The problem isn't religion in video games, series like Final Fantasy has already addressed religious themes in their games on a regular basis.
"Christian Game Developers Foundation put out a video encouraging developers to create wholesome titles for kids", statements like that which cause issues when certain religious sects place act as the moral blanket for everyone christian or atheist, fundamentalist or moderate, they are imposing an agenda on people that do not necessarily agree with their views.
That being said, there is always the option not to purchase it... Don't like it, don't buy it. As long as there is still a choice for the public, then people can make whatever games they want. As soon as someone starts to moves stamp out that choice, resistance should be brutal and swift to maintain freedom of expression.
Both of them are the t-Touch series, which incorporates a touch screen on the analog face to control various functions.
The price isn't bad (Mine lists for $680 and $780 CDN, but I did get them for cheaper overseas), good Seiko's cost at least that, and Movados and dress timepieces cost well in the thousands. The best thing is, that the t-touch series maintains a cool gadget factor with the touch screen and things like the altimeter, ambient temp, immediate world time switching, etc. while still looking sophisticated and non-geeky.
One thing that's rather glossed over is Shirow Masamune's writing style itself. The manga in original Japanese was very complex, and written in mostly in kanji (chinese characters) which has caused even the average Japanese difficulties in understanding it. To give you an idea of the use of kanji, the common Japanese only needs to know about 500 or so kanji to be literate, resorting to hiragana and katakana the rest of the time. The common Chinese needs 1200 (Since it's all chinese characters).
This is very normal of Shirow's style as his writing and stories and a partial reason of why his stories are quite intricate. To give you an idea, it would be like comparing the writing styles of JK Rowling to William Gibson, one is very simple and easy to read, the other is very high-level and in-depth. Even Shirow's earlier works like Appleseed (Which is also very good), Black Magic, Dominion Tank Police, etc., are very detailed and intricate if you dig down into the origial versions of them, which unfortuantely is lost when much of it is translated. Even the bloke that brought the material over (I can't remember his name, Terrance-something-or-other I think), and knows the reclusive Shirow once complained that even he had problems).
The complexity of the socio-economoic, political, and contempoary moral issues that is personified in GITS:SAC is what sets it apart from shows like Cowboy Bebop (Which I also loved, I'm still trying to find one of the limited edition box sets). It's in a different genre of anime (yes there are a ton of genres in Anime) and definitely not comparable to Cowboy Bebop. Both are fun, likable, and are a treat for your senses, but CB is more entertainment while GITS:SAC is more a commentary. It's like Starship Troopers vs. 2010; They're both movies about space, but you watch one to be entertained, and you watch the other to be inspired.
GITS:SAC actually takes place pre-GITS manga, but does overlap and transmutate into some section of the manga. Avid GITS fans will draw the parallel of Kusanagi getting snipered in the TV series, and her body getting shot in the manga, as well as many other similarities that do occur between the two. It's one of those "Let's retell the story, but change a few things around to make it work, even though it'll screw up the interdepencies". Any avid Asian film buff will know what I'm talking about, it happens quite often even in "live" movies (i.e. Windstruck and My Sassy Girl).
One other thing to mention is that the 2 movies were Oshii's movies. Oshii tends to take this weird spin on the GITS world, and often leave out a lot of the details Shirow puts in, and more often than naught, substitutes his own views and imagery in (Read: the damn basset hounds). If anyone's ever seen Oshii's "Avalon", you'll know what I'm talking about. The style and subject matter is the same as the 2 GITS movies, and so is the way he presents his imagery (and the damn basset hounds again). Shirow has always defered creative control to Oshii in the movies, but has retained it, and works very closely with Production IG for the SAC series. Hence, this is much more true to the feel of the original manga, and is greatly departed from the movies, hence the additional complexity. It's almost an impossibility to compare the TV series (both of them) to the movie due to the differences in direction.
Although I disagree with the company's attempt at censorship (duct tape over mouth = bad), is that on the voices for change site, the TWU has been taking pictures of employees going to work, and posting them on the website with derragortory comments, with the intention to intimidate and harass them.
Still not reason enough to do a blanket gag over it, but it does make you think about what is really going on.
The CRTC (Canadian equiv. of the FCC) recently held public submissions on the topic of VoIP Regulation. They will release a decision in the next few months if they will regulate it or not.
During the submissions, there were a lot of petitions stating that VoIP should not be regulated. Most of the phone companies including Bell and TELUS (who I happen to work for), as well as the smaller VoIP providers, were against regulation.
Hopefully they will choose the non-regulated path...
Most good security professionals used to be good hackers. I hate this white hat black hat shit that people tout, doesn't mean a damn thing to anybody except marketing people. You're either good at what you do, or you're not, legal or illegal.
Re: DSL over Dry Copper - already done
on
Make Your Own DSL
·
· Score: 1
hey neighbour!
wow.. small world...
re: DSL over Dry Copper - already done
on
Make Your Own DSL
·
· Score: 1
Our company, Cadvision, has been doing exactally this for about 5 years now. We run old CAP based DSL equipment in near-locate naps to businesses all over the city. Nice article but it's old news.
