic mod), man once made music for himself -- he sang, he played instruments, he created. Then came written musical notation, which allowed him to copy others' inventions by playing or singing songs he may never have heard; still he was making the sounds himself. Next, recorded music allowed him to spin a record/pop in a cassette/play a CD or .mp3 without any act of creation or imagination. Kazaa (and Napster before it) made procuring these mass-produced commodities, no longer created artisans per se but produced by a recording/culture industry, even easier -- he didn't have to pay for them or even leave the comfort of his desk.
In return, he has sacrificed various freedoms, by which I mean his power over the music. First, he gave up the power of creativity; now, he gives up the power over his own computer's spare CPU cycles. Our user gets easier downloading, but he surrenders control over part of his computer and (possibly) renders himself open to attack by hackers. Taken collectively as a society of freeloaders, we may be risking a chunk of the internet for easy .mp3 pirating.
This is not wisdom, and it is not independence. Those who read Slashdot are likely not covered here -- Slashdot readers tend to be the ones who build their own boxen, who write their own code, who value privacy and who see the importance of doing for oneself. Slashdotters tend to be autonomous. The majority, however, are heteronomous: willing to surrender their independence and unwisely to make unknown risks for the sake of allegedly "better" living through false needs, such as 100-gigabyte hoards of Britney Spears and NSYNC .mp3's.
Meanwhile, the recording industry attempts to take from us the right to fair use of what we have bought legally. Between our own childishness and their greed, we risk our computers and whatever increased standard of living mass-produced music has brought us. Beautiful.
This is the progress of Jefferson's America: from our forefathers' earning with their blood the right of liberty, to surrendering freedoms so we can steal the latest Backstreet Boys hit. It almost makes me want to cheer for the RIAA -- hoping that if they win, they'll shoot themselves in the foot by forcing cheapskates like myself, and many others, to go make music instead of consuming it.
Not that ranting here is going to help things a bit -- the unwashed and .mp3-hoarding masses won't listen anyway, and most don't read Slashdot. I'm done venting now.
Yeesh -- the melodrama is overwhelming. Sounds like 13-year-old script kiddies wrote the article. Why do I suddenly have visions of "an elite corps" of acne-ridden guardians "against cyberterrorism" wearing black jumpsuits with a Nike logo stiched just above the US flag on the sleeve?
Why, "Yoyodyne" of course! Read Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 , and revel in philosophical ramblings about thermodynamics and centuries-old conspiracies punctuated by brief musical outbursts, including several corporate anthems for Peirce Invararity's defense contractor, Yoyodyne!
Hey, Bob Dole said during his '96 campaign that smoking was merely a habit. Who are you to question anything a politician says during a campaign? Especially a Republican who later sold himself to the pharmaceutical industry AND appears in ads with Britney Spears. Anyone even remotely connected with Britney, paradigm of innocence, deserves our undying trust.
Dear me, I think I just wrote a troll.
... they called it the Tamagotchi, and we all got over it quickly. Then someone came along with too much free time and a postmodern vocabulary and refigured the social lattice-work of the Tamagotchi construction, subtly shifting the deixis from cheap kids' fad to artsy fad. Ye Gods, where are the sarcastic lampoonists of suck.com when the world needs their bull-fighting superpowers? I can just see Terry Colon's desaturated cartoons depicting an art disciple in black beret fidgeting over his key-chain pocket monster trying to teach it new dance steps with which to "challenge" and "trade fours" with some ten-year-old's ubermonsterdancer.
This lawsuit made it onto NPR tonight... I was rather amused by one spam executive saying the mail was not "unsolicited" because many users give their names to mailing lists when registering for products... "without knowing it" (exact quote... forgive the lack of attribution, but I'm sure someone can dig up an NPR transcript for around 6:45 PM EST on 15 March 2002).
My question then is this: how is the mail not unsolicited if the user doesn't know he's soliciting?
Plato's Socrates might argue, of course, following the Meno, that the user's psyche solicited e-mail advertisements before birth and merely forgot about his solicitation upon entering the world. Perhaps he would demonstrate this by having an uneducated slave register software and sign up to be notified of special offers that might be of interest to him... but then the Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock precisely because they didn't want to put up with that kind of nonsense.
This is part of the Objective Force Warrior Program. From that page: ""The Objective Force Warrior will be a Formidable Warrior in an Invincible Team, Able to See First, Understand First, Act First, and Finish Decisively." Despite the capitalization, diction, and picture, which remind one more of a video game than a project of the federal government, the page is for real and provides some interesting reading. See also The Natick Soldier Center, which hosts the OFW program.
And strangely (or not), it's sold out... Slashdotted the inventory, perhaps?
Someone should shoot the CNN editor who came up with the headline: "Goofy galaxy spins the wrong way"
I'm a nerd. I'll admit that -- I use Linux, my home is designed around a network, etc., but all for what I work on. But I don't need toys. I don't have a TV, a DVD player, or DSL. And I don't have a cell phone. I don't need one. I certainly don't need a GPS-enabled cell phone... maps and common sense tell me where I am. I can't even begin to fathom why I'd want to pay good money to carry around a GPS-enabled advertising device. This is just another example of technology being used to create false material needs -- the desire to consume surplus goods -- to raise our personal expenditures and consolidate our lives as individuals, as consumers, and as instruments. The notion that I would pay to carry around a telephone that would spout advertisements based on my location is worse than absurd -- it's insulting.
I'd expect 24/7 pay-per-view access
$10 and up per pay-per-view item... probably$ 200-$300 worth of use.
24/7 porno
A few nights a week at $8 per movie - another $100 or more.
I also expect an unrestricted U/L and D/L line on my Internet connection
UUNET/Sprint T1 = $800/month...
Realizing that Marcuse was right when he said, "The most effective and enduring form of warfare agianst liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence:"
Priceless.
So you get all your information from the same AOL/TW source, delivered by the same company... can you say "Vertical Integration" children? I knew you could...