Discussions like this make me very glad that guns are still legal in the US. Censor yourselves all you want, leave everyone else out of it (ie no legislation making your opinion law).
Here's a concept: many people, myself included, buy violent games in order to not commit violent acts. When work pisses me off, instead of flying off the handle and killing all my co-workers in a murderous rage, I go home and fire up a video game. This way, I can run around a virtual area that looks suspiciously like my workplace, blowing away people that look suspiciously like my co-workers, and nobody actually has to die. I tell you, there's nothing that takes the edge off a bad day at work like holding a smoking shotgun in your hands and watching your boss's severed, mangled head roll across the floor in glorious 32 bit color. The more realistic, the better. This is how I like to express my rage, and it's a helluva lot safer than keeping a pistol in my briefcase.
If, however, one of you brainwashed censor-zombies manages to make it law that I can no longer mangle people in the virtual world, that might also piss me off, only then I wouldn't have the luxury of limiting my violence to the virtual world. And, as we say around the office, if you can't have video games, real life is the next best thing. So come get my games. Please.
Same goes for movies and music. The more violent, the more graphic, the more realistic, the better. Let people vent on those things instead of on real people. Censorship is mind control, there's no two ways about it.
I used this book (3rd ed I think) two years ago in my Organization and Architecture class, and I liked it. The book was an easy, quick read, which is a major deciding factor when you have 3 reading assignments a day. The author uses examples that actually show in code the concepts he's writing about, and the examples are short, to the point, and easy to understand. Assembly language is a rough language when you first pick it up, but I think this book helped me along rather nicely.
I'd just like to point out that, for a smart few, MMORPG's aren't a money sink or a waste of time. Those of you who have actually played a game or two surely know that there are people in every game who sell in-game stuff (gold, items, etc.) for cold hard cash. Not only can you pay for your monthly subscription fee, you can also make back what you initially paid for the game and still put a tidy sum in your pocket. For example, I played Anarchy Online like a true addict (6-8 hours / day) for about 6 months. For this I paid $60 total for the monthly fees and $20 for the game itself, so a total of $80. At the end of my 6 month subscription, I sold my account for $150, almost double my "initial investment". The only bad things that came from all this was I lost about 10 pounds and my GPA went from 3.14 to 3.12. I know that my example is something of a special case on the whole, but I think it stands as proof that MMORPG's can be better than the hype surrounding them if approached correctly.
And now, to completely sound like a hypocrite, I should add that I have completely sworn off MMORPG's, as the addiction factor coupled with the GPA drop scared the hell out of me.
Damn, here I was all proud of myself for having previously heard of something that made the/. front page. I wonder where I found out about it the first time?
To get on topic, I think it's really interesting the steps we're making in brain research. Those paranoid among us freak out every time someone mentions brain control, but I see it as one step on the road to understanding our own brains. Who knows, someday we might even understand which defective lobe prompts people to bitch and moan about repeat posts by repeating each others' posts!
Wearable computers, a technology that could revolutionize the way humans deal with information. This thing could change our lives in a few years. And what's the first question the geeks ask?
"Can I use it to frag my co-workers/boss?"
I suppose the next question should be "can we put linux on it?". Man, you people crack me up.:)
...the Cape bee clones are apparently incapable of establishing self-sustaining hives of their own...
So these Cape bees just peacefully flit from flower to flower, eating to their little hearts' content, while the African Bees work their asses off and still end up getting annihilated. So much for the the grasshopper and the ant.
Slashdot Mirror
Discussions like this make me very glad that guns are still legal in the US. Censor yourselves all you want, leave everyone else out of it (ie no legislation making your opinion law).
Here's a concept: many people, myself included, buy violent games in order to not commit violent acts. When work pisses me off, instead of flying off the handle and killing all my co-workers in a murderous rage, I go home and fire up a video game. This way, I can run around a virtual area that looks suspiciously like my workplace, blowing away people that look suspiciously like my co-workers, and nobody actually has to die. I tell you, there's nothing that takes the edge off a bad day at work like holding a smoking shotgun in your hands and watching your boss's severed, mangled head roll across the floor in glorious 32 bit color. The more realistic, the better. This is how I like to express my rage, and it's a helluva lot safer than keeping a pistol in my briefcase.
If, however, one of you brainwashed censor-zombies manages to make it law that I can no longer mangle people in the virtual world, that might also piss me off, only then I wouldn't have the luxury of limiting my violence to the virtual world. And, as we say around the office, if you can't have video games, real life is the next best thing. So come get my games. Please.
Same goes for movies and music. The more violent, the more graphic, the more realistic, the better. Let people vent on those things instead of on real people. Censorship is mind control, there's no two ways about it.
I used this book (3rd ed I think) two years ago in my Organization and Architecture class, and I liked it. The book was an easy, quick read, which is a major deciding factor when you have 3 reading assignments a day. The author uses examples that actually show in code the concepts he's writing about, and the examples are short, to the point, and easy to understand. Assembly language is a rough language when you first pick it up, but I think this book helped me along rather nicely.
To get on topic, I think it's really interesting the steps we're making in brain research. Those paranoid among us freak out every time someone mentions brain control, but I see it as one step on the road to understanding our own brains. Who knows, someday we might even understand which defective lobe prompts people to bitch and moan about repeat posts by repeating each others' posts!
"Can I use it to frag my co-workers/boss?"
I suppose the next question should be "can we put linux on it?". Man, you people crack me up. :)
DoS me, get DoS'd. /me dons black hat
So these Cape bees just peacefully flit from flower to flower, eating to their little hearts' content, while the African Bees work their asses off and still end up getting annihilated. So much for the the grasshopper and the ant.