The 9 yr old had a better app & presentation than the 20 something immature idiots did.
This is why I doubt she, personally, was offended at seeing what her competitors had to offer.
She was more professional than they were.
So why shouldn't she be there?
Well, if people are going to be offended on her behalf, then it's not fair to the developers of adult-oriented apps, now is it? If I invent the greatest porn-surfing app of all time, don't I have just as much right to present it as the developer of F2P Bloodletting Island XVII: Rise of the Microtransaction?
I'd say that maybe they just need to separate the conference into a PG-13 group and Adults-Only, but that doesn't really fix anything.
I'm with you on this.... but at the same time, since "EVERYONE does this stuff", why keep trying to make it into a bigger deal than it really is with such things as lame smartphone apps featuring or simulating the behaviors?
Seems to me the ones who are making it a bigger deal are the people who insist on making a fuss. Had there not been an outcry, most of us would have never even heard of TitStare.
The Law of Unintended Consequences, Streisand Effect addendum, is in full effect.
That's indicative of the whole problem here. Yes, this is exactly what sexism is: "behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex" (from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexism)
Uh, you do know that chicks stare at tits, too, right?
It's sexist because it reduces the chances of any woman being there in future, 9 years old or not.
Really? So some idiot pitching an idiotic app about looking at tits causes some sort of wibbly-wobbly time-space anomaly, one that physically prevents members of the female gender from appearing at that location again?
Or did you mean that a handful of butthurt whiners would take things too far, make a mountain out of a molehill, and thus discourage future female coders from attending because it sounds like more bullshit than it's worth?
If the latter, then they should STFU and get on with their own lives; if the former, just wait 'til I pitch my SuperVagRater app next year - the rift it'll create will tear reality asunder! MWA HA HA HA!!!
The fact that business in general is an adult world is a damn good reason to not allow minors into these types of presentations. What's next, porn companies aren't allowed to pitch their apps either, because some tween might be present in the audience? They've got just as much right to commerce as anyone else... well, except maybe a child, since most nations have laws against kids working in actual jobs.
I want to know what the kid thought about the "offensive" presentation. My guess is, she got a bit excited when she saw the pitch, thinking, 'sweet, a craptastic app like that stands no chance of getting funded over my uber-awesomeness!' People don't give kids enough credit - especially people who want to shelter and protect them from any and everything that might be naughty or mildly hazardous.
FWIW, by the age of 9 a lot of us had seen much, much worse shit than a tit-finding app, and all-in-all we're not any more mentally fucked than the next group.
I always believed the best way to end a negative aspect of something was to find a way to laugh about it.
Let's face reality here - so long as there are obviously different races, there will be racism; it's an inevitability. The trick is to not let the racist fuckers dominate and dictate the narrative; this goes for racists on both sides of the fence, i.e. your KKK member and Al Sharpton types, and the best way I've found to do this is to laugh right in their faces anytime they start bloviating about the differences between Race A and Race B. By making fun of them for obsessing over such trivial nonsense, you take the power away, and eventually they either learn to laugh themselves, or they shut the fuck up and move on. Well, or option 3 - they continue being racist assholes, but nobody cares or listens to what they have to say.
I have a dream - that children of all colors will one day stand together and have a big, hearty belly-laugh at all these idiots who can't see past the pigmentation of another person's flesh... as the kids are pushing them into the mouth of a volcano.
Yes, men staring at tits, talking about staring at tits, finding new ways to stare at tits, finding new tits to stare at, or rating tits is all a new thing, invented by the giant sausage factory that is technology development.
Normally men choose to do this without women around, I suspect that the lack of gender balance at these things tends to bring out the frat boy mentality that would otherwise be suppressed.
Hey, maybe they were just trying to let the women in on the 'boys club!' After all, isn't one of the main issues with sexism that men act differently around each other than they do around skirts?
Some broads just don't want to be satisfied, I guess. Like most of my exes, bu-dum psht.
(In case anyone failed to figure it out - yes, I am being facetious.)
Political correctness is inextricably linked with hypocrisy. It is impossible to be politically correct without becoming a hypocrite.
That is only true if you take an insanely black and white position on personal freedoms and hypocrisy in general.
I don't think it's impossible, but it does seem quite difficult; take, for example, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (yes, this is a real group - I bullshit you not). Their surface claim is that they want to put an end to bullying, specifically of fat people; however, their main method of achieving this goal is to bully other groups and people with legal threats and derogatory commentary. Textbook hypocrisy.
The only person in recent history I can think of who successfully pushed a 'politically correct' viewpoint (whatever that term actually means) without being a total hypocrite was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
But luckily humans are not restricted to robot-like rule sets when determining appropriate behavior. Anyone who has trouble understanding why tit jokes in a professional mixed audience are a bad idea has some serious developmental issues.
