Protos

E-terror? gaming and life merging and emotions running high :-(

Teen put in hospital by 36-year-old man as a result of stock shortages

While it’s normally hardware launches that prompt violence and silliness, it would seem that recently reviewed title Gears of War reached such a level of hype that some customers were actually prepared to use their fists to secure themselves a copy.

According to reports currently floating around the internet, a 15-year-old boy was attacked and actually put into hospital by a 36-year-old man who kicked off in a queue outside a branch of Gamestop in Detroit.

Apparently, the argument developed after store clerks informed the crowd that stocks were running out, at which point the 36-year-old customer attempted to cut in line and when challenged swore at and repeatedly punched the 15-year-old who was to receive the last copy of the game.

Naturally the police were called and the man was arrested for aggravated assault and is currently awaiting arraignment at a local correctional facility.

The kid on the other hand was so badly beaten that he had to go to hospital for treatment to wounds on his face, head and neck. The real bummer though is he doesn’t even have his rightful copy of Gears of War to play as he mends either – this is currently being held by police as evidence.

via: 360-gamer.com

WOW – imagine that. The weird thing is that now I need to try that game, if it has that much emo-impact, it could be addictively good – or maybe the man just forgot to take his medication?

That is the claim of the platopeople.com site

The PLATO system, started way back in 1960, was developed as a technological solution to delivering individualized instruction, in thousands of subjects from algebra to zoology, to students in schools and universities across the nation. As the system grew and evolved, it became, pretty much by accident, the first major online community, in the current sense of the term. In the early 1970s, people lucky enough to be exposed to the system discovered it offered a radically new way of understanding what computers could be used for: computers weren’t just about number-crunching (and delivering individualized instruction), they were about people connecting with people. For many PLATO people who came across PLATO in the 1970s, this was a mind-blowing concept.

Most people in Denmark anyway remembers two computers as the first ones: the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore vic 20 and mostly Commodore 64 as the first computers available to home users:

But it turns out that the Plato was an even older system, that didn’t make it to the mainstream market.

As they put it:

This book is the story of the people that were a part of that online community — the first real online “virtual community”, pre-Web, pre-AOL, pre-USENET, pre-BBS, pre-everything.

well! back to the topic of this post turns out these people had emoticons alreaye in 1972:

So basically the common understanding that Scott E. Fahlman invented the emoticons in this post:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(

But with the Plato system you were able to put Characters on top of each other

well I guess I am a nerd then ;-)

It looks real fun. Although I am not sure that a lighter is the perfect pointing device ^^