Greek: To all of you wondering who the hell Joe Peacock is, all I will say is this:

All of you are currently using something made by him. Something of a very geeky nature.

Hopefully SOMEONE here knows what I'm talking about.

What is this thing that makes this Joe Peacock supposedly so famous?

I still wear my Vote for Pedro tshirt from time to time...

WhippingBoy: Mock26: Greek: To all of you wondering who the hell Joe Peacock is, all I will say is this:

All of you are currently using something made by him. Something of a very geeky nature.

Hopefully SOMEONE here knows what I'm talking about.

What is this thing that makes this Joe Peacock supposedly so famous?

He designs Fark.com, and has been designing and developing websites since 1994.

A technological savant, as it were.

How does being a web designer/developer make him a savant?

Hi. My name is Moron, and....I'm an otaku.

Well, I guess I was. My thousand or so anime VHS and DVDs now sit in cardboard boxes. My cels sit in a drawer in art portfolios. My figurines...in boxes next to the videos. I have plushies and plush backpacks stuffed in a closet along with my other non-anime nerdness. I have a box of Sailor Moon CTG. Plenty of Mage Knight and Hero Clix that see about as much daylight as my MTG, which is none. I've been to ACen, Anime STL and Anime Weekend Atlanta. I've competed in a few video game and table top tourneys and came home with a few prizes.

Then I got a job. Then a home. Then a dog.

Responsibilities...how I wish you could all just go away for a week so I could just completely geek out for 7 straight days. I would Mario Kart until I redeveloped controller callouses. I would table top until I could accurately measure distances to the half inch by eye. I would watch so many OAVs that my VCR would beg for rest. I would be happy.

ProfessorOhki: AbiNormal: It seems to me that most of the people who call themselves 'geeks' are just people who are into comics/games/fantasy/role playing. You guys run around to conventions and dress up like your favorite characters, kind of like those people who go to conventions dressed as their favorite animals. Maybe we should call you guys/gals furry lites instead to separate you from those who love science and electronics.

But then, what would the appropriate venue for my electrolytic capacitor costume be?

This is just my uninformed opinion after reading Fark for years so please don't ask me; I am in no way, shape or form a geek or nerd myself that I know of.

I like Domo as much as the next guy but I'm not going to pretend like he didn't start life as a corporate mascot. I'm also not going to pretend like Domo is somehow the ultimate symbol of geekdom.

All I know is that I've been watching Star Trek since before I can remember anything. People ask me stupid questions like "How could the Enterprise travel so fast and not get hit by space debris?" thinking they're being funny. I turn around and answer their question and they get mad. That's one part of being a real geek.

The only thing I can really agree with in this article is that I definitely will go off on an excited tangent when someone brings up one of my favorite things. What's that? You didn't want to hear about Ptolemaic mysticism or its influence on subsequent religious cultures? THEN WHY DID YOU BRING IT UP???

No, of course you don't care about obscure traditions in the culture of the Fremen, you just mentioned Dune because you thought you were being funny.

Tell me I'm not the only one who both remembers and misses those sweaty church basement comicons that were actually about comics and toys.

FiendishDucks: I like Domo as much as the next guy but I'm not going to pretend like he didn't start life as a corporate mascot. I'm also not going to pretend like Domo is somehow the ultimate symbol of geekdom.

All I know is that I've been watching Star Trek since before I can remember anything. People ask me stupid questions like "How could the Enterprise travel so fast and not get hit by space debris?" thinking they're being funny. I turn around and answer their question and they get mad. That's one part of being a real geek.

The only thing I can really agree with in this article is that I definitely will go off on an excited tangent when someone brings up one of my favorite things. What's that? You didn't want to hear about Ptolemaic mysticism or its influence on subsequent religious cultures? THEN WHY DID YOU BRING IT UP???

No, of course you don't care about obscure traditions in the culture of the Fremen, you just mentioned Dune because you thought you were being funny.

Tell me I'm not the only one who both remembers and misses those sweaty church basement comicons that were actually about comics and toys.


First, how DOES the Enterprise not get obliterated by space junk?

Second, I have also had eyes rolled at me when I geek out about something. I was in a small circle that was very competitive with Armored Core. I destroyed in a few con tourneys. A lot of people don't realize it's not just robots shooting each other. There is a lot to balancing the weight, armor, energy/shell defense, energy output/capacity....I could go on. I've also done this with Soul Calibur, Magic, Hero Clix. Warcraft 2/3, Starcraft, even Monopoly. But what really gets me is when someone would bring up anime. It's the biggest hobby I've ever had. I've collected videos and cels for years. If someone showed interest, I would lay it down for them. Sometimes they would get more interested, sometimes I would get the "You watch cartoons?" response. NO! It's not just cartoons! You watched Trigun? Ok, but did you really see it?

