August 14, 2005

• Initial impressions: I want to see nedroid's code.
• apparently the nedroid thing is a bizzare joke of some kind: http://www.nedroid.com/artsoft/artsoft.htm
• and maybe the whole article is a very dry satire? Aristotle said it best: "society is a house, change is a tornado full of woodpeckers." doesnt sound totally serious...
• Is this a joke? >You get to live a king's lifestyle, without a king's responsibilities. >...real money means nothing to me because I don't spend any time in the real world. What am I going to do, buy a real metal-and-rubber car? For what? Where do I drive? It'd be like Monopoly money to me. Uh-huh. And real metal-and-rubber computers will be distributed free to people with no real money, so they can live like kings in a virtual world. Where, presumably, they will eat virtual food. If this is for real, it's both sad and ridiculous. One can only assume that the author got picked on enough as a kid that his idea of utopia is never having to interact with anyone face-to-face again. Bad news: if all human cultural institutions and all social and professional transactions were transferred into a virtual world, there'd be virtual cruelty, virtual injustice, virtual humiliation, and virtual social status, which would be denied to people like the author, who'd then spend all his time getting virtually picked on. The only reason it isn't happening already is that the guys who used to beat him up are out having nonvirtual sex with their nonvirtual girlfriends, while this guy jerks off to some high-poly Elf Maiden in his Brave New World.
• >and maybe the whole article is a very dry satire? Heh. "Hey, did you hear they took the word 'gullible' out of the dictionary...?" Man, I hate being a sucker.
• I *reeeeally* hate being a sucker. I feel I should point out that I have worked with people who were nearly almost kind of like that. Okay, I'm letting it go. I've walked it off. I'm over it.
• Well, dont feel bad. Some of the points actually make sense and this is extremely subtle by internet joke standards. But if you go to the main URL it is clearly a humor site, although again, vastly more subtle than most of what you see.
• I've seen entirely serious articles that were pretty close to this. (Except, y'know. Without the "reorganizing your megahertzes" part.)
• if you think things are interesting only when you agree with them, i pity you.
• /more to be pitied than censored, me
• I like some of these other articles -- the gamer manifesto, great internet porn-off, etc. good stuff in there.
• I think it's a pretty obvious satire, but he's basically blowing things out of porportion to make a point, yes MMORPG's are growing like mad. And yes, they'll soon have influence on our society... He also compiled a list of 20 things he thinks should be changed in video games here...(Excuse me for not knowing the proper HTML...) http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifesto.html
• Just follow the links at the bottom of that story... but I'd suggest avoiding the home page.
• I think the point he is trying to make is that we all will be living within our imaginations. e.g. There are more and more information workers, we play video games etc. In other words 'living online', is a metaphor for the transition to the Information Age. I think it is generally agreed that this is indeed happening.
• >Well, dont feel bad... this is extremely subtle by internet joke standards. It needn't have been to get me. My problem is I like to mouth off about stuff enough that I frequently fail my saving throw against this sort of thing...
• >we all will be living within our imaginations Imagination is neither more nor less important than it's ever been. Playing video games doesn't constitute living in your imagination any more than does watching TV.
• Not very funny, but still puts a few points across. Actually, after reading up te level of involvement and customizing possibilities of virtual reality sites like There and Second Life, I fear the new generations of shut-ins, addicted to the complete freedom on their screens... hell, if I were a teenager today, I know I'd be glued to those places.
• As someone who has diffculty interacting with people in the real world, I found this mildly depressing. I have even less success with the etherial beings in cyberspace. Wah! Back to charm school, I guess.
• apparently the nedroid thing is a bizzare joke of some kind: http://www.nedroid.com/artsoft/artsoft.htm What are you talking about? It's awesome! I typed in horse, and it drew me a fucking horse! I typed in pony and it drew me one of those too- how cool is that!
• That's odd, I typed in "clever Mofite" and all it rendered was a smallish bear.
• I just tried it, and got the same picture I got when I typed in smartass.
• Heh. Indeed.