Wait, but you just said...
So.. humans aren't restricted to robot-like rules, but any person who doesn't understand why they should have to adhere to an arbitrary set of robot-like rules "has some serious developmental issues?"
Second thought - if this is a "professional mixed audience," why the fuck was a 9-year-old in attendance? Are child labor laws a bit more lax down under, or am I missing something here?
"The Nuge" got out of fighting in Vietnam by pissing and shitting himself for a month to create the impression that he was a crazy person when appearing before the draft board. He is a coward and an asshole.
I see... so, when it's convenient to your cause, he's a nutjob, but when it's not, he's 'a coward and an asshole.'
This is why I don't take politicians too seriously - they're mercurial with an agenda.
I guess we can always count on you to sympathize with people that think the US should be attacked, and Americans killed, because you're such a super "patriot," or something.
But do keep in mind that the Syrian government has a bit more practice and training for this sort of thing.
That would be much easier to believe if not for the fact that the same spooks who trained Bin Laden have been providing support to the "rebels" for almost a year now.
So supposedly the US and British found evidence that Syria had used sarin, but refused to divulge the details.
Conversely, Russian officials are claiming that they've found evidence that the rebels had used sarin, but instead of keeping it on the D/L, they're passing the info along to the UN inspectors.
The problem with arming the schools is that it is likely to cause more gun deaths.
The problem with such statements is that they are entirely controvertible and not based on any factual data. FWIW, when I was in high school we had an armed police officer stationed on campus, and not a single incident of gun violence.
If you're holding a gun and are on guard duty, you'll likely shoot at anything that looks particularly threatening.
Where the hell do you get your information from? Movies and video games? The fact is, if your assumption here was correct, we wouldn't be able to go 4 hours without a news report of an armed guard shooting some innocent-but-suspicious-looking person.
I'm guessing you don't have a lot of experience or training with firearms?
The shooting will be investigated, the guard will be cleared if it looks like the guard saw a likely threat, and the incident will be largely forgotten, except by friends and family of the deceased. That's the danger of having armed guards in a real situation, and it does happen.
Citation needed, then.
There's also the question of how many people get shot in school shootings, and whether the resources needed to keep at least one guard on duty at all times in a hundred thousand schools could be better applied.
OK, so do you have a better idea? I'm all ears.
I could be wrong, but right now I think that stationing armed guards, or arming staff, is a big overreaction to the actual threat. Worse, it causes the perception of imminent danger, and contributes to the paranoia spreading around that will give up all sorts of liberties in exchange for a little perceived security.
That I cannot disagree with, but again, what's the alternative? Teaching kids about guns from an early age, so they understand what the tool is, what it's used for, and how to avoid becoming a victim?
And, you know, it's funny how the gallery at the Capitol doesn't turn into a shooting gallery as some might predict. Of course, it'd be stupid to open fire with the security guards about and who knows how many armed lawmakers. As a teacher at a public university, I wish my institution did not prohibit carrying, inasmuch as I feel responsible for the well-being of my students.
I hear that; I was working for a university when the VA Tech shooting happened; We (the IT Department) petitioned the board to allow us to either carry on campus, or have an armory somewhere in the school (most of the IT staff were former military). Needless to say, we were not taken very seriously.
As for being ass-backward, there is certainly some of that here. But I don't think it because of the quality of the people--who are as good and as bad as anywhere else in the country. What's ass-backward about the place is all the corruption. One almost wonders if this isn't the reason the politicians want to be able to carry.
Well, maybe we'll get lucky, and they'll use the ruling to bring back Congressional duels.
Slashdot Mirror
"Let's face reality here - so long as there are obviously different races, there will be racism; it's an inevitability."
Let's face reality here - all humans are clearly members of one race.
Are you really going to ignore my point because of semantics?
You need to set your own mind free before you can help others with their own.
You need to get over yourself, Chief.
The 9 yr old had a better app & presentation than the 20 something immature idiots did.
This is why I doubt she, personally, was offended at seeing what her competitors had to offer.
She was more professional than they were.
So why shouldn't she be there?
Well, if people are going to be offended on her behalf, then it's not fair to the developers of adult-oriented apps, now is it? If I invent the greatest porn-surfing app of all time, don't I have just as much right to present it as the developer of F2P Bloodletting Island XVII: Rise of the Microtransaction?
I'd say that maybe they just need to separate the conference into a PG-13 group and Adults-Only, but that doesn't really fix anything.
