"How was school today?" "I played WoW."Follow

Idea is good, though I'm curious about A) where it's headed and B) why it was newsed now. Maybe I missed something, but when I browsed their site and forum I noticed how the average topic had 0 replies and how the last edits and significant updates were six months old.

Every other post I read from you adds a bit to the vision of "spectacled Teacake, teacher of English literature" I have in my head.

Is there anything English older than ten years you haven't read?

A friend of mine did his senior thesis on the Lord of the Rings.

It's not Ivy League, but this was at Villanova.

I have no idea what the hell you guys are talking about.

And it makes me kinda happy.

Shut UP, that is NOT weird. My Charles ******* action figure told me so. (Yep, that's right.)



Can't you use parental controls to specify which channels they can join? I would think you'd need a lot of parental control type things in place for liability reasons, as the photo shows them playing in a computer lab type environment we can assume is school property with the school's network and computers. And how would the accounts work? Does the school purchase a license and pay the subscription fees for all the accounts? I can't imagine finding budget for that during the present crunch, but I can't imagine them requiring students to lay out that kind of cash for a course available in a public school either. I wonder how they're working it.

This sort of thing would be good enough PR for Blizz that if it got any traction, I wouldn't be surprised if they were willing to donate/comp things like subcriptions and maybe even set up servers solely for this use. Think of the gold to be mined in having a video game, something many parents have vaguely evil associations with and are hesitant to buy their kids, legitimized as something taught in schools right beside Shakespeare.

Edit: If anyone is curious, they explain all that here. The school appears to be paying for the accounts and just associating one with each computer in their lab. When the school year ends, they clear out that account's characters so it can start fresh for the next student. Against TOS, no?


Edited, Jan 25th 2011 9:34am by teacake

I’m a fan of Steinbeck, though I’d champion East of Eden or Of Mice and Men over Grapes of Wrath for pleasure reading. Grapes gets taught so much because it is a vivid portrait of an important part of US history and because the varied interchapters show a lot of different literary techniques. But it’s fairly preachy.

Speaking of books related to Warcraft and to social justice, y’all need to read Cory Doctorow’s novel “For the Win”. It’s an action-adventure that looks at the shadow economy associated with online gaming--gold farming, to oversimplify--from a perspective that most of us lack.

Why did you do this? Now I'm here at the office with a picture in my mind of this woman with her jet black hair tied up in a bun, holding the frame of her oversized glasses with one hand and pulling them down slightly, and looking over them at me with a smile that has just a hint of "come hither."

I'm going to stop the description here in order to keep the "G" rating, but I'll give you a hint. White blouse with lots of ruffles on the front with the top two or three buttons not done.

Realpolitik has nothing on that story. Still one of my favorite FFs.

Higher order moral thinking (post-conventional, as per Kohlberg) dictates that laws and rules were created for specific purposes. Those who have ascended to the highest level of moral reasoning choose to follow (or not follow) rules based on their own abstract principles.

We all choose which rules we are going to follow and which we are going to bend. Those of us with a strong social conscience will break rules as long as we believe we are not harming anyone. I break WoW rules from time to time when I log onto my friends' account to craft something for myself, with their permission, of course. (I don't actually do that any more because logging on from a distant geographical location will trigger an anti-hacking defense and the person will have to reset their password via email confirmation). I also smoke pot, even though it's still illegal where I live. Oh and I speed when I drive, often cruising 20 km/h over the limit when conditions permit.

You follow rules because they are rules, but rules are enforced for a specific reason or set of reasons. Blizzard could ban all of those accounts, but they won't. I think they'd much rather do a community spotlight feature on it to try to boost their image.

If you really believe that rules are rules, make sure you don't exceed the speed limit by 1 km/h on your way home from work. Rules are rules...

Edited, Jan 25th 2011 12:33pm by Jordster

I always found it odd that on some level as long as you felt it was in societies best interest you could break the rules and argue you were on a higher moral footing with Kohlberg reasoning. Not a literal translation as such, but it always stuck out at me as a kind of moral loophole. But perhaps I'm still just viewing it through eyes that see it being used merely as a justification for civil disobedience more often than not.

The principles do not exempt people from laws... If someone is going to hold you in violation of something, your moral reasoning does not come into play. But if you make smart decisions, it will probably never be challenged.

...

I'm supposed to be grading exams right now. This argument is not even fun, but more fun than looking at ANOTHER 10th grade comp sci exam :(

Well sure, but hey it's the reasoning over actions anyway ya? It's less important how you act as long as you're convinced you have the proper moral justification for what you're doing based on your perceptions of what others hold as important.

Awww, well okay. I was having fun though. I don't even get to go into how culture specific or gender specific some of his though process was? (If you can tell I was never a huge fan of his... )

I have no doubt you're an excellent driver, Jord. I'm sure most people believe themselves to be excellent drivers. Hell, I believe myself to be an excellent driver. Yet, accidents do happen. A lot of them.



It's true that the limits don't dictate the speed at which driving becomes perfectly safe, but they help. 20 km/h can mean the difference between stopping in time and crashing right through. It's not so much whether someone will die at 50 km/h or 70 km/h, it's whether or not the driver will be able to stop or avoid in time. Once the accident happens, it's going to hurt regardless. Hell, you could fall on your face and die from a concussion.

Also, why the hell are we talking speed limits in a discussion about whether or not the TOS applies to everything regardless of intentions?

Edit: And it would appear I might have misunderstood the meaning of the phrase 'rules are rules'. I did not intend to say that rules should always be followed, I meant to say that rules apply to everyone regardless of intentions. Which goes for speed limits as well. And judging by your posts, you seem to be of the same impression, so we're arguing over nothing really.

Edited, Jan 25th 2011 10:42pm by Mazra