/rant over.

oops lol

FiendishDucks: MoronLessOff:

First, how DOES the Enterprise not get obliterated by space junk?

.

Well, keeping in mind that we're talking about something which, unfortunately, doesn't exist, the Enterprise has what amounts to a light reverse tractor beam mounted to the forward section of the ship. Rather than having everything crash into the shields and deplete the power reserves (and cause quite a few significant jolts during high speed) this system gently pushes things out of the way. This, of course, doesn't take into account the dilation caused by the warp engines which could affect the relative size and mass of the debris. This dilation represents a significantly different debris problem than that which is faced by the (now defunct >:( !) space shuttle and ISS.

Building on this, we can assume that commonly used routes through high traffic portions of space would be somewhat clear of most static debris due the to the regular use of things such as shuttles and freighters.

Randomly pushing debris in different directions at varying speeds also poses an interesting problem when you consider how safe this sort of thing is to unprotected ships, satellites and planets. It's sort of like doing 90 on the highway and throwing pennies out of the window as you go. It would also disturb certain delicate ecosystems such as a nebula although most courses would be set with an eye towards avoiding that sort of thing (despite the fact that Enterprise captains seem to love "anomalies").

Of course, there are more than a few different Enterprises and I'm sure who ever is in charge of cannon can change things when they want. (it's called Lucasing)

As for real geek vs fake geek, I blame the Big Bang Theory.

Ah. So space routes are like train tracks, maintained for travel, and the Enterprise has it's version of a cow catcher.

Now, this question never occurred to me, but the answer is interesting.

MoronLessOff: FiendishDucks: MoronLessOff:

First, how DOES the Enterprise not get obliterated by space junk?

.

Well, keeping in mind that we're talking about something which, unfortunately, doesn't exist, the Enterprise has what amounts to a light reverse tractor beam mounted to the forward section of the ship. Rather than having everything crash into the shields and deplete the power reserves (and cause quite a few significant jolts during high speed) this system gently pushes things out of the way. This, of course, doesn't take into account the dilation caused by the warp engines which could affect the relative size and mass of the debris. This dilation represents a significantly different debris problem than that which is faced by the (now defunct >:( !) space shuttle and ISS.

Building on this, we can assume that commonly used routes through high traffic portions of space would be somewhat clear of most static debris due the to the regular use of things such as shuttles and freighters.

Randomly pushing debris in different directions at varying speeds also poses an interesting problem when you consider how safe this sort of thing is to unprotected ships, satellites and planets. It's sort of like doing 90 on the highway and throwing pennies out of the window as you go. It would also disturb certain delicate ecosystems such as a nebula although most courses would be set with an eye towards avoiding that sort of thing (despite the fact that Enterprise captains seem to love "anomalies").

Of course, there are more than a few different Enterprises and I'm sure who ever is in charge of cannon can change things when they want. (it's called Lucasing)

As for real geek vs fake geek, I blame the Big Bang Theory.

Ah. So space routes are like train tracks, maintained for travel, and the Enterprise has it's version of a cow catcher.

Now, this question never occurred to me, but the answer is interesting.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it lol

I can't speak for the new hot rod Enterprise, I think that just works with the power of lens flare.

foxyshadis: Quasar: WhippingBoy: Quasar: (playing Farmville was enough to throw you in the 'gamer' category)

You've got to be kidding me.

Farmville, Bejeweled, etc. Apparently my mom's a gamer (she plays Solitaire).

Now, there's an argument to be made that the definition has and should be changed simply because the industry has changed. The advent of detailed phone apps and browser games is indicative that gaming is pushing into new frontiers. So as much as it pains me to think of it that way, it may be valid. Old school-definition gamers are probably a minority now. But the terminology and categorization needs to keep this in mind when looking back into the past and making comparisons otherwise we're not having the right conversations.

Also, if you seriously and honestly look back on old school games - before Doom and excluding classic epic RPGs - there's a strong case to be made that most early games were just as casual games as modern ones, it was the kids starved for entertainment that obsessed over extremely simple button-mashing games like Mario and Double Dragon. (And I say this as an old school obsessive button masher and nerd-game player.) Just as old games punished you with fake difficulty so you have to spend more hours to beat it, new games often punish you by forcing you to come back in five, ten, twenty minutes, or keep you hitting that retry button until you get 3 stars in every level.

