My tax dollars at work? I would ask what they
were thinking, but clearly they were not thinking.
‘I am a
radicalised goat hell-bent on jihad’ – the FBI’s new anti-Isis
video game
I’m a susceptible goat speeding down the path to
Islamic extremism, but first I must negotiate the green-and-grey
blocks of infidel propaganda. No, wait; I’m a radicalised
goat, hell-bent on jihad, but my extremist beliefs are threatened by
green-and-grey blocks of debate. Or could it be that I’m trying to
master the FBI’s virtually unplayable – it’s
almost as infuriating as Flappy Bird – new online
anti-extremism game, which involves manoeuvring a wayward goat
through a sub-Minecraft-style obstacle course whose metaphorical
intent is all but unfathomable?
The game, entitled Slippery Slope, is supposed to
educate impressionable kids on “the distorted logic of blame that
can lead a person into violent extremism”, but it’s also
indicative of how clueless governments can be when it comes to
reaching out to the kids. Slippery
Slope is part of an online initiative launched by the FBI called
Don’t Be a Puppet: Pull
Back the Curtain on Violent Extremism, which uses games and
quizzes to inform young people about radicalisation.
(Related) I had to check to be certain it was
real!
What is
Violent Extremism?
(Related) But don't believe just one website.
(Related)
FBI tries
to keep kids from becoming terrorists by creating world’s worst
video game
This pretty much fails to sum him up. Even when I
didn't agree, I found his writing amusing.
Longest-serving
member of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dies
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Feb 13, 2016
-
New York Times: “Justice Scalia, whose legal theories, vivid writing and outsize personality made him a conservative leader on the Supreme Court, was found dead in Texas [at the age of 79].
-
New York Times: Battle Begins Over Naming Next Justice
-
New York Times: Highlights From Justice Antonin Scalia’s Opinions
-
From President Obama’s statement: “I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibility to nominate a successor in due time,” he said, during a weekend trip to Palm Springs. Obama, who is in the final year of his presidency, said: “There will be plenty of time for me to do so and for the Senate to to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote…These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone, they are bigger than any one party; they are about our democracy. They are about the institution to which justice Scalia dedicated his professional life and making sure it continues to function as the beacon of justice that our founders envisaged.”
'cause I'm a jazz fan.
Montreux
Jazz Festival Launches Video Archive Spanning Almost 50 Years
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Feb 13, 2016
Via The
Quietus: “Montreux Jazz Festival turns 50 in July this year.
To celebrate, the Swiss festival has launched a new digital platform
for its archive of concert videos. Montreux
Jazz Live is the culmination of an eight-year project to digitise
the festival’s video archive, which goes back to 1967. Currently
featuring over 800 videos, Montreux Jazz Live presents a wide range
of festival footage in one place, with detailed information about
each artist and show, intuitive links and playlists.”
I suspect that if students found a paper they
wanted to use in their dissertation, they would have to pay for a
legitimate copy. On the other hand, you can pay for a lot of stuff
that might fit into your dissertation but which turns
out to be worthless. Just saying.
Database of
48 million pirated research papers is focus of litigious revolt
against paywalls
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Feb 13, 2016
Meet
the Robin Hood of Science by Simon Oxenham – The tale of how
one researcher has made nearly every scientific paper ever published
available for free to anyone, anywhere in the world.
“On September 5th, 2011, Alexandra Elbakyan, a
researcher from Kazakhstan, created Sci-Hub, a website that bypasses
journal paywalls, illegally providing access to nearly every
scientific paper ever published immediately to anyone who wants it.
The website works in two stages, firstly by attempting to download a
copy from the LibGen database of pirated content, which opened its
doors to academic papers in 2012 and now contains over 48 million
scientific papers. The ingenious part of the system is that if
LibGen does not already have a copy of the paper, Sci-hub bypasses
the journal paywall in real time by using access keys donated by
academics lucky enough to study at institutions with an adequate
range of subscriptions. This allows Sci-Hub to route the user
straight to the paper through publishers such as JSTOR, Springer,
Sage, and Elsevier. After delivering the paper to the user within
seconds, Sci-Hub donates a copy of the paper to LibGen for good
measure, where it will be stored forever, accessible by everyone and
anyone.”
For the Gaming Club.
1,500
Windows 3.1 shareware apps are now free, immortalized on your browser
… Now, Scott and his crew have done it again
with the
Windows 3.X Showcase—made up of a whopping 1,523 downloads (and
counting), all running in a surprisingly robust, browser-based
JavaScript emulation of Windows 3.1.
… The primary "3.X Showcase" landing
page should be your first stop, which contains a small, curated
selection of notable and weird offerings. SkiFree's
monstrous, cartoonish yeti roams free and wild here, as do some card,
gambling, chess, and board games. (One of those, Merlin,
puts some fantasy twists on the game Risk and asks players to find
and bring a key to "the Gate of Billium, called Bill Gates.")
… For Scott's money, the appeal of this
Windows 3.X Showcase comes from the deeper dives afforded by its
separate game,
app,
"toy,"
and "productivity"
archives. (The games library is by far the largest, having more than
1,100 entries as of press time.) In many cases, you'll have to click
around to figure out just what an app is about—like "filesave,"
an application that exists solely to save any open documents from
other programs, or "gravity,"
a graphically simple simulation app that can be used to determine
planets' orbits based on various points of data.
The whole collection offers quite the 3.1 rabbit
hole. Need a legally dubious Ms. Pac-Man clone? Say hello
to Ms. Chomp.
How about a Magic 8 Ball simulator? Right here.
What about an app whose sole purpose is to help users keep tabs on
whether or not their Domino's Pizza order arrived within the chain's
guaranteed 30-minute window of the early '90s? Pizza.exe
to the rescue.
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