i will say that my love affair with fantasy started in my freshman English class. We read Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, which i recommend. It's short and really interesting. Or if you're looking for a longer Le Guin, The Left-Hand of Darkness has been done a lot in classes. There's tons there that can apply to today.
Also, Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is awesome. i wrote a paper in college for a US Canon lit class where i justified the use of scifi in the canon and went from My Antonia to Martian Chronicles with nothing inbetween, since both books are somewhat about the cultivation of a new land/world, etc.
i'm coming to this party late i admit, but i'm an anthropology grad student and can make a few comments.
For one, no this guy was not an anthropologist of any flavor. The article states he's a "media professor." i have my own biases about media/comm studies people... but i digress on that.
An anthropologist would never go about doing research in this fashion; and i have to admit one of the reasons this article bothers me is due to my own discipline's outlines and ethics. We do participant observation and we have to tell our participants that we are studying them, and give those people the right to opt out of being in our study group and then we are ethically bound to respect that opt out. We're not allowed to experiment in this fashion; pulling strings to play "what happens?" We only observe, and participate as much as possible.
As to the content of the article, i haven't played CoH, but i study online communities so i can give a brief comment based on my own observations and readings.
My small opinion of what's going on here is this (note: i haven't read his paper yet, just the article). Yes, the developers have their rules. But as another commenter has pointed out, the community has made its own subset of community expectations which happens in any community; there are The Big Rules, and then the Community Rules that lay under those.
Also in virtual worlds there are many, many, many instances of communities using the worlds in ways that the developers never intended. Linden Lab did not intend for Second Life to become a huge social hub, they really meant for it to be a hub for creation and creativity (according to Thomas Malaby, in his book _Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life_). As the community finds new ways to use the world and the tools the developers have given them, then the developer has to decide which of these new ways to encourage, which ones to let languish, if any! They have to decide whether to push their own agenda to the detriment of the community uses, or encourage the community uses and still bolster their own ideas, etc. etc.
There's an interesting dynamic (which my research will be looking at) between developer and community. Who holds more power, how much each stakeholder decides to give in to another, etc.
At any rate, he was playing within the developer rules, but the community he was in had its own set of rules subset to that. So was he really following the rules? Who makes the rules in these virtual world spaces? to me those are the more interesting questions, not what Prof. Myers "discovered." What he "discovered" was nothing new and really, online worlds are reflections of the offline world. People are this rude in the Big Blue Room, a bit more muted as the anonymity of the 'Net allows us to be more bold, but you still see this type of action out here in the "real" world.
Just my 2 cents in whatever currency (virtual or otherwise) you want to put it in.
i would assume that since ZDM, who we all paid our subscription fees to, no longer owns EGM that our old subscriptions will NOT be honored.
Here's the deal. ZDM, six months after shuttering the magazine, still has not decided what to do for those of us who still hold subscriptions. i'm willing to bet they're not going to do ANYTHING, and instead are just hoping we'll all forget we paid them money so they can keep it. Eff that.
Call EGM customer service: 800-779-1174. Ask for a refund, they'll give you one. Don't yell at them; ZDM farms out their customer service so you'll only be yelling at some nice lady in Florida who really is just as frustrated as you are at the whole situation.
DO NOT go through the email form on ZDM's site, because it's all braindead idiots who don't read for anything except keywords. Long story short: i gave up and requested a refund via the email form. i informed them i wasn't sure what card was on my account but was pretty sure it had been canceled and therefore needed to a) find out what card was on the account and b) possibly give them new information. i was informed that my subscription was canceled and money refunded. Since i have seen nothing show up anywhere, that refund went to a canceled card originally held by WaMu. Yeah i won't be seeing that money ever again.
So don't email. Call. You'll get someone with at least half a clue instead of none at all.
What about people who hacked their iPhones but are still on the ATT network? My boyfriend was already an AT&T customer when the iPhone came out and wanted one really badly... only to discover that because he was a corporate customer, he couldn't have one because the iPhone wasn't able to be activated for corporate accounts. Pretty lame really, at least from a PR standpoint. I mean, all these corporate customers hauling around iPhones is some of the best damned advertising a company could get!
