There are more general things that have been linked to violence. I've heard that US soldiers in WWII sometimes had a hard time looking at the enemy and pulling the trigger, but there was much less of this inhibition in Vietnam. There was also the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and this was before there were any video games at all.
One risk factor is witnessing violence; for example, a boy who sees his father hitting his mother is more likely to hit his wife when he grows up. Could violent video games have a similar effect - making violence seem more normal and acceptable? I don't know.
The study did say that when parents were involved, kids were less likely to become violent. Perhaps another issue is the need for role models to show kids how to resolve conflicts.
I'd sort of been thinking of older kids who weren't especially popular/well-adjusted/mature. No, a normal 16-year-old probably wouldn't want to hang with a 10-year-old.
We are the ones who are responsable. Because, we, the technological elite, have done nothing to prevent this type of situation from occuring. And we have the power to do so. But we don't have the spine to accept our responsibilities for the technology that we create.
Impressive-sounding rhetoric, but I don't think that this makes much sense. It's like saying that if there's a chemical spill, every chemist in the world is responsible. This gets us into the idea of "diffusion of responsibility" - essentially, saying that "everyone" is responsible for something is almost as useless as saying that "nobody" is.
I was about 12 1/2 when I got my first period - apparently around average. But girls can generally be pretty mean, especially around middle school age, and it's not hard to imagine some of them making fun of an early developer. So what I wondered was whether the early puberty could cause them to be excluded by some of their same-age peers. If so, would they end up hanging out with older kids on the fringes? I could see a situation like that being risky.
Speaking of librarians and the Patriot Act, here are Dave Lippman' lyrics to "Ayatollah Ashcroft." (http://www.davelippman.com/
Well, I went down to see my librarian. Did I mention her name, it was Marian? She was handing my checkout records to this guy Who examined it for the FBI.
Well you can't always get what you want Cause some of the books have been withdrawn. They had passages from the Koran. And if you translate some, you just might find How to make a bomb.
Let me tell you a story About John Ashcroft And all the good things he has done
I'm a graduate student in Library and Information Science at UIUC. One professor I had last year has done a lot of research on the Patriot Act and its effect on libraries. (And yes, Leigh is definitely cool.)
http://www.uiuc.edu/minutewith/leighestabrook.html
I'd highly recommend the documentary "Control Room." So far, it looks like the US has used weapons, rather than weather, to physically attack al-Jazeera.
Good point. I'd wondered if there was a way of submitting a relatively small number of queries with terms that the data mining software would pick up - not enough to mess up Google, but enough to make it harder for the government to mine. Let me clarify - I'm not planning to do this, but the situation made me curious whether it would be possible.
I'm wondering how plausible it would be if Google tried to claim that they had no search records. For example, when you misspell a word, it's able to ask, "Did you mean to search for....?" based on information about previous searches. This would indicate that Google was indeed retaining something.
Yeah, some people said that Google would probably do that. But wouldn't destroying information after it's been subpoenaed get them in a lot of trouble? The difference with librarians and ISPs is that they make a point of not storing the information in the first place, which means that they actually wouldn't have anything if they got a subpoena.
If the government wins and is able to subpoena Google search records, would it be feasible to develop a script that generates bogus Google queries with terms that will trip off the government's data mining software? If there were enough of these in the logs (coming from different IP addresses), could that make the data much harder to mine? Just curious.
I'm not aware of cracking resulting in a fatality, but I remember reading about people breaking into the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Maybe a safety-critical communication system, e.g. air traffic control, being cracked could result in fatalities.
Overall, it seems like a positive thing. However, a few things concerned me. The article showed how a writer could add a talking balloon to a photo of a dog. This generally isn't something you'll want to do to images. Cropping and adjusting levels are a lot more common, though it wasn't entirely clear from the article how much functionality in these areas is available. It's quite possible that these things are supported, though, since the editing bar seemed to have a lot of tools. Of course, I wonder if the sheer number of these might be daunting to a non-graphics person. Still, the learning curve here shouldn't be as steep as it would be with GIMP or Photoshop.
