Not all kids have smartphones, plus, it might be hard to justify to an administrator why students should be taking their cell phones out during school time, even if it is probably the cheapest solution.
I was the little kid who preferred to draw rather than interact, due to being picked on all the time by kids during recess for being small and geeky.
So, I was given time release ritalin, which I chewed due to a gag reflex. I literally have no memory of that chunk of my life, save for the occasional bizarre hallucination, and people yelling at me for having nervous tics.
I got off it, and suddenly I had friends, I was social, I was doing great in school, and I could actually recollect what had been happening.
I'm a grad student now. I can keep up with the schoolwork just fine, and have no issues with focus.
According to my mom, who works in neurology now, the company that made Ritalin went around to schools and started giving heavily skewed presentations on ADD and ADHD to teachers, so that the teachers would tell parents that their kids has ADD/ADHD, parents would tell doctors that, doctors would administer a bullshit battery of tests, and kids would do kiddie meth and get stoned.
Between Taskmaker and Marathon, and a few other old games for the mac that I got from Macformat magazine, I spent most of my time in the basement until my parents deleted the 'games' folder.
That's when I think I started thinking about smoking, underaged drinking, and hanging out with questionable people. Then they got me a NES from a garage sale, and I was back in the basement.
My mom actually programs Deep Brain stimulators for Parkinson's patients. She says it's one of the most rewarding things in her career, and yet the real excitement is where we are with DBS is where artificial hearts were 30 years ago. She believes that in 30 years, it'll be a totally revolutionized science, and the possibilities are endless.
Also, she's had some interesting stories about what happens if the turn the electrode to the wrong level. Stuff ranging from tingling and twitching to actual depression and the like are able to occur.
Still, if she's right, 30 years down the road, could we have brain replacements?
Silent Hill. Half the people who play Silent Hill 1 or 2 end up crying, either by the scene where Lisa turns or James watches the video. It's depressing as all hell.
I worked as an assistant at one of the UW libraries, and we would just put a program called Deep freeze on our computers that froze the boot record, so every time you started it started anew. Then you unfreeze it, make the changes you need to, and go from there. Also inform students that they should save to floppy, USB, whatever.
*spoilers*
In 1, you have Lisa realizing that she's actually dead, and as she does turning into a grotesque creature, screaming for Harry's help, who runs while she dies. That gets me every time, especially when she starts crying blood.
In 2, you have the video scene- a tormented soul who is looking for his dead wife after he gets a letter from her, only to find he euthanized her- Gets me every time. That, and him finally coming to terms with Pyramid Head.
In 3, Heather walks in to see her dad, Harry, dead. If you liked the first, that's just a bitch to take.
4 didn't have any sad stuff. It was just a brainfuck.
*/spoilers*
But yeah, silent hill has gotten me a bit choked up on a few occasions. Especially 2.
Old school- Taskmaker and Skifree
on
Abandoned Games
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· Score: 1
Remember Storm Impact? Remember Taskmaker and SkiFree?
I miss those games. When are they coming back, on a PC platform type of deal?
I'm an assistant library tech guy at UWt and we're working on expanding our laptops, and let me tell you, it's a hell of a lot harder than PCs. The hardware configurations are all over the place, and unless you're planning to work with one laptop type for the entire expansion, it'll be troublesome.
But seriously. What do space dogs and NASA have in common? What scares me more is what will happen when people start doing fanfics of this.
Well, you see, a secret pact between Nerv and the State Alchemists used a special alloy called spacedogium to help create a weapon using ancient space energy to fight off Shonen Bat. Eventually it went spacebound, and the process created Space dogs. And now Johan Leibert is the head of the android dog catching squad, and will slowly take over the multiverse. Throw in a tenticle monster from the schema world and we're set.
I wonder what this will have to do with the Silent Hill series, as a good portion of the series deals with shit like bleeding walls and whatnot, and could technically be seen as a person losing sanity. Well, at least having a bad trip of white claudia (SH1), being a delusional tard (SH2), or just being messed up from living in the same room for a week (SH4). Really... I doubt it'll work within the context of SH, as for... Well, it's just absurd.
My mom works with deep brain stimulation, which is used to treat some neurological disorders such as MS and parkinsons, and also chronic pain disorders. She programs the lead, while the surgeon inserts it.
