This is the divide we are seeing in the generations of users now - back in my day, I had pseudonyms and multiple e-mail addresses, you bet. I did a lot of racy stuff that I never wanted a potential boss to find out about. Now though, as a symptom (or result) of the last ten years of reality TV, no one seems to have anything to hide - until they get in trouble for it.
You used to be able to troll anonymously and spew hate on message boards and get away with it. The facelessness of the Internet guaranteed safety. Not so much anymore. The days when you could have an alter-ego online that had nothing to do with you IRL are gone. (I would argue that 'online' and 'IRL' are no longer mutually exclusive realms...)
As you said, even if you sit behind a screen name that's hard to trace, it's still you. If you troll, you're a troll. "Would you kiss your momma with that mouth?"
I can't help but feel that people who claim 'Specialist parts have destroyed LEGO' have not watched any children actually playing with them.
I'll step up to that...
My boyfriend's 8-year-old got the Mars Mission set this xmas, and the three of us built it together. I would start rearranging things and goofing off and she would get very upset and tell me I was "playing with it wrong" - her goal was to get everything precisely assembled, and then give the astronauts names and complex social hierarchies (this guy is the grandfather of that guy and they're fighting over some family thing having to do with capturing the aliens, etc.). Basically it's not so much a Lego set to her as it is a small-scale all-male Barbie set in space. *ducks*
Seriously though, she has also built other sets with her dad (including the Millennium Falcon - drooooool) and enjoys the rules and the right-ness of putting things where they go. I had the old Lego sets at her age and I built all kinds of weird stuff - because the parts were basic and had no specific purpose...she does not (in her mind) have this opportunity with these sets, though I'm sure the ability is there. I have seen this same child turn a plastic drinking straw and 3 empty spools of thread into a family of woodchucks.
You are correct in having "screaming blue creevles" as you put it since yes, cyber-warriors are likely to be a mix of military and civilians, and what with all the lawsuits and spying already going on it wouldn't be much of a leap for some hax0r to be tagged by the feds and shipped off for questioning. The real sticky part though is how the law will cross borders. Cyber warfare knows no borders, so what would our government do if someone from Iran came calling to arrest one of our own on such charges?
This is the inevitable and ingenious evolution of war, IMO. Not, as ST:TOS "A Taste of Armageddon" would have it, but without any bloodshed or casualties in the physical sense. By hitting people in their infrastructure, their way of life, and their economy. (Sortof what the 9-11 guys thought they were doing...and heck, what all us 'rich' countries do all the time through sanctions, trade agreements, 'wars' on drugs, and such...)
From TFA: "Her complaint contains some very disturbing allegations, including one that labels attempted to contact her then eight-year-old daughter under false pretenses without Andersen's permission."
Hi, Sally, this is Mr. Nice calling, is your mommy home? No? Good... I mean, uh, well then can I just talk to you for a minute instead? Tell me Sally, how would you feel about living with a foster family after we toss your mommy in the clink? I mean, she's subjecting you to gangsta rap, for Heaven's sakes, we'd be doing you a favor!
It's not about making things pretty, it's about making things functional.
Agreed. I am a graphics designer by trade, so it's my job to make things pretty, but I am working on a windoze machine and prefer to set all my displays to 'windows classic' folders because the newer, 'pretty' XP window designs bother me. They feel bloaty and less functional. I don't want giant icons all over the place, and I don't want my fonts aliased and blurred out, thankyouverymuch. Some days I am glad I don't work on a Mac, even if it is better for graphics. (Hang on, someone's come to revoke my graphics geek license...)
That said, the Adobe CS3 package UI upgrades aren't as bad as I thought they'd be; however, the move towards icon-based workspaces is troubling. First, the cash register at McDonald's; tomorrow, Photoshop...
English is a sufficiently illogical and ambiguous way of communicating that all kinds of nonsense can be put into words and "make sense" grammatically without making the least bit of sense logically.
Therefore you should never believe anything you read, not even what I just wrote.
You've made a very important distinction there. It's not WHAT we're playing so much as HOW.