So, did you actually think that you would be diing all the cool R&D stuff your term there? You're in *high school* for god's sakes, not even College/University. You may know a bit about some things, you may even know enough to hold a conversation aginst many of the other people there, but: a) You're young with no experience, b) More than likely, your knowledge about that field of work is very limited compared to what you need to know to actually do some of the cool jobs, c) Do you actually think that even enngineers do cool stuff like you read in the magazines, every day?
I mean, get real, this is the work world, you work at menial tasks 70% of the time, spend another 20% arguing with management, and only 10% doing the really cool stuff. When you get an education, and come into the real world, you'll realize the you'll be doing the same thing that you are now. Meaningless crap that has to be done one way or another.
So don't complain, as least they aren't making you fetch lunch for them, or are making you give them foot rubs or anything.
Ages does play a role, it defines who and how you interact with in the company. If you're a 22 year old interacting with a bunch of 40 year olds on a project, chances are you can get the job done, but the joviality associated with a well oiled group may be missing, just because the age difference is so large, you wil have disimilar intrests.
Age should not play a definition in the ABILITY to do a job, you are correct about that. It does give the immediate reinforcement of how much experience you may already have. After all age = experience. The perception of that in classic business, will immediately put you in a position where you have to prove yourself. Younger people in important positions will generally have to work 3 to 4 times as hard to prove themselves, before they will gain acceptance. This is how business is. It is changing, very slowly with the advent of hi tech business, but you still have to deal with structure like this.
In my case, I am very lucky. I have been with my current company for just about 3 years now, and I have moved into a very senior positions. I started on a help desk, moved to broadband installation and support, then into a research and development role, and finally, I just got promoted to the lead product developer. For a guy of 22 years old, I had to work to prove that I had the skills, maturity, and responsibility to do this job, and I had to work man times harder than some of my more senior counterparts.
The lucky thing is, that the average age in this company can't be over 27. The senior operations manager is 26, and most of the managers are in their 30's to 40's. My co-workers range in age from 21 through 33, so we are a tight knit group that share similar lives and intrests. A company that has a diverse range of ages, and backgrounds, coupled with a good employee comradradry program, will ease a lot of the tension, and go a long way into letting you show your skills, and decrease the chance of people pre-judging your by your age and apperance.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also the carrier where The Stig was shot off the bow in an earlier series of Top Gear.
The problem isn't religion in video games, series like Final Fantasy has already addressed religious themes in their games on a regular basis.
"Christian Game Developers Foundation put out a video encouraging developers to create wholesome titles for kids", statements like that which cause issues when certain religious sects place act as the moral blanket for everyone christian or atheist, fundamentalist or moderate, they are imposing an agenda on people that do not necessarily agree with their views.
That being said, there is always the option not to purchase it... Don't like it, don't buy it. As long as there is still a choice for the public, then people can make whatever games they want. As soon as someone starts to moves stamp out that choice, resistance should be brutal and swift to maintain freedom of expression.
For every point they arbitrarily ding I'm going to arbitrarily kill a whale off the coast of Japan. That'll teach them!
I own 2 Tissots and I'm very happy with them.
Both of them are the t-Touch series, which incorporates a touch screen on the analog face to control various functions.
The price isn't bad (Mine lists for $680 and $780 CDN, but I did get them for cheaper overseas), good Seiko's cost at least that, and Movados and dress timepieces cost well in the thousands. The best thing is, that the t-touch series maintains a cool gadget factor with the touch screen and things like the altimeter, ambient temp, immediate world time switching, etc. while still looking sophisticated and non-geeky.
http://www.tissot.ch/ is their website.
One thing that's rather glossed over is Shirow Masamune's writing style itself. The manga in original Japanese was very complex, and written in mostly in kanji (chinese characters) which has caused even the average Japanese difficulties in understanding it. To give you an idea of the use of kanji, the common Japanese only needs to know about 500 or so kanji to be literate, resorting to hiragana and katakana the rest of the time. The common Chinese needs 1200 (Since it's all chinese characters).
This is very normal of Shirow's style as his writing and stories and a partial reason of why his stories are quite intricate. To give you an idea, it would be like comparing the writing styles of JK Rowling to William Gibson, one is very simple and easy to read, the other is very high-level and in-depth. Even Shirow's earlier works like Appleseed (Which is also very good), Black Magic, Dominion Tank Police, etc., are very detailed and intricate if you dig down into the origial versions of them, which unfortuantely is lost when much of it is translated. Even the bloke that brought the material over (I can't remember his name, Terrance-something-or-other I think), and knows the reclusive Shirow once complained that even he had problems).
