Different generations. I played Space Invaders, Defender, Robotron, Battlezone, and I have an original stand-up Tempest game in the garage. (The electronics work but the monitor is kaput, and you can't find color vector monitors anymore.
While daughter was growing up, we had a strict no-console policy at home. Yes, I know, I was a horrible parent blah blah. Her friends had consoles of various types, as did her grandmother, and she was free to play them as long as it was at someone else's house. What I was trying to avoid was the all encompassing time-sink effect that I had observed had happened to my nephews. The ban did not apply to PC games, so she spent a lot of time growing up with Oblivion, Railroad Tycoon, The Sims, Spore and the like. But she spent most of her online time researching stuff and reading news. At one point she started asking me to find the collections How It's Made, Dirty Jobs, How Art Made the World, Mythbusters. Her interests would fluctuate but were always about real things. Currently she's reading and watching everything she can find about orcas. (Apparently, we're never supposed to step foot in a Sea World ever again...)
Somewhere along the line she developed a taste for things retro -- charlie chaplin movies, swing music, early roll film cameras. She said she wanted to buy a Nintendo 64. Why? Because it's cool. Shrug. Ok. I said go ahead, it's your money. This was our first console, purchased in early 2013.
She had to do a lot of research to figure out what all the parts were, and what was affordable, and eventually had enough pieces to make a working system. She's collected six games now, and plays with them once or twice a week. I get the idea that putting the system together was more fun than actually playing it, but again, it was her money. So I guess I'd say, she was drawn to older games. But it wasn't me who led her to them. Besides the Mechwarrior series, I haven't really played games much. I tried Warcraft once and got so heavily addicted that I neglected to bathe or eat. I finally gave the disc to daughter and told her to hide it. I still don't know where it is, and I haven't gamed since.
"It's your fault the car is wrecked." "Um, how is that?" "If you had driven me to mom's house, I wouldn't have had to drive." "We've had this discussion. You shouldn't have gone at all. It's an ice storm." "Well, you should have driven me. It's your fault." Sigh.
But, my nephew, he was absolutely certain he would get a job as a game tester and live like a king. All he had to do was practice Final Call of Warcraft a few hundred more hours.
Sounds like he never paused long enough to do any research: game testers get paid a pittance.
Also, they have to do more than just play games. He had some bizarre idea that he would get paid for high scores. I actually tried to work with him on it, doing some research online and showing him that the number of people doing it full time for a given company is fairly small, and they know how to collate data give presentations, and write reports. He would have serious competition, and would need to be able to express himself well verbally and in writing. (At the time he had a hard time completing a sentence. I think it was all the coco-puffs.) I encouraged him to take a writing class and a beginning programming class at the local community college, got him a copy of strunk and white and a programmable calculator, and then stepped back to see what he would do. He quit mid term because it was "too hard" and went back to the couch. Three weeks later I cut the cord. I should have done it earlier. When he got tired of living out of his car, he got a job, a roommate, and eventually a career.
I understand. You really don't want to put down the xbox controller. It's just too easy to stay and be mothered, and high scores give you a sense of accomplishment. Whatever works for you.
Incidentally, I graduated high school June 6. By the 12th I was driving to another state to start college (summer session). In all fairness, this was mostly because home life sucked goats. And not even the goats were happy.
> It's been my experience that kids do gain experience very quickly when they have to, but the older they are they, the harder they have it (because their built in support structure tends to get married and/or move away). Eventually, they appear to have no visible support structure and often lack the social skills to build a new one.
Oh man, that's a great point. So if I may paraphrase, living your life requires some practice, development of skills, and some life experiences. And the younger you start (within reason), the better you are able to adapt to change. That does make sense.
But, my nephew, he was absolutely certain he would get a job as a game tester and live like a king. All he had to do was practice Final Call of Warcraft a few hundred more hours.
> I've also been aware of a couple of such cases myself. But, in those cases, the sons were struggling with significant psychological problems and would almost certainly been homeless without their parent's assistance.
No no, you don't understand. I actually knew this guy in high school. I wasn't merely in the same group photo. He was not mentally, physically nor emotionally encumbered. His problem was much deeper, residing in his spirit. It was called "It's easier to sit on this couch than go outside and get a job". At first, because "getting jobs is scary", but later sitting on the couch became its own, sufficient justification. He had skills. He could demonstrate that if he was desperate for money. He just did not feel like he should have to work. Such people exist. Fortunately for society, they appear to still be relatively rare.