Case in point: I recently introduced my mother to Guitar Hero (she was a whiz at Atari back in the day) and she loved it. Now, whereas when I mess up, I cuss and sweat, when mom messed up, she laughed. Different mindsets, different reactions...further on this point - one day as I was playing GH with my bf's young daughter, she was talking a mile a minute (as kids are wont to do) and it was affecting my concentration to the point that I started messing up really bad. I yelled at her. I NEVER yell at her. The game was not violent (unless you count the destruction of guitars) but the reaction it brought out in me was. (Before anyone calls social services, yes, I apologized to her afterward.)
So while I do agree that bloody video games (and TV and movies) can desensitize one to violence, I think the correlation between them and violent behaviour is tenuous at best. You can become just as evil playing something 'innocent' like GH or Pokemon cards or whatever.
What really matters is not that you know what gaussian blur does, but that you know when and why to use it (and when NOT to).
Anybody who figures out how to apply a filter is not automatically a great designer. The software is ultimately just a tool: "Men are more important than tools. If you don't believe so, put a good tool into the hands of a poor workman." - John J. Bernet
Someone gave me that KISS toothbrush for Christmas last year. I have not opened it and have no desire to hear what I consider the most overplayed and monotonous KISS song ever when I'm getting ready for work at 7 a.m. - in my MOUTH. *shudder*
And then, to add insult to injury, they used that same POS song for Guitar Hero 3. "Strutter" in GH2 was a pleasant surprise; WTF happened?
I just got the ribbon this summer myself, and at first I hated it. "Where the hell is 'Save As'-?!" But once I got used to it, I found it was better than the old menus, which were an all-or-nothing setup that took over half the screen (if you wanted easy access to every possible command, that is).
Just this week, my boss ordered the new Adobe suite for our department, and I am both excited and terrified. The old Adobe Bridge was a waste of disk space, IMO, and I never got any use out of it. Now, though, with the integration of Dreamweaver, I wonder if it will truly be a seamless workspace, or if the new menus will create a frustrating learning-curve lag and interrupt my production schedules. I'll know next week! *fidgets*
I knew a guy once who bought a new VCR (this was quite a while back, yes) from wal-mart, took it home, carefully removed the packing tape on the underside of the box, took out the new VCR and replaced it with his old broken one, resealed the tape, and took it back to the store. He got a refund. They never opened it to check - and why would they? It looked unopened. So yes, there are a$$hats out there who do this sort of thing. What sucks about it is that they don't realize (or perhaps don't care) that while on the surface it looks like you're sticking it to the man, in reality you're sticking it to your fellow man. Quite different, and not very good for your karma.:-) The only way to really stick it to these stores is not to shop there.
You had me until In the 2000's the family dines around the computer monitor.
But really, in the 2000's, the mom dines in the driver's seat of her SUV on the way to get her daughter from sports practice, the dad dines at his desk (working late again) and the teenage son dines at the computer monitor...with one hand, anyway.
Mathematics can model things that just don't make any sense. Our sensory organs are not equipped to experience fundamental reality.
Precisely. The guy in Pi went crazy trying to perceive the mathematical name of 'god' - I think most scientists working on string theory, the GUT, quantum physics, etc., could suffer the same fate, but only if they're right.;-)
If you were smart, female, and wanted an education, you were very likely to end up as a teacher. This isn't something that you can go back to, though.
No need to go back, it's never stopped. When I was getting my English degree back in the early 90's, people often assumed I was going to be an English teacher (or that it would be the only job I could get upon graduation). The mindset hasn't completely been outgrown, even now.
That said, my bf's daughter told us last week about a major activity in her 3rd grade class that day - the teacher had brought in a box of doughnuts, and each child had to earn a doughnut by Persuading, Entertaining, or Explaining to the teacher why they deserved one.
WTF?
Granted, it's not rote memorization, or a meaningless SOL test drill or something, but I nearly choked.
Was there a cross-reference made among the delinquents they studied that showed where they lived as children, and might that show any sort of socio-economic factors that go along with being exposed to lead? Meaning, is there more pollution in the air over the ghetto than over the country club? I'm willing to go along with the cause and effect as long as we look at all possible causes together.
