Back in 1997, I was playing a character on the old TrekMoo, when the Q (the admins) were in the process of moving to new servers. They decided to all scorched universe on the remaining players and I have to say, that was a heck of lot of fun. The Borg invaded, the Romulans and Klingons got their ass kicked and we intrepid few in the federation were forced to make some tough choices that included sacrificing our ship. It was a small community of text based adventurers, but the collaborative effort made it a hell of a lot of fun.
I'm surprised there aren't more scorched earth games, where we build up communities just to have them torn down. I hope the loyal players of playing Tabula Rasa get to have the same kind of experience. I know it influenced me as to what good collaborative theaterical improvisation was all about.
I went there once: when I was in vegas, saw both the exhibits.
It was really neat to be on the bridge and the shuttle craft. I was caught pushing the buttons and was jokingly yelled at by the "Lieutenant"for messing with the gravity systems.
All the star trek memorabilia was worth seeing and I had a cup of something blue in the Quark bar afterwards where I spoke with a bomber pilot (no kidding) who was a member of the Canadian air force. I'm still not sure if he was part of the exhibit.
In and all, sad to see it go... Was great to read the Wil Wheaton's rememberances after attending the exhibit shortly after it opened, which is why I decided to check it out.
Oh come on. They aren't in the humanity protecting business; they aren't some sort of superhero company. I hate bloodthirsty health professionals as much as the next rabid liberal, but seriously, google needs to protect their clients over doing what amounts to activism. This doesn't mean that smart company folk won't laugh or smile or be joyous when these clients eventually go under: but you have to play your part if someone is giving you money, it's kinda the way things work.
Taking a cruise around the islands changed the way that I think of biology. The sheer diversity of unusual life-forms is astounding: flightless cormorants to marine iguanas to sea lions that don't flinch as you walk by them to the vast fields of blue footed boobies to the elegant but absurd courting dances of the albatrosses: it truly is a land of wonders.
But you get a sense of fragility walking around: from the bees infestation of an island to the sad lack of giant tortoises: the entire island is a tribute to an environmental sense, an acknowledgment that by changing the environment slightly, entrenched endemic species alter, die, dissipate.
Stricter controls are needed in order to help prevent this slide into desolation, but I hope even more that those that wish to take in the marvels of the land can, I have their minds changed and their appreciation of the world expanded.
In some ways it's like the Heisenberg principal: we change it by viewing it. I just hope we have the sense to remember that we should be careful at how much we kill as we gaze.
Ok. We have many extra-solar planets. We've got water on mars. We've got an ocean on titan. We've got massive amounts of funding on SETI. We had that SETI at home running for years...
Despite that now-pretty-much-debunked mars metorite... When is that we will find believable proof of extraterra life? I'm convinced life has to be out there. When we will find it?
I doubt we will find it anytime soon. We aren't spending enough money and we aren't capable of leaving this island world of ours. Intelligent life that we can communicate with or interact with in a meaningful? Highly unlikely. The universe is just too damn big and the chances of intelligence development too small.
We may have found an ocean on titan: I really wish the task of finding extraterresterial life wasn't so minimal.
According to http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/W alkman.htm: "By 1995, total production of Walkman units reached 150 million." That's from 1979-1995. From 2001-2007, just over the same time frame, Apple has sold double. That's pretty impressive, considering the incredibly popular nature of the Walkmen. I think I've only now just got what a phenomenon iPods have proven to be.
On my wishlist for life is something that does simliar to this, but txts wikipedia articles similiar to the google SMS feature. Or, at least, the intro paragraph from any wikipedia article or first few sentences.
The google service is very useful, my favorite use for it is to google telephone numbers that ring me, if they are a land based or business phone it gives you the goods on who is calling. Also, can be useful for area codes.
Which is the better 15" macbookpro for battery life?
I'm deciding in purchasing between the faster and slower macbookpro's: Does the faster one drain the battery noticibly faster, or is there better power management with the more expensive computer? If I know I'll be using the computer without access to a wall socket for longer periods: is it smarter to go with the slower computer?
Well, here I was posting this information to Digg a full three days ago, when I really should have just submitted the story to slashdot. Of course, it's lack of diggs could have been influenced by pisspoor description. This is not whining, by the way, I am just interested in the sociometric qualities of story-submission dynamics in the slashdot/digg age.
Bastard, you quoting it like that forced me watch it again! It appears they've removed it from youtube, I could only find a cruddy version elsewhere.