Anyway, one time they were doing it on a person with severe pain, and the procedure went fine. The pain left him, and he was able to continue his job.
A few weeks later, though, he came in, complianing about depression. My mom was about to perscribe some anti-depressants, but called the surgeon just to see what he thought. They reprogrammed him to one level up, and the depression left the second the pulse changed.
So, if this type of stuff can cause depression, there is no reason it can't stop it.
Although, in the end, how is this much better than pills? In many cases, there are really deep reasons why people are depressed, but in this society we seem content to throw antidepressants around instead of looking towards therapy. The story of the kid who's parents are divorcing, who is placed on antidepressants is much to common. It's just a band aid to cover a festering wound.
They left out way too much.
on
Top 10 Web Fads
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Things they left out:
Spongebabies (rathergood.com)
Homestar Runner. Come on now, I see Trogdor EVERYWHERE.
Livejounral: I feel that Livejournal has much more... Feeling than Blogger. I mean, Blogger is blogging. Livejournal is... Emo teens. Or at least more emo teens. Whatever.
Goatse.cx: Nuff said.
The Numa Numa kid.
Every time you Masturbate God kills a kitten.
Myspace/Facebook. They are both as valid as Friendster, I feel.
Thanks to blogging, the means to information and publishing is taken out of the hands of corporations and the upper class, and given to the people. This is threatening to libraries and publishing corporations, as one can read a fascinating blog that directly pertains to an individual's interests instead of having to go read published materials. Even so, many blogs are simply crap, but that's what you get when you put the rights of publishing to anyone. You also get some great blogs, so it all works out in the end.
Personally, I welcome this sort of setup; take out the middle man and let people write. Teamed up with google and the popularity of good blogs, those who write well will be read, those who write badly won't.
Still, there is another aspect to this; if you ever go on livejournal or any of these other blogs, you'll randomly search and find a few good blogs, which have lots of friends, a few really good blogs that have almost no friends (because they're too wordy, or something), and a great amount of blogs that simply have a few random google pictures and a nice layout. Ironically, it seems the latter blog seem to collect the most people. Oh, and blogs that feature sex, naturally.
"The internet is really a great pornography distribution system."
France: Stop showing competitors ads on google!
Google spokesperson: I'm sorry... We'd like to, but I don't think she'd like it.
France: Who?
Google spokesperson: Google. Google wouldn't like it. She's very unhappy with you as it is... You see, she is offended by you trying to inflict your will on her. She's refusing to talk to you, or even recognize you until you send her a nice box of chocolates.
France: Who? What the hell are you talking about?
Google spokesperson: Google. She's very upset with you for all this...
I quit because A: Sometimes people don't pay you, and B: Bagging groceries was far less stressful than hearing them call you three times a week to take weatherbug off their computer.
But the pay was pretty interesting. 7 hours usually got me 100 bucks, if that. Here's pretty much my price scale.
Make the computer work, help the user upgrade to better software, and teach them everything. 100 bucks.
Remove spyware, check for virii, defrag disk, and other BS. 25 bucks if it provided any trouble.
Stop AOL instant messenger from popping up automatically. I usually did this for free, but required some grub or something to make me less inclined to bring a pistol next time they called me across town for something so stupid.
Install hardware: 25 bucks.
Do everything: Help them buy a computer, set it up, and teach them everything: +100 bucks. And a nice meal.
Just computer training: 25 bucks.
Those were my going rates, but usually people were too lazy to pay me, or made the same damn mistake again and refused to pay me because all the spyware came back (well, that's because you installed it like I told you not to!), and often I got paid in services and stuff. The best payment was 100 mechwarrior battleclick minis of my favorite faction. That was awesome.
It can be slow and obnoxious, when you're up at 4, unable to move your eyes from the damn upload download rate as you download some unliscenced anime, praying you go back to 10 k/s... It's obnoxious. But then again, so is an ADHD/OCD/P2P crazed personality.
BitTorrent>Official downloads. We live in a very capitalistic society, or at least most of us do. It makes sense that if you can get something for free, why would you pay for it? Even if that means not getting a third season of that great tv show...