I've heard that the FBI wasn't the most pleasant employer - all the security requirements could be pretty cumbersome. For example, they apparently aren't even allowed to have cell phones or USB keys at work. So if IT people are getting less desperate, it makes sense that the FBI would have a harder time filling positions.
My thoughts exactly. Video might make me less willing to read new blogs because I'd have to spend more time to see whether they might be interesting.
Anonymity is another issue. I don't put my name or photos in my blog for safety reasons. In terms of stalker bait, videos seem even worse than photos.
Some friends and I briefly talked about trying to create an online persona with a "soap opera" factor. We'd planned to have a blog with machine-generated entries that included stuff like hookups with various guys. In other words, she'd have more of a sex life than most geeks out there. We also wanted to have her occasionally post to message boards to see how well she could engage the users there. But some professors in my department were concerned about the ethics, so it's temporarily on hold.
The Katrina PeopleFinder project http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Katrina_Peo pleFinder_Project was a group of volunteers who put together data from numerous Katrina sites. The team members used del.icio.us to add and tag links to sites with survivor/missing data. It was really a good resource, and the PeopleFinder project ultimately gathered over 640000 records and supported over a million searches.
As a woman, I'm not offended by the disproportionately large-breasted female avatars, but they do make the game less plausible. How do I explain this politely? This look might work for strippers, but in athletic activities, larger breasts are a disadvantage. Seriously, take a look at high-profile female athletes out there. You won't see a lot of silicone augmentations.
Slashdot Mirror
There are more general things that have been linked to violence. I've heard that US soldiers in WWII sometimes had a hard time looking at the enemy and pulling the trigger, but there was much less of this inhibition in Vietnam. There was also the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and this was before there were any video games at all. One risk factor is witnessing violence; for example, a boy who sees his father hitting his mother is more likely to hit his wife when he grows up. Could violent video games have a similar effect - making violence seem more normal and acceptable? I don't know. The study did say that when parents were involved, kids were less likely to become violent. Perhaps another issue is the need for role models to show kids how to resolve conflicts.
I'd sort of been thinking of older kids who weren't especially popular/well-adjusted/mature. No, a normal 16-year-old probably wouldn't want to hang with a 10-year-old.
We are the ones who are responsable. Because, we, the technological elite, have done nothing to prevent this type of situation from occuring. And we have the power to do so. But we don't have the spine to accept our responsibilities for the technology that we create.
Impressive-sounding rhetoric, but I don't think that this makes much sense. It's like saying that if there's a chemical spill, every chemist in the world is responsible. This gets us into the idea of "diffusion of responsibility" - essentially, saying that "everyone" is responsible for something is almost as useless as saying that "nobody" is.
I was about 12 1/2 when I got my first period - apparently around average. But girls can generally be pretty mean, especially around middle school age, and it's not hard to imagine some of them making fun of an early developer. So what I wondered was whether the early puberty could cause them to be excluded by some of their same-age peers. If so, would they end up hanging out with older kids on the fringes? I could see a situation like that being risky.
Speaking of librarians and the Patriot Act, here are Dave Lippman' lyrics to "Ayatollah Ashcroft." (http://www.davelippman.com/
Well, I went down to see my librarian.
Did I mention her name, it was Marian?
She was handing my checkout records to this guy
Who examined it for the FBI.
Well you can't always get what you want
Cause some of the books have been withdrawn.
They had passages from the Koran.
And if you translate some, you just might find
How to make a bomb.
Let me tell you a story
About John Ashcroft
And all the good things he has done
Thank you. Thank you very much.
I'm a graduate student in Library and Information Science at UIUC. One professor I had last year has done a lot of research on the Patriot Act and its effect on libraries. (And yes, Leigh is definitely cool.) http://www.uiuc.edu/minutewith/leighestabrook.html
Yeah, the techies that I know, both male and female, don't seem to be too interested in soaps.