Speak for yourself! When I booted up my new version of Outlook (groan) after they upgraded my XP machine, I thought I was getting cataracts or something. Cleartype seems to imply it's going to be, well, clear. Not grey fuzz. As a graphics designer, I enjoy having new fonts to play with. As a web coder, I want my plain old pixelated text, thankyouverymuch.
You're still assuming that the people who are PAYING for the websites to be built really care about (or have the capacity to understand) what the users would like. Even now, with all the research and data available for us designers to argue with for simplicity and usability, the folks who sign the check want what they want and as long as I need to pay rent, they'll get it.
That said, I've talked many, many clients out of building a site entirely in Flash - and they promptly found another designer.
and he learns more about real technology by interacting with a tricycle or bionicles
Right. You know what gives me hope? The fact that I can show an 'old' toy to my bf's 8-year-old and she can still be fascinated with it. The fact that she asks if we can have quiet reading time after dinner (if we say no to Playstation, that is). If parents take the time to expose kids to alternatives to technology, they can help negate the instant gratification addiction.
I was all for letting this story go without comment out of the spirit of geeky fun and sci-fi fandom, that was, until you mentioned the possibility of these guys getting hard nipples. *shudder*
JOURNALIST: Quickly, one after the other, four of the Fighting Machines appeared. Monstrous tripods, higher than the tallest steeple, striding over the pine trees and smashing them. Walking engines of glittering metal. Each carried a huge funnel and I realized with horror that I'd seen this awful thing before.
A fifth Machine appeared on the far bank. It raised itself to full height, flourished the funnel high in the air - and the ghostly, terrible Heat Ray struck the town.
Slashdot Mirror
what you do on the internet is really yourself
This is the divide we are seeing in the generations of users now - back in my day, I had pseudonyms and multiple e-mail addresses, you bet. I did a lot of racy stuff that I never wanted a potential boss to find out about. Now though, as a symptom (or result) of the last ten years of reality TV, no one seems to have anything to hide - until they get in trouble for it.
You used to be able to troll anonymously and spew hate on message boards and get away with it. The facelessness of the Internet guaranteed safety. Not so much anymore. The days when you could have an alter-ego online that had nothing to do with you IRL are gone. (I would argue that 'online' and 'IRL' are no longer mutually exclusive realms...)
As you said, even if you sit behind a screen name that's hard to trace, it's still you. If you troll, you're a troll. "Would you kiss your momma with that mouth?"
I constantly see spam coming out of Comscat's network
Comscat. Nuf said.
I can't help but feel that people who claim 'Specialist parts have destroyed LEGO' have not watched any children actually playing with them.
I'll step up to that...
My boyfriend's 8-year-old got the Mars Mission set this xmas, and the three of us built it together. I would start rearranging things and goofing off and she would get very upset and tell me I was "playing with it wrong" - her goal was to get everything precisely assembled, and then give the astronauts names and complex social hierarchies (this guy is the grandfather of that guy and they're fighting over some family thing having to do with capturing the aliens, etc.). Basically it's not so much a Lego set to her as it is a small-scale all-male Barbie set in space. *ducks*
Seriously though, she has also built other sets with her dad (including the Millennium Falcon - drooooool) and enjoys the rules and the right-ness of putting things where they go. I had the old Lego sets at her age and I built all kinds of weird stuff - because the parts were basic and had no specific purpose...she does not (in her mind) have this opportunity with these sets, though I'm sure the ability is there. I have seen this same child turn a plastic drinking straw and 3 empty spools of thread into a family of woodchucks.
Ahem. Yes, woodchucks.
You are correct in having "screaming blue creevles" as you put it since yes, cyber-warriors are likely to be a mix of military and civilians, and what with all the lawsuits and spying already going on it wouldn't be much of a leap for some hax0r to be tagged by the feds and shipped off for questioning. The real sticky part though is how the law will cross borders. Cyber warfare knows no borders, so what would our government do if someone from Iran came calling to arrest one of our own on such charges?