However, in my way to find it, I found a couple of interesting follow-up responses. Not as good as original, but they do try to capture the flavor of the first.
I was going to be one of those schoolchildren that watached it in my classroom, but they cancelled on us, and I watched in on the news when I got home.
One of the more interesting aspects of this that interest me regarding the incident is the folkloric need to make sense of the tragedy as it specifically relates ot this event. Retelling this story in humor, in fear. Shock permeated throughout the school and, as this article implies, the culture following. Being ten at the time, I remember being told several jokes regarding the launch: These two stay with me:
How do we know the schoolteacher on the challenger had Dandruff? They found her head and shoulders.
What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronaunts.
This article describing beliefs about this event two decades ago, doesn't suprise me. Like 9/11 and JFK's assination there is something about this event for those of us experienced, a quite peculiar something. These myths in this article and the jokes and stories and general challengerlore that was generated speak to the need to make a strange sense of such an unfanthonable event. Why was this specifically so unfanthomable? That talks to the zeitgeist, I think.
Mental illnesses are real illnesses and have hard, acute neurological expression in the brain. There is nothing "make-believe" about something that is chronic, repetitive and deeply seated. Depression is not just something that can be snapped out of, nor can PTSD be ignored into dissipating, the fear and desperation of hypochondria comes is real. These illnesses are not merely coming from a person who is playing a casual game of make-believe who needs to get a grip. Mental illnesses are the flipside of the placebo effect: It's when your make-believe bullets pierce your real bulletproof vests.
This isn't even looking at somatoform disorders (physical ailments that come from the toll of being in a mental illness). The truth is that the human mind is far more of a powerful, persuasive instrument than we are normally led to believe and the state of mentality is very much a physical rather than imaginary thing. Placebo effects likewise are not usually effective in helping such mental disorders, so the grandparent's point that it works is meaningful and should not be dismissed. Most likely, the tapping repetition forced the client to breath, and take note and prevent the panic that is prevalent in most anxiety disorders, which in turn backed the person away from their usual repetition compulsion, bypassing the worse part of her illness.
When I was on Slashdot.Org I heard about this prank which supposedly happened a few years earlier, although its a marvelous urban legend.
Believing something as true makes it a much better story, admittedly, but it's very interesting how the urge to believe leads us to retell rumors and stories as if they were true. Human nature fascinates me. Are the best pranks we can come up with ones where we have to invent and personalize the story?
Wikipedia will continue to grow, and content will continue to become more refined and generally better.
Facebook will grow, and options for adding non-school connected individuals will be introduced before the end of the year.
Myspace, Friendster and Liverjournal usership will decline.
The television shows available on itunes will increase ten fold, some regular free television program downloads will become available by march.
Political Speeches will become regularly podcast. A c-span like service will become reasonable popular on itunes podcasting service.
Macintosh computers will sell more computers in this year than in the last two, combined.
I was a Nielsen Television watcher for about year and a half, ending about a year ago. Instead of using my people meter while I watched television, I downloaded the shows to watch them on my computer. During this time, both Enterprise and Wonderfalls, shows I enjoyed immensely, were cancelled.
Although I drained the ratings , which would have been higher should I have actually physically watched the television, I felt it was important since I was representing those of us who had the technology to bypass television completely. I explained this to the Neilsen folks, and they weren't interested in my alternative viewing habits. Concurrently, I also downloaded and watched the first season of the apprentice, with it's integrated product placements. That exposure, from a rating point of view, possibly should have been counted, but there is no way of them measuring that. Even with this new system, they still won't count imbedded commercial watching. Microsoft, for example, paid a pretty penny to be included in the latest episode of the apprentice.
I'm glad Neilsen is finally catching up with technology. I suspect that ratings will shift pretty dramatically when DVRs are used primarily rate the shows. Commercial watching, however, will be seen as happening much less, which I suppose is appropriate since those of that can, do watch as few commercials as possible. Sadly, prefering to watch content and even being pretty unwilling to watch commercials may in the long run prevent content geared to those kinds of individuals from being created. No watching commercials = low ratings = not enough money to produce. Yet I still do everythign I can to limit down commercial watching as much as possible. I realize that may constitute copyright infringement, but I still enjoy the entertainment so much more without having to hear 'these important messages.'
