Wow. Stupid people.

As more and more people use the net I am slowly reaching my limit of putting up with stupid people.

When someone asked a question on how to "hotwire" a Dreamcast controller for PC I gave excellent advice pointing out where you can buy adaptors online and pointed out some forums where he could ask his question and actually get it answered (he wasn't asking in the right manner or place).

The response was so insulting to me.

So he posted another question, asking the SAME thing.

He seems to think that he can just splice some wires from a USB cord to a Dreamcast cord and make it work.

Any working adaptor will require CUSTOM dedicated circuits.

This guy is obviously too dense to put something like that together.

Some jerk might eventually give him wrong instructions on purpose that will burn out his USB port.

I have seen people give advice on how to clean games by telling others to put their CDs in the Microwave on high for 5 minutes. [Yes that would ruin the CD and maybe the Microwave] Before this I never understood why people were being trolls like that. Now I somewhat understand. There is only much IGNORANCE you can take. Try to give some advice to someone and they will not respond like a normal human being because the internet 2.0 promises EXACT ANSWERS RIGHT NOW. Well the only problem is that more and more people are becoming ignorant slobs who can't take it when someone tells them "no you can't really do that".

People have to know their LIMITATIONS. They have to know that they can't just assume they can handle ANYTHING. There is no voice of reason on the 'net yet. It's just a bunch of assholes and the loudest asshole gets heard.

There is SO MUCH PRIDE IN THEIR OWN IGNORANCE. Instead of trying to learn they lash out against those that give constructive advice and criticism. They turn a blind eye to their own faults and look elsewhere for justification of their stupidity. AND THERE IS ALWAYS A FORUM OF LIKE MINDED ASSES WHO WILL SUPPORT THEM!

Is this the real face of humanity?

Has Technology shown us what complete morons the world is composed of?

Instead of delivering humanity into the next stage have we set the world up to be consumed by half-aware Luddites?????????

I have to stop looking around the Internet. I only depress myself.

ABC GMA news story made me sad this morning.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3882520&page=1

A 44 year old woman made a fake myspace account so she could harass a 13 year old. She made up a fake boy's identity to get close to the girl and eventually started saying stuff like the world would be better off without the girl. The girl killed herself.

The 13 year old had "low self-esteem and was on medication at the time of her death".

There is no law on the book to charge the 44 year old woman with anything. It would be tough to do so I suppose but it sucks that some grown person can drive a medicated 13 year old to her death and have no consequences at all.

As the internet gets wider and wider use I wish we would start getting tougher laws on the books.

The reason why we don't have "griefers" in real life constantly insulting EVERYONE and giving everyone shit is because we have laws and police and the right to protect ourselves.

But people harp how the internet is "just on a computer screen" and how it doesn't really matter because everything is anonymous.

My points:

A. In this story we know that's not true.

An asshole who swears and uses racist stuff and posts obscene pictures on the internet can generally be waved off since most of this stuff can be ignored or erased. However, with the web becoming more entwined with out daily lives I think this sort of shit will become harder to ignore and closer to our daily offline lives. For example most people don't know that if somone knows your last name and general area you live in they can use many free reference tools online to tract your physical home address and phone number. It's easy to ignore someone sending you a picture of feces. It's harder when people start to actually mail pieces of it to your home (or a letter bomb, because some people are over achievers when it comes to being a dick).

Of course you can take all that information off the books...but this has never been an issue in the past. I am reminded of the scene in "The Jerk" were Steve Martin's character is excited that he got into the phone book. "Things are gonna start to happen for me now!" The next scene is of a insane person choosing the person his is going to kill by randomly picking that name out of a phone book. Guess who's name is picked?

So because of something that "just happens on a screen" we are all going to have to have our address made unlisted in the next ten years.

(Mark my word, this is one of these things that I think, and I wish I wrote down later when it becomes true. In a leser example when I first saw the original Britney Spears video with her dressed up as a Catholic schoolgirl, I said to myself In two years they are going to have a music video where two girls dressed up in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms are kissing. A few years later we have to Tatu video where *gasp* two girls dressed up in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms kissing. With the world as unoriginal as it is I see this kind of shit before it happens all the time. I gotta start writing it all down.)