This is the inevitable and ingenious evolution of war, IMO. Not, as ST:TOS "A Taste of Armageddon" would have it, but without any bloodshed or casualties in the physical sense. By hitting people in their infrastructure, their way of life, and their economy. (Sortof what the 9-11 guys thought they were doing...and heck, what all us 'rich' countries do all the time through sanctions, trade agreements, 'wars' on drugs, and such...)
From TFA: "Her complaint contains some very disturbing allegations, including one that labels attempted to contact her then eight-year-old daughter under false pretenses without Andersen's permission."
Hi, Sally, this is Mr. Nice calling, is your mommy home? No? Good... I mean, uh, well then can I just talk to you for a minute instead? Tell me Sally, how would you feel about living with a foster family after we toss your mommy in the clink? I mean, she's subjecting you to gangsta rap, for Heaven's sakes, we'd be doing you a favor!
It's not about making things pretty, it's about making things functional.
Agreed. I am a graphics designer by trade, so it's my job to make things pretty, but I am working on a windoze machine and prefer to set all my displays to 'windows classic' folders because the newer, 'pretty' XP window designs bother me. They feel bloaty and less functional. I don't want giant icons all over the place, and I don't want my fonts aliased and blurred out, thankyouverymuch. Some days I am glad I don't work on a Mac, even if it is better for graphics. (Hang on, someone's come to revoke my graphics geek license...)
That said, the Adobe CS3 package UI upgrades aren't as bad as I thought they'd be; however, the move towards icon-based workspaces is troubling. First, the cash register at McDonald's; tomorrow, Photoshop...
English is a sufficiently illogical and ambiguous way of communicating that all kinds of nonsense can be put into words and "make sense" grammatically without making the least bit of sense logically.
Therefore you should never believe anything you read, not even what I just wrote.
You've made a very important distinction there. It's not WHAT we're playing so much as HOW.
Case in point: I recently introduced my mother to Guitar Hero (she was a whiz at Atari back in the day) and she loved it. Now, whereas when I mess up, I cuss and sweat, when mom messed up, she laughed. Different mindsets, different reactions...further on this point - one day as I was playing GH with my bf's young daughter, she was talking a mile a minute (as kids are wont to do) and it was affecting my concentration to the point that I started messing up really bad. I yelled at her. I NEVER yell at her. The game was not violent (unless you count the destruction of guitars) but the reaction it brought out in me was. (Before anyone calls social services, yes, I apologized to her afterward.)
So while I do agree that bloody video games (and TV and movies) can desensitize one to violence, I think the correlation between them and violent behaviour is tenuous at best. You can become just as evil playing something 'innocent' like GH or Pokemon cards or whatever.
What really matters is not that you know what gaussian blur does, but that you know when and why to use it (and when NOT to).
Anybody who figures out how to apply a filter is not automatically a great designer. The software is ultimately just a tool:
"Men are more important than tools. If you don't believe so, put a good tool into the hands of a poor workman." - John J. Bernet
If Hormel loses, we will no longer know if we are getting the genuine SPAM, or an imitator, when we go the supermarket.
Isn't SPAM already an imitation to begin with?
RIP Bill Hicks, we hardly knew ye.
Someone gave me that KISS toothbrush for Christmas last year. I have not opened it and have no desire to hear what I consider the most overplayed and monotonous KISS song ever when I'm getting ready for work at 7 a.m. - in my MOUTH. *shudder*
And then, to add insult to injury, they used that same POS song for Guitar Hero 3. "Strutter" in GH2 was a pleasant surprise; WTF happened?
I just got the ribbon this summer myself, and at first I hated it. "Where the hell is 'Save As'-?!" But once I got used to it, I found it was better than the old menus, which were an all-or-nothing setup that took over half the screen (if you wanted easy access to every possible command, that is).
Just this week, my boss ordered the new Adobe suite for our department, and I am both excited and terrified. The old Adobe Bridge was a waste of disk space, IMO, and I never got any use out of it. Now, though, with the integration of Dreamweaver, I wonder if it will truly be a seamless workspace, or if the new menus will create a frustrating learning-curve lag and interrupt my production schedules. I'll know next week! *fidgets*
I knew a guy once who bought a new VCR (this was quite a while back, yes) from wal-mart, took it home, carefully removed the packing tape on the underside of the box, took out the new VCR and replaced it with his old broken one, resealed the tape, and took it back to the store. He got a refund. They never opened it to check - and why would they? It looked unopened. So yes, there are a$$hats out there who do this sort of thing. What sucks about it is that they don't realize (or perhaps don't care) that while on the surface it looks like you're sticking it to the man, in reality you're sticking it to your fellow man. Quite different, and not very good for your karma. :-) The only way to really stick it to these stores is not to shop there.