This is true. That exhibit at the museum is so tweet. In fact, their entire exhibit (the dinosaur wing), demonstrates, in my mind, rather concretely the beautiful reasonable progression of evolutionary history, not to parrot the scientific view.
Birds are therapod dinosaurs. I can't understand why there is such a flap about this. You can see exactly who they are related to and other evolutionary steps at the exhibit. Stunning, mind-expanding. Let the idea seed your imagination. Migrate from ignorance. Fly towards clarity, becoming an eagle-eyed appreciator of how things came to beak.
I was attempting to capture an ironic juxtaposition between the stereotypical sophistication between an individual who enjoys "fine" performance and a flaming poster whose passionate defense of thier fandom far exceeds their ability to express their tastes in a refined fashion. My apologies if offense was had. Man, I feel like this post should be modded -1 awkward.
Midseason three and season four are when it really gets to be excellent, like biting the nails, I, Claudius, excellent.
Payoff for all the previous crud you had to shift through. Keep the netflix faith. It's worth it.
Actually, this is incorrect. You have to provide the illusion of being neutral. True neutrality is impossible when you bread is buttered on one side, researching cannot help but know where their funding is coming from, and the human element will skew it, in hopes to get more research money from that source. Happily, bias is inherent in humanity, so everything you are exposed to is skewed one way or another.
Man, another day in the desert. I miss Mount Horeb. I have a burning bush screen saver now. But I think I got some spyware! Let my PC go!
The mannah really rocks, though, thanks god. Alright. so, we got out our gpses, looked the land, but still no luck. It's pretty hard to keep looking for this bloody thing. Anybody see anything?
It's more a matter of contemplating the face of the grown adult, even though the little tyke is only making baby steps right now. It's as an easy a distraction to focus on the limitations of current technology as to be unrealistic about where the technology might end up. In deference to "no wireless. less space than nomad. lame." factor, however, it's often a worthwhile time to recognize that some relatively harmless incremental technology can be the doorway to groundbreaking, paradigm shifting, lifestyle-shifting, dominion altering stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in 1997, I was playing a character on the old TrekMoo, when the Q (the admins) were in the process of moving to new servers. They decided to all scorched universe on the remaining players and I have to say, that was a heck of lot of fun. The Borg invaded, the Romulans and Klingons got their ass kicked and we intrepid few in the federation were forced to make some tough choices that included sacrificing our ship. It was a small community of text based adventurers, but the collaborative effort made it a hell of a lot of fun.
I'm surprised there aren't more scorched earth games, where we build up communities just to have them torn down. I hope the loyal players of playing Tabula Rasa get to have the same kind of experience. I know it influenced me as to what good collaborative theaterical improvisation was all about.
I went there once: when I was in vegas, saw both the exhibits. It was really neat to be on the bridge and the shuttle craft. I was caught pushing the buttons and was jokingly yelled at by the "Lieutenant"for messing with the gravity systems. All the star trek memorabilia was worth seeing and I had a cup of something blue in the Quark bar afterwards where I spoke with a bomber pilot (no kidding) who was a member of the Canadian air force. I'm still not sure if he was part of the exhibit. In and all, sad to see it go... Was great to read the Wil Wheaton's rememberances after attending the exhibit shortly after it opened, which is why I decided to check it out.
Oh come on. They aren't in the humanity protecting business; they aren't some sort of superhero company. I hate bloodthirsty health professionals as much as the next rabid liberal, but seriously, google needs to protect their clients over doing what amounts to activism. This doesn't mean that smart company folk won't laugh or smile or be joyous when these clients eventually go under: but you have to play your part if someone is giving you money, it's kinda the way things work.
Taking a cruise around the islands changed the way that I think of biology. The sheer diversity of unusual life-forms is astounding: flightless cormorants to marine iguanas to sea lions that don't flinch as you walk by them to the vast fields of blue footed boobies to the elegant but absurd courting dances of the albatrosses: it truly is a land of wonders.
But you get a sense of fragility walking around: from the bees infestation of an island to the sad lack of giant tortoises: the entire island is a tribute to an environmental sense, an acknowledgment that by changing the environment slightly, entrenched endemic species alter, die, dissipate.
Stricter controls are needed in order to help prevent this slide into desolation, but I hope even more that those that wish to take in the marvels of the land can, I have their minds changed and their appreciation of the world expanded.
In some ways it's like the Heisenberg principal: we change it by viewing it. I just hope we have the sense to remember that we should be careful at how much we kill as we gaze.
