A Shanghai online game player stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword, the China Daily said Wednesday, creating a dilemma in China where no law exists for the ownership of virtual weapons. —Online Gamer Stabbed for Selling Cyber-Saber (Reuters|My Way) But it wasn’t the stabbing that created the dilemma, it was the victim’s act…
Imagine someone coping with real discrimination — a black tanner, say, in 1897 Alabama. To expand his business, he needs capital and access to markets beyond the black business corridors in the south. Every white lender has turned him down, however, and no white merchant will carry his leather goods, even though they are superior…
Whether solving mysteries in text-based adventure games or slaying dragons by phone in multi-user role-playing games, many players still name the written word as their weapon of choice. —Jacob Ogles —Keyboard Is Mightier Than Sword (Wired) Rather than wallow in text-only nostalgia, this piece places text games in the context of modern 3D gaming, so it’s…
Across campus, in a second-floor windowless room, four students huddle around an odd, 3-foot-tall frame constructed of PVC pipe. They have equipped it with propellers, cameras, lights, a laser, depth detectors, pumps, an underwater microphone, and an articulated pincer. At the top sits a black, waterproof briefcase containing a nest of hacked processors, minuscule fans,…
In terms of their reputation within respectable society, comics hit their nadir in the early 1950s. Slowly, however, the pendulum started to swing the other way. The careers of two Catholic intellectuals, Marshall McLuhan and Father Walter Ong, illustrate how comics re-won respect in the post-war era. In the 1940s, long before his fame as…
Take her money and cut and paste a paper together from the internet that was so obviously plagiarised that she’d be guaranteed to get caught. And then, if I was able to get the information out of her, I’d report her to whatever her school was, and who knows, maybe even pump her for double…
Because Grinnell is a small college, it‘sclear that many students make postings that assume a lot of knowledge on the part of readers, and the postings range from serious to silly — with many appearing to be the kind of thing a college student might write after a beer or three. Another Grinnell student sent…
Columbia is introducing a new journalism curriculum. But it is doing so in a separate program, maintaining its old program, which has many of the characteristics Bollinger criticized. The new program is a one-year M.A. degree that draws more heavily on the liberal arts and broad areas of study, rather than the traditional, one-year M.S.…
In 1999, I wrote about the conference in my first online journal, but since I composed entries under a pseudonym, I wrote in vague terms and ended up saying very little. Whenever I met another blogger, the encounter always felt somewhat clandestine; blogging was something we did in a back room and certainly not something…
—Chess Tournament Photos I’ve added a few pictures to the blog entry about my son’s chess tournament. Similar:Every family has one.PersonalSeriously, clouds? Now?PersonalCarolyn performed as Ariel yesterday in the New Renaissance Theatre Company's production o… Carolyn performed as Ariel yesterday i…AmusingWhat does the girl do with my iPad while I try to jump-start her mother’s…
Many people think teens are technowizards who surf the Web with abandon. It’s also commonly assumed that the best way to appeal to teens is to load up on heavy, glitzy, blinking graphics. Our study refuted these stereotypes. Teenagers are not in fact superior Web geniuses who can use anything a site throws at them.…
Most biologists who have considered insect societies see them as models for studying altruism, with the workers looking out for the common good. But according to Wenseleers, the new work suggests that the more appropriate image is that of oppressed workers in a police state. —Susan Millius —Cops with Six Legs (Science News) While I spent…
The Nerd Watch Message Board is up and running! Visit an online community of LCD wristwatch collectors to socialize and share information about digital watches. —Nerd Watch Museum (Pocket Calculator Show) I had a calculator watch in high school. It had a touch screen. This was in about 1984 — it was awesome. I daydreamed about…
Mistake: A student raises her hand to announce that there’s a typo on a handout. Knee-Jerk Reaction: Saying “I did that on purpose just to see if you guys were paying attention.” Constructive Response: Reward the student who discovered the typo. Ask the whole class to correct the error on the handout by hand. Then…
Some of my offices have had peculiar shapes: 6 feet wide and 30 feet long with a sloped ceiling (once part of an attic); 8 feet square and — if you peeked above the suspended ceiling — perhaps 50 feet high (a ventilation shaft). I once had an office that was like that strange floor…
In 1982, testifying in front of Congress before the Supreme Court had ruled, MPAA President Jack Valenti said, “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” —John Borland —FAQ: Betamax–tech’s favorite ruling (ZD Net) A good primer…
Writing liberated the life of the text from the moment of performance. It allowed the poet to reflect on and manipulate traditional forms and subject matter. Recording the chronicles of oral culture led to the development of prose, a purely written use of language. By the fifth century, the transition of Greek society from oral…
This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions. —Yahoo! Creative Commons Search (Yahoo!) Slashdot is aflutter with…
Gray, a part-time worker at the Clackamas County library information network and the Tigard Public Library, sold at least $10,000 worth of library materials online in the past six months, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. According to Jim Strovink, a sheriff’s office spokesman, Gray would check out books, then tap into the library…
Appearing as part of a sextet of high-profile directors promoting 3-D and digital cinema at film industry convention ShoWest on Thursday, Lucas said he hadn’t yet committed to a precise schedule but hoped to have the first film ready for the 30th anniversary of the original “Star Wars” movie in 2007 and that he would…