I'd highly recommend the documentary "Control Room." So far, it looks like the US has used weapons, rather than weather, to physically attack al-Jazeera.
Good point. I'd wondered if there was a way of submitting a relatively small number of queries with terms that the data mining software would pick up - not enough to mess up Google, but enough to make it harder for the government to mine. Let me clarify - I'm not planning to do this, but the situation made me curious whether it would be possible.
I'm wondering how plausible it would be if Google tried to claim that they had no search records. For example, when you misspell a word, it's able to ask, "Did you mean to search for ....?" based on information about previous searches. This would indicate that Google was indeed retaining something.
Yeah, some people said that Google would probably do that. But wouldn't destroying information after it's been subpoenaed get them in a lot of trouble? The difference with librarians and ISPs is that they make a point of not storing the information in the first place, which means that they actually wouldn't have anything if they got a subpoena.
If the government wins and is able to subpoena Google search records, would it be feasible to develop a script that generates bogus Google queries with terms that will trip off the government's data mining software? If there were enough of these in the logs (coming from different IP addresses), could that make the data much harder to mine? Just curious.
I'm not aware of cracking resulting in a fatality, but I remember reading about people breaking into the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Maybe a safety-critical communication system, e.g. air traffic control, being cracked could result in fatalities.
Was she able to figure out the decompiler on her own, or did she need someone else to do that for her too?
Overall, it seems like a positive thing. However, a few things concerned me. The article showed how a writer could add a talking balloon to a photo of a dog. This generally isn't something you'll want to do to images. Cropping and adjusting levels are a lot more common, though it wasn't entirely clear from the article how much functionality in these areas is available. It's quite possible that these things are supported, though, since the editing bar seemed to have a lot of tools. Of course, I wonder if the sheer number of these might be daunting to a non-graphics person. Still, the learning curve here shouldn't be as steep as it would be with GIMP or Photoshop.
CNN had an interesting article about academic culture in South Korea, which provides some context for the scandal. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/01/06/skorea .professors.ap/index.html
In the graphics department, Blender3D is pretty impressive.
I've heard that the FBI wasn't the most pleasant employer - all the security requirements could be pretty cumbersome. For example, they apparently aren't even allowed to have cell phones or USB keys at work. So if IT people are getting less desperate, it makes sense that the FBI would have a harder time filling positions.
My thoughts exactly. Video might make me less willing to read new blogs because I'd have to spend more time to see whether they might be interesting. Anonymity is another issue. I don't put my name or photos in my blog for safety reasons. In terms of stalker bait, videos seem even worse than photos.
Some friends and I briefly talked about trying to create an online persona with a "soap opera" factor. We'd planned to have a blog with machine-generated entries that included stuff like hookups with various guys. In other words, she'd have more of a sex life than most geeks out there. We also wanted to have her occasionally post to message boards to see how well she could engage the users there. But some professors in my department were concerned about the ethics, so it's temporarily on hold.
Maybe they just deleted the table from the article because they couldn't figure out how to format it in LaTEX.
The Katrina PeopleFinder project http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Katrina_Peo pleFinder_Project was a group of volunteers who put together data from numerous Katrina sites. The team members used del.icio.us to add and tag links to sites with survivor/missing data. It was really a good resource, and the PeopleFinder project ultimately gathered over 640000 records and supported over a million searches.
As a woman, I'm not offended by the disproportionately large-breasted female avatars, but they do make the game less plausible. How do I explain this politely? This look might work for strippers, but in athletic activities, larger breasts are a disadvantage. Seriously, take a look at high-profile female athletes out there. You won't see a lot of silicone augmentations.
Boy, it's a good thing we don't have to look at unrealistic pictures of women anywhere else, like Victoria's Secret catalogs for example.
Can I still be strong and intelligent if I don't feel like sharing my bra size with the slashdot community?