Anyways, when the hacks started coming out, he bought an iPhone and did the hack so that he could use the phone with his corporate AT&T account. AT&T is getting their money, Apple got their money... and yet he's one of those quarter million phones that was bought to be hacked which is apparently bad. I wonder how these people fit into this discussion of hacked iPhones.
Just as an FYI, this new service level doesn't replace the free level. You can still have a completely free journal, no ads. The "Sponsored +" level gives you a few more ammenities (15 userpics instead of 6, 1GB of storage on Scrapbook, and phone posting which is not allowed on the free journal), and comes with ads. There is also the paid user level which gives you even more ammenities and is also ad-free. Plus, you have to opt-in to the "Sponsored +" level.
So they're not going totally evil. Yet.
Re:I'm not a Californian
on
Tinfoil Hat House
·
· Score: 2, Informative
For being "California's News Leader", KCRA doesn't always get their stuff correct:) (they're my local news station. they used to be good but they've slid over the last couple of years)
Re:I'm not a Californian
on
Tinfoil Hat House
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Because it's a housing code violation. It looks from the picture like it's touching the fence/house next door and in CA (at least in Sac, I live there) it's illegal to build or have any structure connected to your house touching or within x amount of feet of the fence. Our neighbours behind us built some rickity lean-to on their house which used our back fence as one of the walls and we called the housing code people who came and told them to tear it down.
I think the issue more is that these people feel like they built this community into something that *can* make money, and now they're basically being told "hey thanks for all your hard work in creating something we can make money off of, now please pay to keep up that hard work."
I see both sides of the story. I get that it takes large amounts of capital to run sites like this (I used to work for userfriendly. don't hurt me), and I totally understand that they need to recoop some money somewhere. But I also see the community's side of the story, feeling betrayed that they built a community and now they have to pay to stay in it.
It'll be interesting to see how this develops... I want to study online communities when I go to graduate school, I think this may give me another angle to look at.
Oh give me a break. I'm currently doing a small anthropological study on an IRC channel for a class. I am of course in my paper stating which network and which channel I am studying.
This "study" didn't tell us anything. Just the "top 10 networks" and the "top 60 channels". And those are... what exactly? What is his definition of 'top'? by usage? What usage? Number of people connected? Amount of traffic? did he make allowances for people sitting on multiple channels? Too many open ended variables.
And has been said before... go looking for warez, you're going to find them. Of course the top 60 channels are warez.. but last time I checked, the top 60 channels didn't constitute all of IRC. His 'study' would have been better served if he had picked 60 channels at random (or say 10-15 per network). I'm sure that the number of people in all of the *other* channels on those networks combined way way WAY outnumber the people on those 60 channels grabbing warez.
Y'know, I may very well use his "study" in my paper to show the fallacies people fall into when they try and study online communities/culture. He definitly did a good job on that standpoint.
I actually am taking a class in Forensic Anthropology this quarter (from a Board Certified Forensic Anthropologist even) and I have to say, while I knew a lot of the stuff on CSI et al was crap, I'm almost getting to the point where I can't watch them anymore. The very first thing my prof told us on the very first day is WE DO NOT SOLVE CASES. It was in huge caps on her slide. As forensic investigators, we gather evidence and provide it to the police. THEY solve the case. For instance, in class we have an assignment where we are given parts of a skeleton and we must analyze them and put our findings in a case report just like our prof would write for her cases. On a rib, I noticed a fracture. My job is to document the fracture, say whether it is ante-, pere- or post- mortum and what kind of injury it is consistant with. It is NOT my job to say that the guy was punched in the ribs by the assalant 'cause he wanted the guy's wife or whatever. My job is to say that I have observed a peremotrum fracture of the left fourth/fifth rib which is consistant with blunt force trauma and then explain why (the pattern of fracture, etc). It bothers me to see these forensic investigators getting all Dragnet everywhere.
My prof actually discourages people from going into forensic sciences because really there aren't that many jobs. And she would know! Yes she's a well known forensic anthropologist working on some high profile cases (including the Peterson case) but she also teaches at a university. Doing case work is not her total bread and butter.