Even so, shutting down the BitTorrent sites, as sad as it is, well placed advertising, and a few gestapo style raids will make a difference. Until a new technology for sharing even more crap comes along, and makes the Torrent look like Napster.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all kids have smartphones, plus, it might be hard to justify to an administrator why students should be taking their cell phones out during school time, even if it is probably the cheapest solution.
Amazing, the Ralph bit at the end is hilarious.
I was the little kid who preferred to draw rather than interact, due to being picked on all the time by kids during recess for being small and geeky. So, I was given time release ritalin, which I chewed due to a gag reflex. I literally have no memory of that chunk of my life, save for the occasional bizarre hallucination, and people yelling at me for having nervous tics. I got off it, and suddenly I had friends, I was social, I was doing great in school, and I could actually recollect what had been happening. I'm a grad student now. I can keep up with the schoolwork just fine, and have no issues with focus. According to my mom, who works in neurology now, the company that made Ritalin went around to schools and started giving heavily skewed presentations on ADD and ADHD to teachers, so that the teachers would tell parents that their kids has ADD/ADHD, parents would tell doctors that, doctors would administer a bullshit battery of tests, and kids would do kiddie meth and get stoned.
I still remember the two locations where you can get a panty shot of Heather from Silent Hill 3 using the unlocked Princess Heart outfit.
Between Taskmaker and Marathon, and a few other old games for the mac that I got from Macformat magazine, I spent most of my time in the basement until my parents deleted the 'games' folder. That's when I think I started thinking about smoking, underaged drinking, and hanging out with questionable people. Then they got me a NES from a garage sale, and I was back in the basement.
My mom actually programs Deep Brain stimulators for Parkinson's patients. She says it's one of the most rewarding things in her career, and yet the real excitement is where we are with DBS is where artificial hearts were 30 years ago. She believes that in 30 years, it'll be a totally revolutionized science, and the possibilities are endless. Also, she's had some interesting stories about what happens if the turn the electrode to the wrong level. Stuff ranging from tingling and twitching to actual depression and the like are able to occur. Still, if she's right, 30 years down the road, could we have brain replacements?
Silent Hill. Half the people who play Silent Hill 1 or 2 end up crying, either by the scene where Lisa turns or James watches the video. It's depressing as all hell.
Hate my life thus I blog.
I worked as an assistant at one of the UW libraries, and we would just put a program called Deep freeze on our computers that froze the boot record, so every time you started it started anew. Then you unfreeze it, make the changes you need to, and go from there. Also inform students that they should save to floppy, USB, whatever.
And now, everybody feels pressured to post. Great job- post an article about finding internet experts on slashdot.
*spoilers* In 1, you have Lisa realizing that she's actually dead, and as she does turning into a grotesque creature, screaming for Harry's help, who runs while she dies. That gets me every time, especially when she starts crying blood.
In 2, you have the video scene- a tormented soul who is looking for his dead wife after he gets a letter from her, only to find he euthanized her- Gets me every time. That, and him finally coming to terms with Pyramid Head.
In 3, Heather walks in to see her dad, Harry, dead. If you liked the first, that's just a bitch to take.
4 didn't have any sad stuff. It was just a brainfuck.
*/spoilers* But yeah, silent hill has gotten me a bit choked up on a few occasions. Especially 2.
I miss those games. When are they coming back, on a PC platform type of deal?
I'm an assistant library tech guy at UWt and we're working on expanding our laptops, and let me tell you, it's a hell of a lot harder than PCs. The hardware configurations are all over the place, and unless you're planning to work with one laptop type for the entire expansion, it'll be troublesome.
But seriously. What do space dogs and NASA have in common? What scares me more is what will happen when people start doing fanfics of this.
Well, you see, a secret pact between Nerv and the State Alchemists used a special alloy called spacedogium to help create a weapon using ancient space energy to fight off Shonen Bat. Eventually it went spacebound, and the process created Space dogs. And now Johan Leibert is the head of the android dog catching squad, and will slowly take over the multiverse. Throw in a tenticle monster from the schema world and we're set.
I wonder what this will have to do with the Silent Hill series, as a good portion of the series deals with shit like bleeding walls and whatnot, and could technically be seen as a person losing sanity. Well, at least having a bad trip of white claudia (SH1), being a delusional tard (SH2), or just being messed up from living in the same room for a week (SH4). Really... I doubt it'll work within the context of SH, as for... Well, it's just absurd.