Ok. All I need now are the reviews. We know that mossberg has one; I wager other influencial tech gurus also posess one at this point.
The questions I want answered:
Is it good?
Does it keep its charge?
Does it feel solid?
Are there any happykilling bugs?
Does it feel like its worth the money?
Will these be answered before the 29th? How early do I have to show up at my local at&t to get one?
What about using these in reading glasses or goggles. People find bifocles somewhat frustrating due to the disruption to field of vision.
::tap:: Presto, convex.
I can imagine: Let me put on my glasses. Oh, they are set for concave.
I guess there *is* something to see.
Ok. We have many extra-solar planets. We've got water on mars. We've got an ocean on titan. We've got massive amounts of funding on SETI. We had that SETI at home running for years... Despite that now-pretty-much-debunked mars metorite... When is that we will find believable proof of extraterra life? I'm convinced life has to be out there. When we will find it? I doubt we will find it anytime soon. We aren't spending enough money and we aren't capable of leaving this island world of ours. Intelligent life that we can communicate with or interact with in a meaningful? Highly unlikely. The universe is just too damn big and the chances of intelligence development too small. We may have found an ocean on titan: I really wish the task of finding extraterresterial life wasn't so minimal.
According to http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/W alkman.htm: "By 1995, total production of Walkman units reached 150 million." That's from 1979-1995. From 2001-2007, just over the same time frame, Apple has sold double. That's pretty impressive, considering the incredibly popular nature of the Walkmen. I think I've only now just got what a phenomenon iPods have proven to be.
On my wishlist for life is something that does simliar to this, but txts wikipedia articles similiar to the google SMS feature. Or, at least, the intro paragraph from any wikipedia article or first few sentences.
The google service is very useful, my favorite use for it is to google telephone numbers that ring me, if they are a land based or business phone it gives you the goods on who is calling. Also, can be useful for area codes.
Which is the better 15" macbookpro for battery life?
I'm deciding in purchasing between the faster and slower macbookpro's: Does the faster one drain the battery noticibly faster, or is there better power management with the more expensive computer? If I know I'll be using the computer without access to a wall socket for longer periods: is it smarter to go with the slower computer?
Well, here I was posting this information to Digg a full three days ago, when I really should have just submitted the story to slashdot. Of course, it's lack of diggs could have been influenced by pisspoor description. This is not whining, by the way, I am just interested in the sociometric qualities of story-submission dynamics in the slashdot/digg age.
Bastard, you quoting it like that forced me watch it again! It appears they've removed it from youtube, I could only find a cruddy version elsewhere.
However, in my way to find it, I found a couple of interesting follow-up responses. Not as good as original, but they do try to capture the flavor of the first.
Original...
West Coast response...
Muncie Response... All mention google maps in some form.
I was going to be one of those schoolchildren that watached it in my classroom, but they cancelled on us, and I watched in on the news when I got home.
One of the more interesting aspects of this that interest me regarding the incident is the folkloric need to make sense of the tragedy as it specifically relates ot this event. Retelling this story in humor, in fear. Shock permeated throughout the school and, as this article implies, the culture following. Being ten at the time, I remember being told several jokes regarding the launch: These two stay with me:
How do we know the schoolteacher on the challenger had Dandruff? They found her head and shoulders.
What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronaunts.
This article describing beliefs about this event two decades ago, doesn't suprise me. Like 9/11 and JFK's assination there is something about this event for those of us experienced, a quite peculiar something. These myths in this article and the jokes and stories and general challengerlore that was generated speak to the need to make a strange sense of such an unfanthonable event. Why was this specifically so unfanthomable? That talks to the zeitgeist, I think.
Mental illnesses are real illnesses and have hard, acute neurological expression in the brain. There is nothing "make-believe" about something that is chronic, repetitive and deeply seated. Depression is not just something that can be snapped out of, nor can PTSD be ignored into dissipating, the fear and desperation of hypochondria comes is real. These illnesses are not merely coming from a person who is playing a casual game of make-believe who needs to get a grip. Mental illnesses are the flipside of the placebo effect: It's when your make-believe bullets pierce your real bulletproof vests.