I'll also say that a lot of the people in my class are very influenced by the CSI shows and think that forensic work is all computers and microscopes and pretty things. They don't realize they have to deal with dead and bloated bodies, gunshot trauma, and other things that you shouldn't be seeing in slides at 9:30 in the morning (this morning it was maggots. Needless to say, I didn't have anything with rice for lunch). I don't think CSI will have the dalmation effect for forensic sciences (ie, people saw 101 Dalmations and went out and bought dalmation puppies because they were OH SO CUTE.. only to realize that they couldn't deal with the breed and gave the dogs away), but I will say I have to deal with a lot of tarts in my classes who I'd rather kick to the curb since they just want to wear tight little tshirts look pretty like they do on CSI.
I've gotta say I agree... as a former employee of the California State University system (Sacramento campus), i've heard nothing but horror stories. The entire system (20-some-odd-campuses) is converting over, and the project is something like $300 million over budget. For a state that's $38 billion in the red, that's bad. There's a ton of other stuff going on in that whole vein as well (like one of the selection committee sitting on the PeopleSoft board or something like that) but that's a whole other story. The community college district I just graduated from uses PS, and they call it PeopleHard. The first semester, people who signed up for classes using the online component of PeopleSoft found themselves missing from rollsheets. Grades got mixed up, some people got other people's grades on their transcripts that STILL haven't been removed... it's a mess. I'm so glad I'm no longer working for CSU, my campus has already pushed back it's PS implimentation for a year and I didn't want any part of the whole fiasco. I think maybe one of the 26 campuses has implimented all of the modules, but not without huge hassles for students *and* staff.
I can only hope that if the Oracle buyout goes through, it makes the PS product more stable and actually do what it's supposed to do. The gods know, Elison couldn't make it worse!!
... because a lot of times Kazaa/etc is a crapshoot. I know I'm not the only person who's downloaded xyz song expecting *That* song... only to find that the person I dl'ed from is an idiot and didn't name the song correctly. Or it's crappy quality. Or it's got a virus. Or get halfway through the download to have the person go offline, never to be found again (along with that rare song I've been hunting for forever and a day). Or it's Madonna telling us to fsck off:)
I'd rather pay a buck a song for what I know is going to be a quality mp3 that's *mine* and is actually the song I want, then have to play roulette on Kazaa. (and I say this as a poor college student!)
And perish the thought... I'd like to support the artist who makes the music. Tell them thanks for giving me good study music.
But Obi-Wan had no knowledge of Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. He said Luke is their last hope, and Yoda told him there was another.
Unless ObiWan didn't know Leia could do stuff with the Force. Remember, the Dark Side is clouding everything, mayhaps he didn't know Leia had the Force Powers too?
Just a thought. I don't see how ObiWan could *not* have known there were two... at every turn he seems to be there. Maybe only Jedi who are still among the living can sense who can manipulate the Force and those who can't.
Hey guys... The parents of the victims at Columbine have set up a charity to build a new library... why not donate the money there? They're trying to raise $3.1 million and they're about halfway there. Their website is at http://www.hopecolumbine.org. At least *something* good will come out of Katz's writings. He needs a proofreader. -Keth let us always remember and let us never forget.
I used to work for an ISP as its postmistress/abuse type. When I took on the job, we were #1 on the spamhippo list, and were being threatened with a UDP(to take effect within a few days). Within 2 days I had the news spamming under control. **2 days** folks. In those two days, I cancelled something like 14 accounts. POOF!! Problem solved. Now, the ISP I worked for did not have the scope that @Home does, but it just goes to prove that if you just inforce your AUP (it ain't just there for looks yanno) you don't have the problem. You'll have flare ups from time to time, but you can put that fire out and poof. You're in usenet happy land. All you need is a logging server and the headers. It doesn't even take a lot of brains to do it. All @Home really needs to do is grab a bunch of techs who aren't doing anything, give 'em the spams, access to query the logging server and I bet within a few days they wouldn't have a problem anymore. I know we didn't.