I'm with you on this .... but at the same time, since "EVERYONE does this stuff", why keep trying to make it into a bigger deal than it really is with such things as lame smartphone apps featuring or simulating the behaviors?
Seems to me the ones who are making it a bigger deal are the people who insist on making a fuss. Had there not been an outcry, most of us would have never even heard of TitStare.
The Law of Unintended Consequences, Streisand Effect addendum, is in full effect.
I'm not sure this is sexist.
That's indicative of the whole problem here. Yes, this is exactly what sexism is: "behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex" (from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexism)
Uh, you do know that chicks stare at tits, too, right?
It's sexist because it reduces the chances of any woman being there in future, 9 years old or not.
Really? So some idiot pitching an idiotic app about looking at tits causes some sort of wibbly-wobbly time-space anomaly, one that physically prevents members of the female gender from appearing at that location again?
Or did you mean that a handful of butthurt whiners would take things too far, make a mountain out of a molehill, and thus discourage future female coders from attending because it sounds like more bullshit than it's worth?
If the latter, then they should STFU and get on with their own lives; if the former, just wait 'til I pitch my SuperVagRater app next year - the rift it'll create will tear reality asunder! MWA HA HA HA!!!
We would not accuse a 10 year old of being "sexist" because he repeats dumb sex jokes to his friends
Yeah, we would. It is sexism. And we are supposed to teach the immature, regardless of age, that they are being sexist and is wrong.
So, kid, what was this joke you heard?
Do dumb blonde jokes count? I know about a million of those...
The fact that business in general is an adult world is a damn good reason to not allow minors into these types of presentations. What's next, porn companies aren't allowed to pitch their apps either, because some tween might be present in the audience? They've got just as much right to commerce as anyone else... well, except maybe a child, since most nations have laws against kids working in actual jobs.
I want to know what the kid thought about the "offensive" presentation. My guess is, she got a bit excited when she saw the pitch, thinking, 'sweet, a craptastic app like that stands no chance of getting funded over my uber-awesomeness!' People don't give kids enough credit - especially people who want to shelter and protect them from any and everything that might be naughty or mildly hazardous.
FWIW, by the age of 9 a lot of us had seen much, much worse shit than a tit-finding app, and all-in-all we're not any more mentally fucked than the next group.
Which people? From what I've read, you could be talking about pretty much all the parties involved.
I always believed the best way to end a negative aspect of something was to find a way to laugh about it.
Let's face reality here - so long as there are obviously different races, there will be racism; it's an inevitability. The trick is to not let the racist fuckers dominate and dictate the narrative; this goes for racists on both sides of the fence, i.e. your KKK member and Al Sharpton types, and the best way I've found to do this is to laugh right in their faces anytime they start bloviating about the differences between Race A and Race B. By making fun of them for obsessing over such trivial nonsense, you take the power away, and eventually they either learn to laugh themselves, or they shut the fuck up and move on. Well, or option 3 - they continue being racist assholes, but nobody cares or listens to what they have to say.
I have a dream - that children of all colors will one day stand together and have a big, hearty belly-laugh at all these idiots who can't see past the pigmentation of another person's flesh... as the kids are pushing them into the mouth of a volcano.
I happen to be a minister of Spiritual Humanism, so feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have.
TL;DR - Yea, I find the human need to piss and moan about how other people express their freedoms pretty fucked up, too
Nonsense. This is an isolated incident.
Yes, men staring at tits, talking about staring at tits, finding new ways to stare at tits, finding new tits to stare at, or rating tits is all a new thing, invented by the giant sausage factory that is technology development.
Normally men choose to do this without women around, I suspect that the lack of gender balance at these things tends to bring out the frat boy mentality that would otherwise be suppressed.
Hey, maybe they were just trying to let the women in on the 'boys club!' After all, isn't one of the main issues with sexism that men act differently around each other than they do around skirts?
Some broads just don't want to be satisfied, I guess. Like most of my exes, bu-dum psht.
(In case anyone failed to figure it out - yes, I am being facetious.)
Political correctness is inextricably linked with hypocrisy. It is impossible to be politically correct without becoming a hypocrite.
That is only true if you take an insanely black and white position on personal freedoms and hypocrisy in general.
I don't think it's impossible, but it does seem quite difficult; take, for example, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (yes, this is a real group - I bullshit you not). Their surface claim is that they want to put an end to bullying, specifically of fat people; however, their main method of achieving this goal is to bully other groups and people with legal threats and derogatory commentary. Textbook hypocrisy.
The only person in recent history I can think of who successfully pushed a 'politically correct' viewpoint (whatever that term actually means) without being a total hypocrite was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Who was murdered for his efforts.