This isn't even looking at somatoform disorders (physical ailments that come from the toll of being in a mental illness). The truth is that the human mind is far more of a powerful, persuasive instrument than we are normally led to believe and the state of mentality is very much a physical rather than imaginary thing. Placebo effects likewise are not usually effective in helping such mental disorders, so the grandparent's point that it works is meaningful and should not be dismissed. Most likely, the tapping repetition forced the client to breath, and take note and prevent the panic that is prevalent in most anxiety disorders, which in turn backed the person away from their usual repetition compulsion, bypassing the worse part of her illness.
When I was on Slashdot.Org I heard about this prank which supposedly happened a few years earlier, although its a marvelous urban legend. Believing something as true makes it a much better story, admittedly, but it's very interesting how the urge to believe leads us to retell rumors and stories as if they were true. Human nature fascinates me. Are the best pranks we can come up with ones where we have to invent and personalize the story?
Wikipedia will continue to grow, and content will continue to become more refined and generally better. Facebook will grow, and options for adding non-school connected individuals will be introduced before the end of the year. Myspace, Friendster and Liverjournal usership will decline. The television shows available on itunes will increase ten fold, some regular free television program downloads will become available by march. Political Speeches will become regularly podcast. A c-span like service will become reasonable popular on itunes podcasting service. Macintosh computers will sell more computers in this year than in the last two, combined.
"Started in August 2003"
-wikipedia
I was a Nielsen Television watcher for about year and a half, ending about a year ago. Instead of using my people meter while I watched television, I downloaded the shows to watch them on my computer. During this time, both Enterprise and Wonderfalls, shows I enjoyed immensely, were cancelled.
Although I drained the ratings , which would have been higher should I have actually physically watched the television, I felt it was important since I was representing those of us who had the technology to bypass television completely. I explained this to the Neilsen folks, and they weren't interested in my alternative viewing habits. Concurrently, I also downloaded and watched the first season of the apprentice, with it's integrated product placements. That exposure, from a rating point of view, possibly should have been counted, but there is no way of them measuring that. Even with this new system, they still won't count imbedded commercial watching. Microsoft, for example, paid a pretty penny to be included in the latest episode of the apprentice.
I'm glad Neilsen is finally catching up with technology. I suspect that ratings will shift pretty dramatically when DVRs are used primarily rate the shows. Commercial watching, however, will be seen as happening much less, which I suppose is appropriate since those of that can, do watch as few commercials as possible. Sadly, prefering to watch content and even being pretty unwilling to watch commercials may in the long run prevent content geared to those kinds of individuals from being created. No watching commercials = low ratings = not enough money to produce. Yet I still do everythign I can to limit down commercial watching as much as possible. I realize that may constitute copyright infringement, but I still enjoy the entertainment so much more without having to hear 'these important messages.'
This is true. That exhibit at the museum is so tweet. In fact, their entire exhibit (the dinosaur wing), demonstrates, in my mind, rather concretely the beautiful reasonable progression of evolutionary history, not to parrot the scientific view.
Birds are therapod dinosaurs. I can't understand why there is such a flap about this. You can see exactly who they are related to and other evolutionary steps at the exhibit. Stunning, mind-expanding. Let the idea seed your imagination. Migrate from ignorance. Fly towards clarity, becoming an eagle-eyed appreciator of how things came to beak.
I was attempting to capture an ironic juxtaposition between the stereotypical sophistication between an individual who enjoys "fine" performance and a flaming poster whose passionate defense of thier fandom far exceeds their ability to express their tastes in a refined fashion. My apologies if offense was had. Man, I feel like this post should be modded -1 awkward.
Midseason three and season four are when it really gets to be excellent, like biting the nails, I, Claudius, excellent.
Payoff for all the previous crud you had to shift through. Keep the netflix faith. It's worth it.
Season 5? You can pretty much skip it entirely.
Actually, this is incorrect. You have to provide the illusion of being neutral. True neutrality is impossible when you bread is buttered on one side, researching cannot help but know where their funding is coming from, and the human element will skew it, in hopes to get more research money from that source. Happily, bias is inherent in humanity, so everything you are exposed to is skewed one way or another.
Land of milk and funky 1420 BC Móshe
It's more a matter of contemplating the face of the grown adult, even though the little tyke is only making baby steps right now. It's as an easy a distraction to focus on the limitations of current technology as to be unrealistic about where the technology might end up. In deference to "no wireless. less space than nomad. lame." factor, however, it's often a worthwhile time to recognize that some relatively harmless incremental technology can be the doorway to groundbreaking, paradigm shifting, lifestyle-shifting, dominion altering stuff.
If mentioned, it's right to link to Right to Read.