Slashdot Mirror
i will say that my love affair with fantasy started in my freshman English class. We read Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, which i recommend. It's short and really interesting. Or if you're looking for a longer Le Guin, The Left-Hand of Darkness has been done a lot in classes. There's tons there that can apply to today.
Also, Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is awesome. i wrote a paper in college for a US Canon lit class where i justified the use of scifi in the canon and went from My Antonia to Martian Chronicles with nothing inbetween, since both books are somewhat about the cultivation of a new land/world, etc.
i'm coming to this party late i admit, but i'm an anthropology grad student and can make a few comments.
For one, no this guy was not an anthropologist of any flavor. The article states he's a "media professor." i have my own biases about media/comm studies people... but i digress on that.
An anthropologist would never go about doing research in this fashion; and i have to admit one of the reasons this article bothers me is due to my own discipline's outlines and ethics. We do participant observation and we have to tell our participants that we are studying them, and give those people the right to opt out of being in our study group and then we are ethically bound to respect that opt out. We're not allowed to experiment in this fashion; pulling strings to play "what happens?" We only observe, and participate as much as possible.
As to the content of the article, i haven't played CoH, but i study online communities so i can give a brief comment based on my own observations and readings.
My small opinion of what's going on here is this (note: i haven't read his paper yet, just the article). Yes, the developers have their rules. But as another commenter has pointed out, the community has made its own subset of community expectations which happens in any community; there are The Big Rules, and then the Community Rules that lay under those.
Also in virtual worlds there are many, many, many instances of communities using the worlds in ways that the developers never intended. Linden Lab did not intend for Second Life to become a huge social hub, they really meant for it to be a hub for creation and creativity (according to Thomas Malaby, in his book _Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life_). As the community finds new ways to use the world and the tools the developers have given them, then the developer has to decide which of these new ways to encourage, which ones to let languish, if any! They have to decide whether to push their own agenda to the detriment of the community uses, or encourage the community uses and still bolster their own ideas, etc. etc.
There's an interesting dynamic (which my research will be looking at) between developer and community. Who holds more power, how much each stakeholder decides to give in to another, etc.
At any rate, he was playing within the developer rules, but the community he was in had its own set of rules subset to that. So was he really following the rules? Who makes the rules in these virtual world spaces? to me those are the more interesting questions, not what Prof. Myers "discovered." What he "discovered" was nothing new and really, online worlds are reflections of the offline world. People are this rude in the Big Blue Room, a bit more muted as the anonymity of the 'Net allows us to be more bold, but you still see this type of action out here in the "real" world.
Just my 2 cents in whatever currency (virtual or otherwise) you want to put it in.
i would assume that since ZDM, who we all paid our subscription fees to, no longer owns EGM that our old subscriptions will NOT be honored.
Here's the deal. ZDM, six months after shuttering the magazine, still has not decided what to do for those of us who still hold subscriptions. i'm willing to bet they're not going to do ANYTHING, and instead are just hoping we'll all forget we paid them money so they can keep it. Eff that.
Call EGM customer service: 800-779-1174. Ask for a refund, they'll give you one. Don't yell at them; ZDM farms out their customer service so you'll only be yelling at some nice lady in Florida who really is just as frustrated as you are at the whole situation.
DO NOT go through the email form on ZDM's site, because it's all braindead idiots who don't read for anything except keywords. Long story short: i gave up and requested a refund via the email form. i informed them i wasn't sure what card was on my account but was pretty sure it had been canceled and therefore needed to a) find out what card was on the account and b) possibly give them new information. i was informed that my subscription was canceled and money refunded. Since i have seen nothing show up anywhere, that refund went to a canceled card originally held by WaMu. Yeah i won't be seeing that money ever again.
So don't email. Call. You'll get someone with at least half a clue instead of none at all.
That ending line would have been funny if Judaism believed in reincarnation...
What about people who hacked their iPhones but are still on the ATT network? My boyfriend was already an AT&T customer when the iPhone came out and wanted one really badly... only to discover that because he was a corporate customer, he couldn't have one because the iPhone wasn't able to be activated for corporate accounts. Pretty lame really, at least from a PR standpoint. I mean, all these corporate customers hauling around iPhones is some of the best damned advertising a company could get!