I wonder what would have happened had he spent some time being homeless. Would he have pulled himself together and taken his place in the world? Personally, I would like to think so. We may never know.
"as more and more of her competition is staring at a screen when they should be doing something important."
And what in this day and age of bread and circuses would that be?
celle
Ok, fair enough. I'd say, you could be one of the people getting thrown bread, or you could be one of the people in the ring, or you could be up in the box seats directing the bread and circus. I know where I'd rather she be.
You are absolutely right, but perhaps what he really needs is for his life to really suck for awhile. Living on his own (or trying to) may result in some life-changing revelations.
And please, don't fall for the "I'm going to be a professional game tester" line. I heard that from my nephew when he was living with us. (We got him when his mom couldn't take him anymore.) Needless to say, that didn't work out. And when I finally, regretfully, tossed him out, he slept in his car for awhile. And oh, he hated me with a white hot hate for destroying all his plans, which seemed to center around occupying my spare bedroom for the rest of his life. But eventually, he pulled himself together, got a job, and actually made something of himself.
Jesus you sound just like my parents. If your son is happy why don't you leave your son alone and mind your own business.
Ok, so, I'm having a similar problem with my daughter, also 19. The answer to your question is easy. You're an adult. It's my house. I have no intention of keeping you as a pet. If you're working towards something in good faith, a job, or an internship, or college, I'll support that. But if you're just going to sit on the couch, you can do it somewhere else.
Because, I'll say this again to be certain we're communicating -- pause the game so you can hear me -- It's. My. House. Not yours. As an adult you live here because I let you live here.
In your particular case, it might be time to set down the controller and figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Oh, depending on the character of your parents, you may be able to occupy that couch indefinitely. I've seen it happen -- a guy I went to high school with, is still living with his mother in his fifties. Yes, I did say fifties. But I suspect that kind of situation is rare and I'm not sure that depending on it is a good career plan.
Hm. It's comments like this that make me wonder if people like "war4peace" up there is really trying to push his (her? it?) argument or if he's deliberately serving as a straw man. My test is if the phrase "if this person didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him" might seem to apply.
I suspect there are people like this on both sides of this issue. For instance, when someone says with a straight face that any unusual cold is weather but any unusual heat must be climate change, I wonder if they might secretly be working the other side.
So what about the situation where the parent is addicted to social media but the child is not? This isn't a rhetorical question.
I dunno, I think the idea that parents being over-protective driving children online is one of those things that's easy to prove anecdotally, because there are so many overprotective parents to choose from, and as a substantial number of children could be said to be addicted to social media, there would be a significantly large intersect between the two groups. But I wonder if there's really any meaning there.
I think it is true that society (not just parents) has made it more of a challenge for children to interact with each other. Geeze, the grade school playground is looking more and more like something out of A Wrinkle in Time. (...Camazotz......Read a book!...) I think a case could be made that there are a number of factors involved, including the observation that if it's news, it's rare by definition even if it's not, for profit reasons, presented as such, and this has given the vast unwashed public, who as a group has a less-than-college-level understanding of statistics, some wrong ideas. (Incidents of people being hit by falling pianos up 100%! Panic!)
I continue to believe that this tendency, if it exists, merely gives my daughter much shorter lines to stand in as she journeys through life, as more and more of her competition is staring at a screen when they should be doing something important. So I don't worry about it overmuch.
Exactly. My HOA has 170 homes. Let's say we can generate enough power for us plus an additional 50 homes. We provide our own power and make a little money on the side, which is split amongst the members.
Then, the HOA next to us, which is bigger, joins our little LLC and now we've got 430 homes in the farm and can provide power for, say, 110 additional homes. More and more homes join our private "grid" and pretty soon we're providing an appreciable fraction of the county's electricity.
There is a natural tendency to conserve, because the less you use, the more you can sell.
The approach doesn't depend on government or big corporations to build big solar farms, (reducing the possibility of graft and corruption) the process is incremental, and participation is voluntary. The local electric company shifts their primary focus from power generation to maintenance of the grid. One possible side-effect may be that our aging grid finally gets some much needed attention.
I believe the current grid is already set up to isolate major problems, so the entire grid wouldn't really have to go down on catastrophic failure at one point, given intelligent enough management. With enough people participating, power production and distribution as a whole becomes highly redundant and robust.
The problem as I see it is in convincing the power companies that a shift in their own business model is in their long term best interest, lest we have a "power company protection act" and it's all for naught.