The complexity of the socio-economoic, political, and contempoary moral issues that is personified in GITS:SAC is what sets it apart from shows like Cowboy Bebop (Which I also loved, I'm still trying to find one of the limited edition box sets). It's in a different genre of anime (yes there are a ton of genres in Anime) and definitely not comparable to Cowboy Bebop. Both are fun, likable, and are a treat for your senses, but CB is more entertainment while GITS:SAC is more a commentary. It's like Starship Troopers vs. 2010; They're both movies about space, but you watch one to be entertained, and you watch the other to be inspired.
GITS:SAC actually takes place pre-GITS manga, but does overlap and transmutate into some section of the manga. Avid GITS fans will draw the parallel of Kusanagi getting snipered in the TV series, and her body getting shot in the manga, as well as many other similarities that do occur between the two. It's one of those "Let's retell the story, but change a few things around to make it work, even though it'll screw up the interdepencies". Any avid Asian film buff will know what I'm talking about, it happens quite often even in "live" movies (i.e. Windstruck and My Sassy Girl).
One other thing to mention is that the 2 movies were Oshii's movies. Oshii tends to take this weird spin on the GITS world, and often leave out a lot of the details Shirow puts in, and more often than naught, substitutes his own views and imagery in (Read: the damn basset hounds). If anyone's ever seen Oshii's "Avalon", you'll know what I'm talking about. The style and subject matter is the same as the 2 GITS movies, and so is the way he presents his imagery (and the damn basset hounds again). Shirow has always defered creative control to Oshii in the movies, but has retained it, and works very closely with Production IG for the SAC series. Hence, this is much more true to the feel of the original manga, and is greatly departed from the movies, hence the additional complexity. It's almost an impossibility to compare the TV series (both of them) to the movie due to the differences in direction.
Although I disagree with the company's attempt at censorship (duct tape over mouth = bad), is that on the voices for change site, the TWU has been taking pictures of employees going to work, and posting them on the website with derragortory comments, with the intention to intimidate and harass them.
Still not reason enough to do a blanket gag over it, but it does make you think about what is really going on.
The CRTC (Canadian equiv. of the FCC) recently held public submissions on the topic of VoIP Regulation. They will release a decision in the next few months if they will regulate it or not.
During the submissions, there were a lot of petitions stating that VoIP should not be regulated. Most of the phone companies including Bell and TELUS (who I happen to work for), as well as the smaller VoIP providers, were against regulation.
Hopefully they will choose the non-regulated path...
Most good security professionals used to be good hackers. I hate this white hat black hat shit that people tout, doesn't mean a damn thing to anybody except marketing people. You're either good at what you do, or you're not, legal or illegal.
hey neighbour!
wow.. small world...
Our company, Cadvision, has been doing exactally this for about 5 years now. We run old CAP based DSL equipment in near-locate naps to businesses all over the city. Nice article but it's old news.
So, did you actually think that you would be diing all the cool R&D stuff your term there? You're in *high school* for god's sakes, not even College/University. You may know a bit about some things, you may even know enough to hold a conversation aginst many of the other people there, but: a) You're young with no experience, b) More than likely, your knowledge about that field of work is very limited compared to what you need to know to actually do some of the cool jobs, c) Do you actually think that even enngineers do cool stuff like you read in the magazines, every day?
I mean, get real, this is the work world, you work at menial tasks 70% of the time, spend another 20% arguing with management, and only 10% doing the really cool stuff. When you get an education, and come into the real world, you'll realize the you'll be doing the same thing that you are now. Meaningless crap that has to be done one way or another.
So don't complain, as least they aren't making you fetch lunch for them, or are making you give them foot rubs or anything.
Mark, you suck
Ages does play a role, it defines who and how you interact with in the company. If you're a 22 year old interacting with a bunch of 40 year olds on a project, chances are you can get the job done, but the joviality associated with a well oiled group may be missing, just because the age difference is so large, you wil have disimilar intrests. Age should not play a definition in the ABILITY to do a job, you are correct about that. It does give the immediate reinforcement of how much experience you may already have. After all age = experience. The perception of that in classic business, will immediately put you in a position where you have to prove yourself. Younger people in important positions will generally have to work 3 to 4 times as hard to prove themselves, before they will gain acceptance. This is how business is. It is changing, very slowly with the advent of hi tech business, but you still have to deal with structure like this. In my case, I am very lucky. I have been with my current company for just about 3 years now, and I have moved into a very senior positions. I started on a help desk, moved to broadband installation and support, then into a research and development role, and finally, I just got promoted to the lead product developer. For a guy of 22 years old, I had to work to prove that I had the skills, maturity, and responsibility to do this job, and I had to work man times harder than some of my more senior counterparts. The lucky thing is, that the average age in this company can't be over 27. The senior operations manager is 26, and most of the managers are in their 30's to 40's. My co-workers range in age from 21 through 33, so we are a tight knit group that share similar lives and intrests. A company that has a diverse range of ages, and backgrounds, coupled with a good employee comradradry program, will ease a lot of the tension, and go a long way into letting you show your skills, and decrease the chance of people pre-judging your by your age and apperance.