Anyways, when the hacks started coming out, he bought an iPhone and did the hack so that he could use the phone with his corporate AT&T account. AT&T is getting their money, Apple got their money... and yet he's one of those quarter million phones that was bought to be hacked which is apparently bad. I wonder how these people fit into this discussion of hacked iPhones.
.. or watch it for free from their website?
(assuming it's available, but I can't see why it wouldn't be)
Just as an FYI, this new service level doesn't replace the free level. You can still have a completely free journal, no ads. The "Sponsored +" level gives you a few more ammenities (15 userpics instead of 6, 1GB of storage on Scrapbook, and phone posting which is not allowed on the free journal), and comes with ads. There is also the paid user level which gives you even more ammenities and is also ad-free. Plus, you have to opt-in to the "Sponsored +" level.
So they're not going totally evil. Yet.
For being "California's News Leader", KCRA doesn't always get their stuff correct :) (they're my local news station. they used to be good but they've slid over the last couple of years)
Because it's a housing code violation. It looks from the picture like it's touching the fence/house next door and in CA (at least in Sac, I live there) it's illegal to build or have any structure connected to your house touching or within x amount of feet of the fence. Our neighbours behind us built some rickity lean-to on their house which used our back fence as one of the walls and we called the housing code people who came and told them to tear it down.
You mean there's more than one Pamela Jones in the world!?!?
/. let me put that first sentence in caps? It loses it's majesty!)
You're kidding. There can be only one!!!
(why won't
I think the issue more is that these people feel like they built this community into something that *can* make money, and now they're basically being told "hey thanks for all your hard work in creating something we can make money off of, now please pay to keep up that hard work."
I see both sides of the story. I get that it takes large amounts of capital to run sites like this (I used to work for userfriendly. don't hurt me), and I totally understand that they need to recoop some money somewhere. But I also see the community's side of the story, feeling betrayed that they built a community and now they have to pay to stay in it.
It'll be interesting to see how this develops... I want to study online communities when I go to graduate school, I think this may give me another angle to look at.
Oh give me a break. I'm currently doing a small anthropological study on an IRC channel for a class. I am of course in my paper stating which network and which channel I am studying.
This "study" didn't tell us anything. Just the "top 10 networks" and the "top 60 channels". And those are... what exactly? What is his definition of 'top'? by usage? What usage? Number of people connected? Amount of traffic? did he make allowances for people sitting on multiple channels? Too many open ended variables.
And has been said before... go looking for warez, you're going to find them. Of course the top 60 channels are warez.. but last time I checked, the top 60 channels didn't constitute all of IRC. His 'study' would have been better served if he had picked 60 channels at random (or say 10-15 per network). I'm sure that the number of people in all of the *other* channels on those networks combined way way WAY outnumber the people on those 60 channels grabbing warez.
Y'know, I may very well use his "study" in my paper to show the fallacies people fall into when they try and study online communities/culture. He definitly did a good job on that standpoint.
I actually am taking a class in Forensic Anthropology this quarter (from a Board Certified Forensic Anthropologist even) and I have to say, while I knew a lot of the stuff on CSI et al was crap, I'm almost getting to the point where I can't watch them anymore. The very first thing my prof told us on the very first day is WE DO NOT SOLVE CASES. It was in huge caps on her slide. As forensic investigators, we gather evidence and provide it to the police. THEY solve the case. For instance, in class we have an assignment where we are given parts of a skeleton and we must analyze them and put our findings in a case report just like our prof would write for her cases. On a rib, I noticed a fracture. My job is to document the fracture, say whether it is ante-, pere- or post- mortum and what kind of injury it is consistant with. It is NOT my job to say that the guy was punched in the ribs by the assalant 'cause he wanted the guy's wife or whatever. My job is to say that I have observed a peremotrum fracture of the left fourth/fifth rib which is consistant with blunt force trauma and then explain why (the pattern of fracture, etc). It bothers me to see these forensic investigators getting all Dragnet everywhere.
My prof actually discourages people from going into forensic sciences because really there aren't that many jobs. And she would know! Yes she's a well known forensic anthropologist working on some high profile cases (including the Peterson case) but she also teaches at a university. Doing case work is not her total bread and butter.