The rise of FPS games split gaming in two, essentially, into casual and hardcore. Nowadays who are considered "hardcore" gamers? FPS and some RPG players. Anything that's not an FPS or epic RPG is considered casual no matter how much time or skill it takes. Before FPS, almost everything was "casual" games you could pick up and play and put down at any time; even fighting games, with their contorted combo chains, were still pick-up-and-play games. Pretty much the only exceptions before that were for the real propeller heads: Realistic simulators, RPGs, and text adventures.

I pretty much agree with what you have already written, but I want to add a few more.

Anyone remember MUDDs/MOOs/MUSH/etc? Maybe not hardcore, but not casual either given the technical details of using early modems and all that. Grandma certainly wasn't playing them.

I used to play the heck out of Master Of Orion, and though not a hard game, it took a lot of thinking ahead to play a good game of that. MOO was one of the simple space empire games. Trade Wars? Stars!? Ascension?

Also, war simulators for the civil war/naval and hex grid games took quite a bit of thought to execute well. Probably doesn't make any of them hardcore, but if you catch your friend with a pad full of calculations that he refuses to show, but is really itching to play another game of Steel Panthers, then you know something sneaky is coming. Also, X-COM.

There are also a huge class of 'games' that are more open world/experimental. I don't mean GTA, which has missions and goals. There's this game (the name of which I can not remember) that's pretty much a physics sandbox with all of the models designed around rods and springs. It's cool to see what can be done using fewer rigid bodies than traditional, and the model deformation is fantastic. I would personally class these games as toys.

OK, last one. C-Robots. A game where you write the robots AI in some c like language. Probably C0 as I think this may have been an exercise for a compiler 101 class. Written by a guy named Tom Pointdexter. Just doesn't get any better than that. Thanks Tom!

To create my own definition, I would say a hardcore gamer is like a hardcore art buff. You don't just study impressionism and call it a day. You study as much of it as you can and you attempt to understand it in the era that it was released. Its a voracious appetite for learning and a willingness to try new things and experience games in all their formats. It's remembering when health packs used to be available in FPSes, or that the transition to mice for shooters wasn't immediate. Its beating Metroid for the first time and actually being shocked Samus is a girl, because no one else in the neighborhood knew that. It's setting up IPX/SPX so we can play DOOM.

With that sad, Facebook games can go fark themselves.

Prof Honeybone: Anyone remember MUDDs/MOOs/MUSH/etc?

Ha, I was just looking up MUDs today to see what I could try again. I plan on seeing if LegendMUD is still active. It sounded pretty cool.

It's been a long time though.

Prof Honeybone: foxyshadis: Quasar: WhippingBoy: Quasar: (playing Farmville was enough to throw you in the 'gamer' category)

You've got to be kidding me.

Farmville, Bejeweled, etc. Apparently my mom's a gamer (she plays Solitaire).

Now, there's an argument to be made that the definition has and should be changed simply because the industry has changed. The advent of detailed phone apps and browser games is indicative that gaming is pushing into new frontiers. So as much as it pains me to think of it that way, it may be valid. Old school-definition gamers are probably a minority now. But the terminology and categorization needs to keep this in mind when looking back into the past and making comparisons otherwise we're not having the right conversations.

Also, if you seriously and honestly look back on old school games - before Doom and excluding classic epic RPGs - there's a strong case to be made that most early games were just as casual games as modern ones, it was the kids starved for entertainment that obsessed over extremely simple button-mashing games like Mario and Double Dragon. (And I say this as an old school obsessive button masher and nerd-game player.) Just as old games punished you with fake difficulty so you have to spend more hours to beat it, new games often punish you by forcing you to come back in five, ten, twenty minutes, or keep you hitting that retry button until you get 3 stars in every level.

The rise of FPS games split gaming in two, essentially, into casual and hardcore. Nowadays who are considered "hardcore" gamers? FPS and some RPG players. Anything that's not an FPS or epic RPG is considered casual no matter how much time or skill it takes. Before FPS, almost everything was "casual" games you could pick up and play and put down at any time; even fighting games, with their contorted combo chains, were still pick-up-and-play games. Pretty much the only exceptions before that were for the real propeller heads: Realistic simulators, RPGs, and text adventures.

I pretty much agree with what you have already written, but I want to add a few more.

Anyone remember MUDDs/MOOs/MUSH/etc? Maybe not hardcore, but not casual either given the technical details of using early modems and all that. Grandma certainly wasn't playing them.

I used to play the heck out of Master Of Orion, and though not a hard game, it took a lot of thinking ahead to play a good game of that. MOO was one of the simple space empire games. Trade Wars? Stars!? Ascension?

