The Slashdot Comments Drinking Game

The Slashdot Comments Drinking Game is easy and fun. Prepare a bottle of your favorite drink and a small glass, open an item from the Slashdot main news and scroll down to the comments. Whenever you see one of the items below, take a drink. Keep in mind to only read the visible comments (those rated +3 or more), or else you will die.

Examples from here.

• A comment inquiring on how this news item is news since it's old/a no-brainer/obvious to anyone
• This is done in the tone you used with your mother when you were 15 ("In China, even *Americans* must obey Chinese law! Gee, who would have thought?")
• A tired Simpsons/Futurama/Yakov Smirnoff meme (keep in mind someone rated it +3 even though it was used twenty hundred times before)
• Comments inexplicably defending the big innocent corporation/country from the mean little bloggers / The 'don't make waves' argument ("You may not like them, for whatever reason. You may think they are inhuman and evil, but they are the law of the land.")
  
• Ad-thumbsitum argument: "If you don't like it, then leave/don't use it/don't do it."
  
• In general, any complaint that you should not complain
  

As a bonus, the Youtube Comments Drinking Game. Take a drink whenever you see:

• Comments consisting of "Doesn't this person have anything better to do with their time" and variations thereof.

Have fun. Don't drink and drive.

How One More Day Could Have Been Done Properly

(Parker home. Enter PETER PARKER, AUNT MAY and MARY JANE.)
PETER PARKER: I feel somewhat stupid about revealing my identity to the public.
AUNT MAY: Peter, you know I will always support you.
(AUNT MAY is shot and killed by a sniper.)
MARY JANE: And me, too. Also, I'm pregnant.
(MARY JANE is killed by someone. The VULTURE or something.)
(Enter J. JONAH JAMESON.)
J. JONAH JAMESON: Parker, you horrible person! People die because of your existence!
(JJJ is killed by ROCKET RACER.)
PETER PARKER: Mary Jane! Aunt May! Jonah! I rend my garments thus!
(PETER PARKER roams alleys in grief-stricken madness. Enter MEPHISTO.)
MEPHISTO: Parker, you suck.
PETER PARKER: I know. Oh, had I never taken the mantle of Spiderman!
MEPHISTO: Fear not, for I offer you a deal. I'll let you pull back all your fuck ups. Back to the first one.
PETER PARKER: You mean?
MEPHISTO: Uncle Ben. You can go back and not have him killed. And every other stupid thing you did will be revoked.
PETER PARKER: My soul is not enough a price to pay for the lives that have died for me.
MEPHISTO: Pah, I don't want your soul. No price. Just say yes.
(Music comes to a crescendo as PARKER ponders the gravity of the situation.)
PETER PARKER: Oka--
(Flash of bright light. Parker home. Enter UNCLE BEN, PETER PARKER. PARKER has different clothes.)
PETER PARKER: Uncle Ben, I'm home!
UNCLE BEN: Hello, Peter. Have you found a job yet?
PETER PARKER: Uh... not quite yet, Uncle. I'm looking for one, though.
UNCLE BEN: Peter, you're past twenty-five, you don't have a girlfriend and you don't have a job. What would your aunt say if she was alive?
PETER PARKER: I'm sure she'd be as worried as you, uncle.
(Exeunt.)

Man vs. Mega Man

In case you haven't heard of it, Wikigroaning is defined as such:

First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created.

It's very enlightening. Here are some I've found:

James A. Garfield
Garfield

Monopoly
Monopoly (game)
(best one I've found so far)

Poison ivy
Poison Ivy (comics)

Fraction (mathematics)
Ranma ½

Flight
Flight Simulator

Transparency (optics)
Invisible Woman

Zyklon B
Xykon

Ball
Pokeball

Sparrow
Captain Jack Sparrow

Soprano
The Sopranos

Bean
Mr. Bean

Beowulf (hero)
He-Man

Blight
Dr. Blight

Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
Metamorphosis (Hilary Duff album)

MD5
Mega Man Battle Network 5

Scott Kurtz Explains How To Make Webcomics

Have a bunch of plot holes in your sitcom-derived plot that you were too lazy to handle?

Paint them on a strawman and shoot him with paintballs.

That's quality storytelling, folks. Buy his book.

Sometimes I Wish I Could Throw Up Lava

"The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. [...] ... People are living longer and 50 years of copyright protection no longer give lifetime income to artists who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties, he said.'"

Imagine someone discovers the cure for death tomorrow. Maybe he researched chemical compounds for thirty years, maybe he just mixed a couple of cleaning agents on his kitchen and drank it. Either way, he cures death. Assume he patents this procedure and it is distributed to every human being so nobody would ever die again. He has created the greatest thing ever known by humanity. For how long he and his family will be allowed to profit from it?

Answer: Twenty years.

Meanwhile do you have any idea who gets money when you buy a re-re-mastered version of "Imagine", nearly thirty years after John Lennon died? Because I don't.

Le Demographie

One of the main things that made Psychonauts unpopular, I feel, is that the cover art of a kid in goggles just didn't appeal to its 20-25 demographic. To help future endeavors of Tim Schaefer and other fellas of the trade, I'm making a list of main videogame characters proper for each demographic:

Male
9-12: Furry animal with 'tude
12-15: Burly guy
15-18: Busty girl
18-21: Special ops secret ninja from NASA
21-24: Burly guy or busty girl in period clothing
24-30: Chubby plumber
30-50: L-piece
50+: Sudoku grid

Female
9-12: Furry animal with sparklies
12-15: Dog, horse, girl with dog or horse
15-18: Mix between reality show contestants and Barbies
18-50: Girls this age don't play videogames so just put busty girls in or something
50+: Mii

Hooray For The Person Of The Year

Google removed Youtube's Add To Groups functionality in October 2007.

I know this because it was the last date anyone that isn't me added a video to my Youtube Group. I don't blame them.

For those of you that only care about Youtube as a way to embed videos on your blogs, the groups are a way for multiple users to contribute to a single playlist.

Before the removal of the Add To Groups link, the process involved three clicks from the main Youtube video page:

1) Click on Add to Groups
2) Click on the group you want the video added to
3) Click on OK

The process was done automatically without leaving the page you're on. Now, adding a video requires at least ten clicks and a happy jaunt through eight pages.

1) click on Add to Favorites.
2) click on what favorites list you want to add it to.
3) click on OK.
4) click on your username to go to your Profile page. (page 2)
5) click on Groups to go to your Groups page. (page 3)
6) click on the group you want to add the video to. (page 4)
7) click on Add Videos. (page 5)
8) click on the playlist you want to get the video from. (page 6)
Optional step: more than 10 videos in that playlist? start clicking 'next'. No, there is not a 'last' button. (pages 7, 8, 9...)
9) click on the checkbox next to the video you want to add.
10) click on Add Video. (one more page because this certainly does not use ajax)

This if you started from the standard page - an embedded video requires three more clicks and a paste operation. And, of course, people can't subscribe to updates from groups, as opposed to personal playlists. This from a site that calls itself Web 2.0.

Actually, this is very in the Google spirit (don't put complicated things in the interface that might take time off you coding neat things) and in the Web 2.0 spirit. Web 2.0 is about two things:

• Gather information from everyone to yourself;
• Send information from yourself to everyone.
  

Any way to do projects in groups smaller than infinity is unsupported. del.icio.us is firmly plugged into your Google username. The 'communities' of social networking sites have a badge for you to display in your page and maybe a little 4chan-style message board for people to shout at each other, without any meaningful organization.

Web 2.0 is all about you. Maybe web 3.0 will be about us.