I'll also say that a lot of the people in my class are very influenced by the CSI shows and think that forensic work is all computers and microscopes and pretty things. They don't realize they have to deal with dead and bloated bodies, gunshot trauma, and other things that you shouldn't be seeing in slides at 9:30 in the morning (this morning it was maggots. Needless to say, I didn't have anything with rice for lunch). I don't think CSI will have the dalmation effect for forensic sciences (ie, people saw 101 Dalmations and went out and bought dalmation puppies because they were OH SO CUTE.. only to realize that they couldn't deal with the breed and gave the dogs away), but I will say I have to deal with a lot of tarts in my classes who I'd rather kick to the curb since they just want to wear tight little tshirts look pretty like they do on CSI.
I've gotta say I agree... as a former employee of the California State University system (Sacramento campus), i've heard nothing but horror stories. The entire system (20-some-odd-campuses) is converting over, and the project is something like $300 million over budget. For a state that's $38 billion in the red, that's bad. There's a ton of other stuff going on in that whole vein as well (like one of the selection committee sitting on the PeopleSoft board or something like that) but that's a whole other story. The community college district I just graduated from uses PS, and they call it PeopleHard. The first semester, people who signed up for classes using the online component of PeopleSoft found themselves missing from rollsheets. Grades got mixed up, some people got other people's grades on their transcripts that STILL haven't been removed... it's a mess. I'm so glad I'm no longer working for CSU, my campus has already pushed back it's PS implimentation for a year and I didn't want any part of the whole fiasco. I think maybe one of the 26 campuses has implimented all of the modules, but not without huge hassles for students *and* staff.
I can only hope that if the Oracle buyout goes through, it makes the PS product more stable and actually do what it's supposed to do. The gods know, Elison couldn't make it worse!!
... because a lot of times Kazaa/etc is a crapshoot. I know I'm not the only person who's downloaded xyz song expecting *That* song... only to find that the person I dl'ed from is an idiot and didn't name the song correctly. Or it's crappy quality. Or it's got a virus. Or get halfway through the download to have the person go offline, never to be found again (along with that rare song I've been hunting for forever and a day). Or it's Madonna telling us to fsck off :)
I'd rather pay a buck a song for what I know is going to be a quality mp3 that's *mine* and is actually the song I want, then have to play roulette on Kazaa. (and I say this as a poor college student!)
And perish the thought... I'd like to support the artist who makes the music. Tell them thanks for giving me good study music.
But Obi-Wan had no knowledge of Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. He said Luke is their last hope, and Yoda told him there was another.
Unless ObiWan didn't know Leia could do stuff with the Force. Remember, the Dark Side is clouding everything, mayhaps he didn't know Leia had the Force Powers too?
Just a thought. I don't see how ObiWan could *not* have known there were two... at every turn he seems to be there. Maybe only Jedi who are still among the living can sense who can manipulate the Force and those who can't.
Or maybe her powers were late in maturing?
Just a few thoughts.
Hey guys... The parents of the victims at Columbine have set up a charity to build a new library... why not donate the money there? They're trying to raise $3.1 million and they're about halfway there. Their website is at http://www.hopecolumbine.org. At least *something* good will come out of Katz's writings. He needs a proofreader. -Keth let us always remember and let us never forget.
I used to work for an ISP as its postmistress/abuse type. When I took on the job, we were #1 on the spamhippo list, and were being threatened with a UDP(to take effect within a few days). Within 2 days I had the news spamming under control. **2 days** folks. In those two days, I cancelled something like 14 accounts. POOF!! Problem solved. Now, the ISP I worked for did not have the scope that @Home does, but it just goes to prove that if you just inforce your AUP (it ain't just there for looks yanno) you don't have the problem. You'll have flare ups from time to time, but you can put that fire out and poof. You're in usenet happy land. All you need is a logging server and the headers. It doesn't even take a lot of brains to do it. All @Home really needs to do is grab a bunch of techs who aren't doing anything, give 'em the spams, access to query the logging server and I bet within a few days they wouldn't have a problem anymore. I know we didn't.