You had me until
In the 2000's the family dines around the computer monitor.
But really, in the 2000's, the mom dines in the driver's seat of her SUV on the way to get her daughter from sports practice, the dad dines at his desk (working late again) and the teenage son dines at the computer monitor...with one hand, anyway.
I understood the thought behind it, but DOUGHNUTS?
And English is being called Communication Skills? Stop, just stop right there, I can't take anymore. *sob*
Mathematics can model things that just don't make any sense. Our sensory organs are not equipped to experience fundamental reality.
;-)
Precisely. The guy in Pi went crazy trying to perceive the mathematical name of 'god' - I think most scientists working on string theory, the GUT, quantum physics, etc., could suffer the same fate, but only if they're right.
If you were smart, female, and wanted an education, you were very likely to end up as a teacher. This isn't something that you can go back to, though.
No need to go back, it's never stopped. When I was getting my English degree back in the early 90's, people often assumed I was going to be an English teacher (or that it would be the only job I could get upon graduation). The mindset hasn't completely been outgrown, even now.
That said, my bf's daughter told us last week about a major activity in her 3rd grade class that day - the teacher had brought in a box of doughnuts, and each child had to earn a doughnut by Persuading, Entertaining, or Explaining to the teacher why they deserved one.
WTF?
Granted, it's not rote memorization, or a meaningless SOL test drill or something, but I nearly choked.
I have not read TFA, but...
Was there a cross-reference made among the delinquents they studied that showed where they lived as children, and might that show any sort of socio-economic factors that go along with being exposed to lead? Meaning, is there more pollution in the air over the ghetto than over the country club? I'm willing to go along with the cause and effect as long as we look at all possible causes together.
So they look beautiful with Cleartype on,
Speak for yourself! When I booted up my new version of Outlook (groan) after they upgraded my XP machine, I thought I was getting cataracts or something. Cleartype seems to imply it's going to be, well, clear. Not grey fuzz. As a graphics designer, I enjoy having new fonts to play with. As a web coder, I want my plain old pixelated text, thankyouverymuch.
You can pry Fixedsys from my cold, dead hands!
You're still assuming that the people who are PAYING for the websites to be built really care about (or have the capacity to understand) what the users would like. Even now, with all the research and data available for us designers to argue with for simplicity and usability, the folks who sign the check want what they want and as long as I need to pay rent, they'll get it.
That said, I've talked many, many clients out of building a site entirely in Flash - and they promptly found another designer.
And this may be too Mac-centric for /. but I also keep up with The Joy of Tech over at Geek Culture. I miss the Techno-Talking Babes of AY2K...
and he learns more about real technology by interacting with a tricycle or bionicles
Right. You know what gives me hope? The fact that I can show an 'old' toy to my bf's 8-year-old and she can still be fascinated with it. The fact that she asks if we can have quiet reading time after dinner (if we say no to Playstation, that is). If parents take the time to expose kids to alternatives to technology, they can help negate the instant gratification addiction.
I was all for letting this story go without comment out of the spirit of geeky fun and sci-fi fandom, that was, until you mentioned the possibility of these guys getting hard nipples. *shudder*
JOURNALIST: Quickly, one after the other, four of the Fighting Machines appeared. Monstrous tripods, higher than the tallest steeple, striding over the pine trees and smashing them. Walking engines of glittering metal. Each carried a huge funnel and I realized with horror that I'd seen this awful thing before.
A fifth Machine appeared on the far bank. It raised itself to full height, flourished the funnel high in the air - and the ghostly, terrible Heat Ray struck the town.
Well I was going to suggest surfing the 'net while supervised by an adult, but that sounds creepy now in light of your correlation...