If your intent is pure, then all your actions will bear good.

• 6Aug 08

  How to become a man

  ok here is a method that men used since ancient times to grow up and understand the world.
  
  1. find a good, strong and long branch, use a good knife to make it into a staff
  2. find a deposit of hard rock, like flint, make a spear tip from it.
  3. remove all clothes, shoes and such and put a strap of leather on you
  4. make a fire, and recite this prayer: "I am a man and now I embark on a journey to find the fire to carry me through life"
  5. put war paint on your chest and face
  6. go to the forest and hunt a bear, you must use the spear you made.
  7. kill the bear but honor him, for you just took life.
  8. understand that life is temporary and every moment is lost forever, so regret nothing and cherish everything
  • Posted Aug 6, 2008 4:17 pm PT
  • Category: Other
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• 31Jul 08

  Applying the Zeroth rule on Gamespot

  While we all were new users once, it seems that a lot of new guys came to gamespot as of late, it seems that the whole community is being saturated by people who joined few weeks or months ago, I don't say it's a bad thing but many people that I used to see are gone. I admit I never was too involved in the community here at gamespot, heck I joined in 2003 but for many years I didn't even post in the forums or in my blog. I guess like in "Fight Club" you choose your own level of involvement. Maybe with the summer people get more bored and try to find a new community to be part of, our own virtual village.
  

  
  

  It's funny that this "surge" of new comers happens the same time that GiantBomb opened their doors, and some GS users left, while others share time between the two. I opened an account too, even the same user name, but GiantBomb is the same place, just less mods, but the same topics, questions and debates. Both have the same threads pretty much glued to the front OT page, some users even post the same thread simultaneously at both sites. Which warrant the question: did users go to GiantBomb just feel they are part of something new, while doing the same thing they did here?
  

  
  

  Well, GiantBomb apparently is without corporate corruption that struck the very core of Gamespot, but the forums were never affected by the main site, after all the forums are made by the users.
  One thing happens all the time here on Gamespot: users that are known in the community cross the fine lines of the ToS and get banned. Some open new account and start again, some get very angry and don't come back, it's like killing your own gene pool, usually the people that get banned (I don't mean the account suicides) are borderline trolling and flaming because usually the threads they are in have some "interesting" topics, and when a mod see that and use the "ban-hammer" they actually harming the whole community, after all you don't have that many intelligent posts (no offense).
  

  
  

  It can be compared to the 3 laws of robotics the first being "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." in this case its the not a human being but the ToS, but remember that eventually R. Daneel understood that robots must act in the interest of all humanity and not merely individuals, in this case the individual rules of the ToS sometimes harm the whole community, and without it there is no Gamespot, making the ToS obsolete. Sometimes a mod must act in the interest of the whole community, and not the dry rules of the ToS.
  

  
  

  Of course for a mod it's much easier to follow hard rules rather then some subjective understanding of the importance of a single user to the whole community, and after reading the last sentence I understand that for a human being its impossible to act upon zeroth rule of "community before ToS", as so I predict that eventually this impossibility will destroy Gamespot, because the mods are not gods in their understanding of the community, yet the ToS will statistically remove all the meaningful users in the community.

  • Posted Jul 31, 2008 12:07 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 16Jul 08

  Time to move out of the village

  Alrighty then soon the big day come, for the past 14 years I live in a very small village, now about 30 people live here (it was 70 when we came here), I work not far from it as a security guard in a factory, but plan to move out next month to the big city! (about 500,000 people).
  And while its all calm and quiet here, I really need to get out, there are no girls here, nothing to do except gaming (thank god I have my computer). It's not like I didn't live some in other places, once I lived in Eilat, which is a tourist city, for 7 months, but it was as a waiter in a hotel, and they gave me accommodation, so it's not completely independent, after that I lived 6 months in LA, but it was with my family there and again, not in my own place and my own master sort of speak.
  
  This time its the moment that every person reaches in his life, when he really move out into the world.
  I think its important to "move out of your mother's basement" (I don't live in the basement, we don't have one) in order to keep developing as a human, and to regain some of my mental health that left without me, well, imagine living in a monastery in the mountains for many years having connection with people and friends only once a while, many periods of complete physical solitude, it's not easy, but it's what I lived through.
  
  The reason I didn't move out earlier is that I guess I have a very serious problem of chronic procrastination that got more and more sever over the years, I guess the fact that almost nothing changed around me, made me feel that there is always time, but it might be something different, who knows...
  My friend that lived here until he was 17 finished school one year earlier just so he can move our quicker, I didn't have the same willpower.

  But no more! time to meet new people, see new places, having parties, and in general catch up with life and society that I only saw through the internet, or brief periods of time when I went to my friends. It's not that I live in the jungle and don't know what modern life is, I have a good computer, a car and all of the modern stuff, but almost no interaction with people. That is one important thing, because I really became sociopathic and quite depressed in the long years I lived here.

  Just few more weeks, then I'll have enough money for a month or two until I find a new job in the city.

  • Posted Jul 16, 2008 1:34 pm PT
  • Category: General
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