Also, war simulators for the civil war/naval and hex grid games took quite a bit of thought to execute well. Probably doesn't make any of them hardcore, but if you catch your friend with a pad full of calculations that he refuses to show, but is really itching to play another game of Steel Panthers, then you know something sneaky is coming. Also, X-COM.

There are also a huge class of 'games' that are more open world/experimental. I don't mean GTA, which has missions and goals. There's this game (the name of which I can not remember) that's pretty much a physics sandbox with all of the models designed around rods and springs. It's cool to see what can be done using fewer rigid bodies than traditional, and the model deformation is fantastic. I would personally class these games as toys.

OK, last one. C-Robots. A game where you write the robots AI in some c like language. Probably C0 as I think this may have been an exercise for a compiler 101 class. Written by a guy named Tom Pointdexter. Just doesn't get any better than that. Thanks Tom!

To create my own definition, I would say a hardcore gamer is like a hardcore art buff. You don't just study impressionism and call it a day. You study as much of it as you can and you attempt to understand it in the era that it was released. Its a voracious appetite for learning and a willingness to try new things and experience games in all their formats. It's remembering when health packs used to be available in FPSes, or that the transition to mice for shooters wasn't immediate. Its beating Metroid for the first time and actually being shocked Samus is a girl, because no one else in the neighborhood knew that. It's setting up IPX/SPX so we can play DOOM.

With that sad, Facebook games can go fark themselves.

Oh god. I misspent my youth on a MUSH. Good times.

Prof Honeybone: Its a voracious appetite for learning and a willingness to try new things and experience games in all their formats.

That's what I was on about in my post about what a gamer is. Too bad gaming is becoming less of a gamer's market and more of a (casual) players market.

Prof Honeybone: MUDDs/MOOs/MUSH/etc

Too lazy to look up what each was. What would role playing in a yahoo chatroom be considered(if any of those)?(15-20 years ago, they still do today, but it's more like novel collaborations each action being a wall of text and boring. We used a speed based system, smallish minimum, like 7-12 words), and several lines(IE prepare to attack, begin the attack, and then connect (all before a defense was made....didn't take long to require a minimum wordage for defense....*dodges* gets pretty lame as an easy out.)

Prof Honeybone: With that sad, Facebook games can go fark themselves.

Oh yes, they're less games and more psychological torture devices with a pretty skin on top, designed to make you pay to stop the pain. Kind of like I wanna be the guy or Super Meat Boy, but at least those are also mentally and physically taxing.

Prof Honeybone: Also, war simulators for the civil war/naval and hex grid games

Oh hell, I totally forgot about strategy games, both RTS and Turn-based. There are a few casual ones (Rampart comes to mind) but by and large they are very hardcore oriented.

My main thrust is that hardcore and casual is a way of espousing smug superiority over people who play inferior games. If more people used it like you, it wouldn't have that problem, but your Renaissance gamer would be derided by most of the self-styled hardcore gamers who dedicate themselves to obsessing over the latest AAA titles at all times. Most hardcore gamers are really just single-genre gamers in an echo chamber, playing different variations of the same essential game; if that's what they enjoy then more power to them, but the endless juvenile crapping on anyone who enjoys anything else gets under my skin.

That's probably why I avoid gaming forums and comment threads.

omeganuepsilon: Prof Honeybone: MUDDs/MOOs/MUSH/etc

Too lazy to look up what each was. What would role playing in a yahoo chatroom be considered(if any of those)?(15-20 years ago, they still do today, but it's more like novel collaborations each action being a wall of text and boring. We used a speed based system, smallish minimum, like 7-12 words), and several lines(IE prepare to attack, begin the attack, and then connect (all before a defense was made....didn't take long to require a minimum wordage for defense....*dodges* gets pretty lame as an easy out.)

Well my card requires revoking because I spelled MUD wrong. I could barely keep the differences straight then and I couldn't do it without wikipedia support now. The one thing I do remember is some of the fancier ones allowed scripting for objects.

I've always played paper RPG's in person, though I know people who do it via skype. They just call it gaming as far as I can tell. As for preventing the descriptions of actions from getting boring, this is why our gaming group has switched to the Exalted system. The game rewards creativity with die bonuses and and possibly XP if you blow everyone away with your actions.

So a few times a game you get something like: In one smooth motion I unsheathe my blade so quickly, that the air swirls and renders from the stress. As the hot air spills off the blade, small rocks and and and dust get kicked up from the ground and needles from the nearby pines gently shower down. The force of the impact on the midsection of my enemy devastates his being in a line of bone and meat chunks that spiral out from the wound, spattering in foamy ribbons against the trees.

VS.