B. This sort of behavior bleeds into the real world.

I know most people feel that society in general has alot of assholes and we just see them more clearly online. But I think that if a younger person reads obscene stuff all day and watches videos were everyone swears for hours at a time, how can that NOT be reflected when they stop using the computer and wander into the real world? It's not that people are assholes. It's that people will become as ammoral as society lets them be. We have this myth that people are "nice". The reality is that most people simply do what society tells them they can or can't do. If the internet lets them do anything then they will do anything.

If a totally free internet would really provide anything useful (except for those who are on society's fringe of course, I mean look what the internet has done for the furry and japanese snuff porn industry, they are thriving!) I would be for it. But it seems like it just breeds antisocial behavior with no penalities.

Interesting reading and listening. - Considering the popularity of video games. And a brief ramble about my past online multiplayer experience.

NPR had an really interesting portion on "Talk of the Nation" the other day. I will post a link soon.

A Vet from Iraq just posted this article about gaming:

http://homefires.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/way-beyond-pong/index.html

It was good. However, the real treat was the responses. This was the best one.

"Interesting. Forty years ago, I and my friends would be routinely criticized for playing Avalon Hill boardgames, most of which were wargames. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

— Posted by Geoff "

Nice.

There was also a response that complained about Guitar hero for some reason and that got me thinking on another track. It said it was nothing like playing real guitar and was just about pressing buttons quickly in synch with a program.

I was watching Youtube awhile back before "Guitar Hero" became popular, there was a video of a Japanese video game where the player hit buttons quickly in tune to the music and graphics. There were a ton on comments about how stupid the game was and how it was just another "Japanese Memorization" game. Yet when you get down to it, that EXACTLY what GH is. Just pressing buttons in synch and memorization.

Take away the gimmick controller and change the music and it's pretty much exactly like any other rhythm game.

So how much is the popularity of games based on how popular they are perceived by society in general.

For a very brief time I played MUDs online through telnet and the Internet. In terms of gameplay I believe they were FAR superior to World of Warcraft. Plus back in 1998 they were mostly FREE. It was all text of course, but you were playing with MANY different people in a very complex world.

Now add some pretty graphics to that and add monthly fees and you have Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. And of course the game gets dumbed down. And restricted. There is less freedom. Yet the same sort of people that would turn their noses at the weirdos playing an elf in a text based game eagerly play WoW.

I personally stopped playing MUDs because there seemed to be no point. They were always adding new content and new people were always joining the game. The only way to be really good in the game was to spend ridiculous amounts of hours playing the game and use a shitload of cheap tricks like macros and keystroke programs. There is ALWAYS going to be someone else who has more time on their hands who will ruing these types of games. In any case I never got into them because I couldn't play with other people because of my busy schedule.

Then came brief interlude with Half Life and it's MANY online game modes like Team Fortress. I got so good at online multiplayer "Action Half Life" I would ALWAYS get the number one slot for kills and points scored. Yet I eventually walked away from that too. I had a decent Internet connection in college and I played a lot. Those were the only reasons I was good at the game.

In fact MOST multiplayer games are like that. "Skill" in the game just means you have enough free time to play it alot. That's when I got more into the single player PC and console games. Looking for a good, fun experience in a game is what matters. It's supposed to be a brief BREAK from work. Not work itself.

Now most gamers are coming to the same conclusions as I did about 6 years ago. It's stupid to spend time and money on games that you can ONLY excel in if you happen to have plently of free time.

This all comes back to the original comment on that Iraq Vet story. 40 years ago people were having the same arguement. Everything changes, yet everything stays the same.

You must look toward the future and make sure that EVERYTHING in your life, INCLUDING games have some sort of real value and are not just the result of society telling you what you should or should not experience and enjoy.

...Wow...I always post the best stuff when I have had an 18 hour day working and only get 4.5 hours sleep...