And in return for providing this service, they're protected by the government as a natural monopoly. They have no competitors and there is no free market for electricity. It's completely reasonable for tax payers to compel a utility to do some things for free in exchange. Having no competition is a tremendous boon, and it's not something that we should give away freely.
Oooh. Oooh. Wait a minute. Remember back in the old days of DSL, where the telephone company managed the infrastructure but multiple companies provided services? I think the alternate DSL providers had to pay some of it back to the phone company for managing the last mile.
So, before some laws changed and some technical issues were solved, only the owner of the last mile could provide internet services over the wires they owned, but eventually other companies could offer competing services over the same infrastructure.
You see where I'm going with this? What if, let's say, a homeowner's association that has made a heavy commitment to solar has decided to form a co-op or an LLC and sell their excess power -- not back to the power company, but directly to other homeowners?
I think part of the mechanism is already in place -- you can pay extra for power from "green" sources, for instance. (Although part of me thinks that what they're buying is coming out of the same bin as those of us who are paying regular prices for dirty power.) Why couldn't you buy power from some other power source, perhaps a co-op close to you, using the existing infrastructure?
...but it's not connected to the grid. Instead, it charges a set of marine (deep cycle) batteries that power a circuit with noncritical demand. (Lights and electronic appliances.) It's a proof of concept, but my next upgrade still won't connect to the grid. My goal is not to sell power to the local electric company, but to have enough power to not be terribly inconvenienced if the city power goes away. Others may disagree, but I think coupling your solar with the city grid kinda misses the point of having your own power. Especially since the most common means of coupling still shuts off your power if the grid fails (to avoid the lines being powered when linemen work on them). (I've heard that there are systems that disconnect you from the grid in the event of grid failure, but they're not common yet.)
Anyway, point is, that the power company refuses to buy back your excess power is not sufficient reason to abandon solar.
But that said, isn't there some law that the power company *must* buy back your excess power if you generate and are synced to the grid? Or was that only in California?
I had not intended to imply that. Only that, if there were an unusual amount of sea ice in what amounts to the peak of summer in the south, that would be interesting data.
My point was more like "you can find interesting data even in failure". They did not get to their destination, but the reason why may yield data important to their project. Just sayin'.
...if only to see the README accompanying that patch. "Apply this patch if your Tesla roadster has ever caught fire." No, wait. Um, "This patch makes the very unlikely event of your Tesla roadster burning down your garage even more unlikely." But it'll be probably something nebulous and lawyer-proof like "This patch enhances the charging software to further protect your house wiring."
Slashdot Mirror
Different generations. I played Space Invaders, Defender, Robotron, Battlezone, and I have an original stand-up Tempest game in the garage. (The electronics work but the monitor is kaput, and you can't find color vector monitors anymore.
While daughter was growing up, we had a strict no-console policy at home. Yes, I know, I was a horrible parent blah blah. Her friends had consoles of various types, as did her grandmother, and she was free to play them as long as it was at someone else's house. What I was trying to avoid was the all encompassing time-sink effect that I had observed had happened to my nephews. The ban did not apply to PC games, so she spent a lot of time growing up with Oblivion, Railroad Tycoon, The Sims, Spore and the like. But she spent most of her online time researching stuff and reading news. At one point she started asking me to find the collections How It's Made, Dirty Jobs, How Art Made the World, Mythbusters. Her interests would fluctuate but were always about real things. Currently she's reading and watching everything she can find about orcas. (Apparently, we're never supposed to step foot in a Sea World ever again...)
Somewhere along the line she developed a taste for things retro -- charlie chaplin movies, swing music, early roll film cameras. She said she wanted to buy a Nintendo 64. Why? Because it's cool. Shrug. Ok. I said go ahead, it's your money. This was our first console, purchased in early 2013.
She had to do a lot of research to figure out what all the parts were, and what was affordable, and eventually had enough pieces to make a working system. She's collected six games now, and plays with them once or twice a week. I get the idea that putting the system together was more fun than actually playing it, but again, it was her money. So I guess I'd say, she was drawn to older games. But it wasn't me who led her to them. Besides the Mechwarrior series, I haven't really played games much. I tried Warcraft once and got so heavily addicted that I neglected to bathe or eat. I finally gave the disc to daughter and told her to hide it. I still don't know where it is, and I haven't gamed since.
Didn't know it at the time. You discover many hidden things after the ceremony.
And now for something completely different.
Then, you know.
"It's your fault the car is wrecked." "Um, how is that?" "If you had driven me to mom's house, I wouldn't have had to drive." "We've had this discussion. You shouldn't have gone at all. It's an ice storm." "Well, you should have driven me. It's your fault." Sigh.
