When an employer decides he needs to fill a programming position, what is going to make him want to fill that position in the U.S. rather than overseas, even before individual candidates are considered?
Simple. Money.
Realize that most IT jobs are outsourceable, and price yourself accordingly. Got your MS certification? So what? So do a million others. Accept the fact that even a $40,000/yr starting salary is a very, very GOOD place to be, and don't bemoan the dot.com years because they were FAKE. The salaries and benefits available then were a balloon. Don't peg your hopes to them.
The fact is that "computer skills" don't really buy you crap in this world, not anymore. Unlike our country's seemingly unending appetite for lawyers, graduating with an IT degree doesn't grant you some special divine exemption from the rules of supply and demand. Face it, there are a PILE of college grads out there with perfectly serviceable degrees that can't find jobs in their fields, or who must accept that they are going to have to 'pay their dues' by working 60+ hour weeks for sub-$20k salaries for several years.
"Computers" as a field, are now also one of those professions.
Maybe the point is to throw the bums out. "...the political might of the auto companies..." what a load. Did they threaten the senator's family? Did they stick a horsehead into the bed of the congresswoman? No (at least I hope not). They waved around fat checks and, like a slobbery golden retriever [although far less interested in your well being, as a rule] congresspeople trotted along the dotted line and voted as ordered.
Doesn't anyone else find this repulsive? I mean, it's BOTH sides - the Republicans are in bed with big oil, the Dems are in bed with organized labor & trial lawyers (no less corrupt, thank you very much).
This is the part of our political system that I find absolutely repellent. I understand that not every congressperson is a "Mr. Smith", but geez, is it SO impossible to simply do what's right?/impotent rant
Ironically moving them from a medium that (however fragile now) has lasted scores of years to some format that will probably be outdated in 3 years, and stored digitally on optical storage media which, if it's not eaten by that South American fungus, will have a lifespan of a decade tops?
The comparison isn't on process, it's on principle.
"The War on Drugs is a * plan to prevent me from hittin' the bong whenever I want, oppressing me unfairly." is equated to "The War on Piracy is a * plan to prevent me from getting free movies whenever I want, oppressing me unfairly."
ergo "help help, I'm being oppressed!" is the key message. The method and medium is irrelevant.
*= evil, cunning, capitalist, patriarchal, racist, sexist, or whatever your hated-adjective-du-jour might be....
palm, phone, mp3 player, RFID scanner I have one of the early cellphone/pda's (thankfully about to die now, so will hopefully be replacing soon), and that's clunkier than just about everyone's cell phones now. I get a lot of comments about the bulkiness.
But then I ask them to take out their cell phones. And their palm pilots. And the chargers for both (I travel a lot).
Their pile is bigger than mine - one admittely clunky device, but also ONLY one cord charger/adapter (and only one thing to remember when leaving a hotel room!).
And people with Franklin Planners? Geez, I totally pwn them.:)
But my point is, if I'm going to be carrying all these devices ANYway, why not accept a little inconvenience (in terms of size) to have them in one "thing". I'm 6'4", 280 lbs. An extra 4 oz of handheld isn't going to kill me.
The problem is, that bar-code scanner thingy (Cuecat) wasn't a one-way data feed, and neither might this be.
With Cuecat, every time you swiped a barcode, it logged what you were doing and passed that information to the parent marketing firm. Personally, I don't really CARE about marketing firms having a pile of data on what interests me (gee, you mean I'm going to have to watch MORE ads aimed at my demographic? Oh no, more chicks in skimpy stuff! Please make it stop!) but it probably will drive the tinfoil hat crowd nuts.
I'd guess the RFID thing might work the same way - use the RFID kit to read retail RFIDs and I wouldn't be surprised if it means there's a log somewhere that'll upload to Nokia/whomever. That would be a nice saleable resource for Nokia - I mean, people pay $000's for email lists of dubious provenance, what about a swipe-history of your RFID activity?
Now, I'd still consider getting this kit to use my cell phone as an RFID sweeper: buy a shirt, sweep it with the phone *ping* RFID detected.
ME: "Store Manager? If you want me to buy this shirt you're going to have to read and FRY the RFID tag in it before I walk out the door." Manager: "Oh yes sir." (swipe) "OK, it's dead." ME, waving cellphone: *ping* "NO it's not. Do it right or I might misunderstand your incompetence as malfeasance, buddy."
Yeah, I can see a good use for such a thing. New PDA: palm, phone, mp3 player, RFID scanner. I'd pay good money for that, yes.
Green Ronin, for their Mutants and Masterminds game (a superhero d20 game) eliminated hit points in favor of a "Damage Save": if you make the save (like any other save) you take no damage, fail and take damage in various levels.
Actually, I think Harn did it first, and better than M&M. Rather than "counting down" from a starting HP total, it went the other way. IIRC, you'd take damage points and these would be a modifier to the roll against your Con (?), fail the roll to a certain level, and you were unconscious. Fail it too far, you're dead.