I attack him

If the GameMaster/StoryTeller thinks that is a good description you get dice. If you reuse the same thing noticeably and bore the ST, no dice. Literally.

Uchiha_Cycliste: AbiNormal: ProfessorOhki: AbiNormal: It seems to me that most of the people who call themselves 'geeks' are just people who are into comics/games/fantasy/role playing. You guys run around to conventions and dress up like your favorite characters, kind of like those people who go to conventions dressed as their favorite animals. Maybe we should call you guys/gals furry lites instead to separate you from those who love science and electronics.

But then, what would the appropriate venue for my electrolytic capacitor costume be?

This is just my uninformed opinion after reading Fark for years so please don't ask me; I am in no way, shape or form a geek or nerd myself that I know of.

Personally, I think you are confusing definitions here.
There are 3 biggies in this realm: Nerd, geek and dork.
\Now these definitions are somewhat subjective but I think they are pretty correct.

Nerd- the fore mentioned (our Boobies) Science and electronics master. Stereo typically above average IQ. Enthusiastic about school (when applicable) and learning. Necessarily has gained mastery of at least one field for examples, chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, math, programming, building electronics. It's assumed they possess knowledge and knowledge beyond the purely theoretical to the practical/usable in their favored sphere.

Geek- Someone who is fanatical about something. Generally something somewhat (in some way) a little childish. Ex. comics, baseball cards, anime, MLP, Domo, manga, anime, D&D (or RPGs as a whole) video games. They have expansive knowledge of trivia, has sunk ridiculous amount of time into their hobby. they are definitely, definitely far beyond a ordinary or even extra-ordinary fan.

Dork- Someone sort of aloof. this has less to do with knowledge, the pursuit of knowledge or application there-in,.. This one is all personality, a dork is, well, ort of dorky. But not necessarily in a bad way. For instance a dorky friend would never possibly be a reason to break off ...

Thanks for the clarification. I still think some of you Star Wars fans fall into the furry category though. ;-P

Prof Honeybone: I've always played paper RPG's in person, though I know people who do it via skype.

I haven't played in person seriously in far too long. I couldn't see getting into it by the books over something like skype. I'd love a morpg that'd play akin to tabletop(sort of like neverwinter nights) as all the people I used to play with are scattered over the country. All the "role playing" computer games today there's not much freedom or tools to really GM actively. They systems in D&D online were cool, but in the end the rest of the game format was blech!(a private server for that specific game and with GM tools would rock).

Your text example was similar to the way we played, but once actions started taking full minutes to type(due to a steady influx of people who didn't like the game/competition so much as sounding like long winded bad fan fiction), a lot of us just kind of wandered off. There was a sweet balance where an action line was about 15-30 words.

foxyshadis: Quasar: WhippingBoy: Quasar: (playing Farmville was enough to throw you in the 'gamer' category)

You've got to be kidding me.

Farmville, Bejeweled, etc. Apparently my mom's a gamer (she plays Solitaire).

Now, there's an argument to be made that the definition has and should be changed simply because the industry has changed. The advent of detailed phone apps and browser games is indicative that gaming is pushing into new frontiers. So as much as it pains me to think of it that way, it may be valid. Old school-definition gamers are probably a minority now. But the terminology and categorization needs to keep this in mind when looking back into the past and making comparisons otherwise we're not having the right conversations.

Also, if you seriously and honestly look back on old school games - before Doom and excluding classic epic RPGs - there's a strong case to be made that most early games were just as casual games as modern ones, it was the kids starved for entertainment that obsessed over extremely simple button-mashing games like Mario and Double Dragon. (And I say this as an old school obsessive button masher and nerd-game player.) Just as old games punished you with fake difficulty so you have to spend more hours to beat it, new games often punish you by forcing you to come back in five, ten, twenty minutes, or keep you hitting that retry button until you get 3 stars in every level.

The rise of FPS games split gaming in two, essentially, into casual and hardcore. Nowadays who are considered "hardcore" gamers? FPS and some RPG players. Anything that's not an FPS or epic RPG is considered casual no matter how much time or skill it takes. Before FPS, almost everything was "casual" games you could pick up and play and put down at any time; even fighting games, with their contorted combo chains, were still pick-up-and-play games. Pretty much the only exceptions before that were for the real propeller heads: Realistic simulators, RPGs, and text adventures.

iRacing is by far much more "hardcore" than any shooter I've played. I'm bloody terrible at it, but you can't wipe the shiat eating grin off my face when I play it.

Don't get me wrong, I love shooters (well, TF2 and Tribes) but I'm not the biggest fan of the whole modern battlefield stuff. Those just feel like point and click. Meh.