But, my nephew, he was absolutely certain he would get a job as a game tester and live like a king. All he had to do was practice Final Call of Warcraft a few hundred more hours.
Sounds like he never paused long enough to do any research: game testers get paid a pittance.
Also, they have to do more than just play games. He had some bizarre idea that he would get paid for high scores. I actually tried to work with him on it, doing some research online and showing him that the number of people doing it full time for a given company is fairly small, and they know how to collate data give presentations, and write reports. He would have serious competition, and would need to be able to express himself well verbally and in writing. (At the time he had a hard time completing a sentence. I think it was all the coco-puffs.) I encouraged him to take a writing class and a beginning programming class at the local community college, got him a copy of strunk and white and a programmable calculator, and then stepped back to see what he would do. He quit mid term because it was "too hard" and went back to the couch. Three weeks later I cut the cord. I should have done it earlier. When he got tired of living out of his car, he got a job, a roommate, and eventually a career.
I understand. You really don't want to put down the xbox controller. It's just too easy to stay and be mothered, and high scores give you a sense of accomplishment. Whatever works for you.
Incidentally, I graduated high school June 6. By the 12th I was driving to another state to start college (summer session). In all fairness, this was mostly because home life sucked goats. And not even the goats were happy.
> It's been my experience that kids do gain experience very quickly when they have to, but the older they are they, the harder they have it (because their built in support structure tends to get married and/or move away). Eventually, they appear to have no visible support structure and often lack the social skills to build a new one.
Oh man, that's a great point. So if I may paraphrase, living your life requires some practice, development of skills, and some life experiences. And the younger you start (within reason), the better you are able to adapt to change. That does make sense.
But, my nephew, he was absolutely certain he would get a job as a game tester and live like a king. All he had to do was practice Final Call of Warcraft a few hundred more hours.
> I've also been aware of a couple of such cases myself. But, in those cases, the sons were struggling with significant psychological problems and would almost certainly been homeless without their parent's assistance.
No no, you don't understand. I actually knew this guy in high school. I wasn't merely in the same group photo. He was not mentally, physically nor emotionally encumbered. His problem was much deeper, residing in his spirit. It was called "It's easier to sit on this couch than go outside and get a job". At first, because "getting jobs is scary", but later sitting on the couch became its own, sufficient justification. He had skills. He could demonstrate that if he was desperate for money. He just did not feel like he should have to work. Such people exist. Fortunately for society, they appear to still be relatively rare.
I wonder what would have happened had he spent some time being homeless. Would he have pulled himself together and taken his place in the world? Personally, I would like to think so. We may never know.
Their most significant finding, though will be that "ice breaker ships are tearing up all the sea ice!".
Thanks, that was funny. Everyone seems to have lost their sense of humor around here.
"as more and more of her competition is staring at a screen when they should be doing something important."
And what in this day and age of bread and circuses would that be?
celle
Ok, fair enough. I'd say, you could be one of the people getting thrown bread, or you could be one of the people in the ring, or you could be up in the box seats directing the bread and circus. I know where I'd rather she be.
You are absolutely right, but perhaps what he really needs is for his life to really suck for awhile. Living on his own (or trying to) may result in some life-changing revelations.
And please, don't fall for the "I'm going to be a professional game tester" line. I heard that from my nephew when he was living with us. (We got him when his mom couldn't take him anymore.) Needless to say, that didn't work out. And when I finally, regretfully, tossed him out, he slept in his car for awhile. And oh, he hated me with a white hot hate for destroying all his plans, which seemed to center around occupying my spare bedroom for the rest of his life. But eventually, he pulled himself together, got a job, and actually made something of himself.
Jesus you sound just like my parents. If your son is happy why don't you leave your son alone and mind your own business.
Ok, so, I'm having a similar problem with my daughter, also 19. The answer to your question is easy. You're an adult. It's my house. I have no intention of keeping you as a pet. If you're working towards something in good faith, a job, or an internship, or college, I'll support that. But if you're just going to sit on the couch, you can do it somewhere else.
Because, I'll say this again to be certain we're communicating -- pause the game so you can hear me -- It's. My. House. Not yours. As an adult you live here because I let you live here.
In your particular case, it might be time to set down the controller and figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Oh, depending on the character of your parents, you may be able to occupy that couch indefinitely. I've seen it happen -- a guy I went to high school with, is still living with his mother in his fifties. Yes, I did say fifties. But I suspect that kind of situation is rare and I'm not sure that depending on it is a good career plan.