But luckily humans are not restricted to robot-like rule sets when determining appropriate behavior. Anyone who has trouble understanding why tit jokes in a professional mixed audience are a bad idea has some serious developmental issues.
Wait, but you just said...
So.. humans aren't restricted to robot-like rules, but any person who doesn't understand why they should have to adhere to an arbitrary set of robot-like rules "has some serious developmental issues?"
Second thought - if this is a "professional mixed audience," why the fuck was a 9-year-old in attendance? Are child labor laws a bit more lax down under, or am I missing something here?
"The Nuge" got out of fighting in Vietnam by pissing and shitting himself for a month to create the impression that he was a crazy person when appearing before the draft board. He is a coward and an asshole.
I see... so, when it's convenient to your cause, he's a nutjob, but when it's not, he's 'a coward and an asshole.'
This is why I don't take politicians too seriously - they're mercurial with an agenda.
I guess we can always count on you to sympathize with people that think the US should be attacked, and Americans killed, because you're such a super "patriot," or something.
Nice reductio ad absurdum.
Like, fuckin' textbook.
But do keep in mind that the Syrian government has a bit more practice and training for this sort of thing.
That would be much easier to believe if not for the fact that the same spooks who trained Bin Laden have been providing support to the "rebels" for almost a year now.
So supposedly the US and British found evidence that Syria had used sarin, but refused to divulge the details.
Conversely, Russian officials are claiming that they've found evidence that the rebels had used sarin, but instead of keeping it on the D/L, they're passing the info along to the UN inspectors.
FWIW.
Hey now, haven't you learned that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic?
Nah, see, it's cool - we balance it with a good helping of love for John Stewart.
How is this a troll?
It's not - cold fjord is our resident boot-licking statist, and you just stepped on his dick with your honest account.
This is penetration testing software, isn't it? There's no way it could be that simple, could it?
Dunno, but as soon as I get home and fire up the VM, I'll find out!
The problem with arming the schools is that it is likely to cause more gun deaths.
The problem with such statements is that they are entirely controvertible and not based on any factual data. FWIW, when I was in high school we had an armed police officer stationed on campus, and not a single incident of gun violence.
If you're holding a gun and are on guard duty, you'll likely shoot at anything that looks particularly threatening.
Where the hell do you get your information from? Movies and video games? The fact is, if your assumption here was correct, we wouldn't be able to go 4 hours without a news report of an armed guard shooting some innocent-but-suspicious-looking person.
I'm guessing you don't have a lot of experience or training with firearms?
The shooting will be investigated, the guard will be cleared if it looks like the guard saw a likely threat, and the incident will be largely forgotten, except by friends and family of the deceased. That's the danger of having armed guards in a real situation, and it does happen.
Citation needed, then.
There's also the question of how many people get shot in school shootings, and whether the resources needed to keep at least one guard on duty at all times in a hundred thousand schools could be better applied.
OK, so do you have a better idea? I'm all ears.
I could be wrong, but right now I think that stationing armed guards, or arming staff, is a big overreaction to the actual threat. Worse, it causes the perception of imminent danger, and contributes to the paranoia spreading around that will give up all sorts of liberties in exchange for a little perceived security.
That I cannot disagree with, but again, what's the alternative? Teaching kids about guns from an early age, so they understand what the tool is, what it's used for, and how to avoid becoming a victim?
Hey, now, that's not such a bad idea...
Googled it, checked the Wiki page, laughed my arse off.
Well done, sir.
And, you know, it's funny how the gallery at the Capitol doesn't turn into a shooting gallery as some might predict. Of course, it'd be stupid to open fire with the security guards about and who knows how many armed lawmakers. As a teacher at a public university, I wish my institution did not prohibit carrying, inasmuch as I feel responsible for the well-being of my students.
I hear that; I was working for a university when the VA Tech shooting happened; We (the IT Department) petitioned the board to allow us to either carry on campus, or have an armory somewhere in the school (most of the IT staff were former military). Needless to say, we were not taken very seriously.
As for being ass-backward, there is certainly some of that here. But I don't think it because of the quality of the people--who are as good and as bad as anywhere else in the country. What's ass-backward about the place is all the corruption. One almost wonders if this isn't the reason the politicians want to be able to carry.
Well, maybe we'll get lucky, and they'll use the ruling to bring back Congressional duels.
But we must make sure to only ban assault model helicopters!
Those are the ones that look exactly like other model helicopters, except they have black synthetic bodies and a tac. rail, right?
And a shoulder thing that goes up.
m
?
You mean a collapsible/folding stock?
Pretty sure 'a shoulder thing that goes up' is not an industry term...
LOL, I never knew Eisenstein was a real person! To me it's just something we used to say when we were being smart-assed kids.