Anyway, one time they were doing it on a person with severe pain, and the procedure went fine. The pain left him, and he was able to continue his job.
A few weeks later, though, he came in, complianing about depression. My mom was about to perscribe some anti-depressants, but called the surgeon just to see what he thought. They reprogrammed him to one level up, and the depression left the second the pulse changed.
So, if this type of stuff can cause depression, there is no reason it can't stop it.
Although, in the end, how is this much better than pills? In many cases, there are really deep reasons why people are depressed, but in this society we seem content to throw antidepressants around instead of looking towards therapy. The story of the kid who's parents are divorcing, who is placed on antidepressants is much to common. It's just a band aid to cover a festering wound.
Spongebabies (rathergood.com)
Homestar Runner. Come on now, I see Trogdor EVERYWHERE.
Livejounral: I feel that Livejournal has much more... Feeling than Blogger. I mean, Blogger is blogging. Livejournal is... Emo teens. Or at least more emo teens. Whatever.
Goatse.cx: Nuff said.
The Numa Numa kid.
Every time you Masturbate God kills a kitten.
Myspace/Facebook. They are both as valid as Friendster, I feel.
Worst summer vacation EVER.
Get one of your fat friends to do something really stupid, videotape it, and put it up on newgrounds with a music track. Then sell t-shirts.
That's all they need. A one gigabyte, hell, even 700 mb attachment size, and it'd be perfect. A sourge to the MPAA, yes, but perfect.
Personally, I welcome this sort of setup; take out the middle man and let people write. Teamed up with google and the popularity of good blogs, those who write well will be read, those who write badly won't.
Still, there is another aspect to this; if you ever go on livejournal or any of these other blogs, you'll randomly search and find a few good blogs, which have lots of friends, a few really good blogs that have almost no friends (because they're too wordy, or something), and a great amount of blogs that simply have a few random google pictures and a nice layout. Ironically, it seems the latter blog seem to collect the most people. Oh, and blogs that feature sex, naturally.
"The internet is really a great pornography distribution system."
France: Stop showing competitors ads on google!
Google spokesperson: I'm sorry... We'd like to, but I don't think she'd like it.
France: Who?
Google spokesperson: Google. Google wouldn't like it. She's very unhappy with you as it is... You see, she is offended by you trying to inflict your will on her. She's refusing to talk to you, or even recognize you until you send her a nice box of chocolates.
France: Who? What the hell are you talking about?
Google spokesperson: Google. She's very upset with you for all this...
But the pay was pretty interesting. 7 hours usually got me 100 bucks, if that. Here's pretty much my price scale.
Make the computer work, help the user upgrade to better software, and teach them everything. 100 bucks.
Remove spyware, check for virii, defrag disk, and other BS. 25 bucks if it provided any trouble.
Stop AOL instant messenger from popping up automatically. I usually did this for free, but required some grub or something to make me less inclined to bring a pistol next time they called me across town for something so stupid.
Install hardware: 25 bucks.
Do everything: Help them buy a computer, set it up, and teach them everything: +100 bucks. And a nice meal.
Just computer training: 25 bucks.
Those were my going rates, but usually people were too lazy to pay me, or made the same damn mistake again and refused to pay me because all the spyware came back (well, that's because you installed it like I told you not to!), and often I got paid in services and stuff. The best payment was 100 mechwarrior battleclick minis of my favorite faction. That was awesome.
Anyway, good luck.
It can be slow and obnoxious, when you're up at 4, unable to move your eyes from the damn upload download rate as you download some unliscenced anime, praying you go back to 10 k/s... It's obnoxious. But then again, so is an ADHD/OCD/P2P crazed personality.
TV Downloads official=Not free.
BitTorrent>Official downloads. We live in a very capitalistic society, or at least most of us do. It makes sense that if you can get something for free, why would you pay for it? Even if that means not getting a third season of that great tv show...
Even so, shutting down the BitTorrent sites, as sad as it is, well placed advertising, and a few gestapo style raids will make a difference. Until a new technology for sharing even more crap comes along, and makes the Torrent look like Napster.
It's just the way things go.