Besides, I want his room for a den.
. . .is to self-empower, while assuaging guilt.
Exactly. And if you want numerous examples, all you need do is get married.
Hm. It's comments like this that make me wonder if people like "war4peace" up there is really trying to push his (her? it?) argument or if he's deliberately serving as a straw man. My test is if the phrase "if this person didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him" might seem to apply.
I suspect there are people like this on both sides of this issue. For instance, when someone says with a straight face that any unusual cold is weather but any unusual heat must be climate change, I wonder if they might secretly be working the other side.
So what about the situation where the parent is addicted to social media but the child is not? This isn't a rhetorical question.
I dunno, I think the idea that parents being over-protective driving children online is one of those things that's easy to prove anecdotally, because there are so many overprotective parents to choose from, and as a substantial number of children could be said to be addicted to social media, there would be a significantly large intersect between the two groups. But I wonder if there's really any meaning there.
I think it is true that society (not just parents) has made it more of a challenge for children to interact with each other. Geeze, the grade school playground is looking more and more like something out of A Wrinkle in Time. (...Camazotz... ...Read a book!...) I think a case could be made that there are a number of factors involved, including the observation that if it's news, it's rare by definition even if it's not, for profit reasons, presented as such, and this has given the vast unwashed public, who as a group has a less-than-college-level understanding of statistics, some wrong ideas. (Incidents of people being hit by falling pianos up 100%! Panic!)
I continue to believe that this tendency, if it exists, merely gives my daughter much shorter lines to stand in as she journeys through life, as more and more of her competition is staring at a screen when they should be doing something important. So I don't worry about it overmuch.
Exactly. My HOA has 170 homes. Let's say we can generate enough power for us plus an additional 50 homes. We provide our own power and make a little money on the side, which is split amongst the members.
Then, the HOA next to us, which is bigger, joins our little LLC and now we've got 430 homes in the farm and can provide power for, say, 110 additional homes. More and more homes join our private "grid" and pretty soon we're providing an appreciable fraction of the county's electricity.
There is a natural tendency to conserve, because the less you use, the more you can sell.
The approach doesn't depend on government or big corporations to build big solar farms, (reducing the possibility of graft and corruption) the process is incremental, and participation is voluntary. The local electric company shifts their primary focus from power generation to maintenance of the grid. One possible side-effect may be that our aging grid finally gets some much needed attention.
I believe the current grid is already set up to isolate major problems, so the entire grid wouldn't really have to go down on catastrophic failure at one point, given intelligent enough management. With enough people participating, power production and distribution as a whole becomes highly redundant and robust.
The problem as I see it is in convincing the power companies that a shift in their own business model is in their long term best interest, lest we have a "power company protection act" and it's all for naught.
And in return for providing this service, they're protected by the government as a natural monopoly. They have no competitors and there is no free market for electricity. It's completely reasonable for tax payers to compel a utility to do some things for free in exchange. Having no competition is a tremendous boon, and it's not something that we should give away freely.
Oooh. Oooh. Wait a minute. Remember back in the old days of DSL, where the telephone company managed the infrastructure but multiple companies provided services? I think the alternate DSL providers had to pay some of it back to the phone company for managing the last mile.
So, before some laws changed and some technical issues were solved, only the owner of the last mile could provide internet services over the wires they owned, but eventually other companies could offer competing services over the same infrastructure.
You see where I'm going with this? What if, let's say, a homeowner's association that has made a heavy commitment to solar has decided to form a co-op or an LLC and sell their excess power -- not back to the power company, but directly to other homeowners?
I think part of the mechanism is already in place -- you can pay extra for power from "green" sources, for instance. (Although part of me thinks that what they're buying is coming out of the same bin as those of us who are paying regular prices for dirty power.) Why couldn't you buy power from some other power source, perhaps a co-op close to you, using the existing infrastructure?
"This patch enhances the charging software to further protect your house wiring."
Ensures a cool and enjoyable energy consumption experience.
"Share and enjoy."
Anyway, point is, that the power company refuses to buy back your excess power is not sufficient reason to abandon solar.
But that said, isn't there some law that the power company *must* buy back your excess power if you generate and are synced to the grid? Or was that only in California?
I had not intended to imply that. Only that, if there were an unusual amount of sea ice in what amounts to the peak of summer in the south, that would be interesting data.
My point was more like "you can find interesting data even in failure". They did not get to their destination, but the reason why may yield data important to their project. Just sayin'.
> the purpose of the expedition is 'to discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.
Looks like they found some.