I always liked Harn's combat system. Very quick, very realistic. But then again, I preferred realism to high fantasy and my players didn't.:(
Thereare a few problems with the article. First, the writing: The problems experienced by TOEE users might be best described as systemic, rules based problems that were not developed by Troika, but by RPG rules publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC), a bastardized version of what TSR used to be in its hey-day, prior to the removal of a very important figure from the company: The Father of RPG, Gary Gygax, first created Dungeons & Dragons with a bunch of people who hung out with him regularly, and it was through this intensive and subjective process that the rules of all future video games were spawned. Huh? Nice sentence.
Second, his comment about "Meld into Stone" isn't a fundamental flaw in crpg systems using d20, it's nothing more than a bug in prioritization during combat for the AI. BFD. (And, his experience with P&P RPGs is pretty freakin' sad if the only way his DM would resolve such a use of the spell would be to whack them with a 50d6 lightning bolt; I'd say his P&P weren't all that bug free either...)
He's barely coherent in much of his commentary, such as this paragraph: Right away, TOEE is behind the eight ball in terms of fluidity; the publisher must be held accountable for this, as publishers set the cycles of development in terms of funding and maximum resource allocation into projects. While some would say that developers determine scheduling, I am a firm believer that the market and external factors truly determine development cycle. Atari is an arcade games manufacturer, and therefore they must have thought in terms of the arcade lifecycle, and not what Troika was going for, which was the conversion of PPRPG into CRPG (something that could have worked if enough time and money was devoted)....The result is a good experience, with beautiful environs and general ease-of-use, and all types of cubism present in Arcanum are missing from TOEE; therefore, any problems are not graphical in TOEE, IMHO. Again, HUH? WTF are you SAYING?
I gave up reading it about halfway through, frankly. The guy can barely put two words together to convey a thought.
The problems with d20 as a CRPG ruleset are many and varied. The problems with d20 rules THEMSELVES are many and varied.
This article really illuminates nothing, and isn't anything more than a rant about someone who was disappointed with their CRPG purchase. So?
There was D&D - the basic set, in which you could play IIRC a Fighter, a Wizard, a Cleric, and Elf, or a Dwarf.
Then there was ADVANCED D&D which was the ruleset 'all grown up' - hardcover books like the DM's Guide, Player's Handbook, etc - all the canon classes, all the spells. Unearthed Arcana was AFAIK the last 'addon' to AD&D 1st Ed.
*Then* they came out with 2nd Edition, which was a half-assed attempt to codify the mess of rules (which had grown and been modified to the point of self-contradiction through umpteen Dragon articles, etc.) into some sort of homongeneous whole.
The real update and revision came with D&D 3rd edition, (3.0) where they pretty much rewrote the system from the ground up.
MIT suggests it: innovative and far-seeing concept for increasing useability, efficiency, and interactivity for humans and their ever-more pervasive electronic devices.
Bill Gates suggests it (ie. implementing Windows everywhere, in everything): greedy, self-interested capitalist bastard trying to oppress all of the Open Source Ewoks of Truth and Light.
I personally would like my kids to be as well intellectually and morally prepared if confronted by violence, as you would like yours to be prepared when they are confronted by sex.
Both can destroy a person's life, if they aren't prepared for it.
You're right, I hope neither your nor my kids are confronted by violence either. But they may be. And how they respond to that can be far more quickly catastrophic to their lives than sex ever can be.
By the way, it's only a facet of our veneer of civilization that we're not confronted with it daily, but violence is JUST as inherent to life as is sex. Had a hamburger lately?
Hey, I'll be the first to agree that America has some whacked double-standards and inconsistencies. I'm actually on two committees trying to reduce the gratuitous gore on television in my area, I find it personally abhorrent.
I just have a kneejerk reaction to the constant holier-than-thou moralizing from our friends on the other side of the Atlantic, especially when they are criticizing us for betraying stereotypes of America that THEY got from the crap media we export:irony:.
If someone's going to lob stones at my glass house, I figure I might as well toss a few back.:)
Hopefully people like you will die off, too busy killing each other to ever relax and make love.
Let me see if I understand your point: You berate Americans for their bloodthirsy and unending fixation with violence, then you wish for the death of someone who merely disagrees with you on an internet forum.
Nice! What's the word for HYPOCRITE in your little world?
Actually, I think I've watched all of them. I know we have a ton. Some have amusing moments, but you're right on the money when you identify the singing parts as probably my major problem.
I'd concede that Veggie Tales just jumped to mind, on second thought I'd probably use Pokemon as a much better reference.:)
One could argue that violence has been with the human species as long as sex has. You're the one making the normative statement here.
One could also make the argument that with a little more violence and a little less sex, it's not hard to imagine that the world overall would be a happier place. After all, empty slogans aside, violence HAS solved quite a number of problems, and sex has also caused quite a few.
I could just as easily say that Kids in Europe grow up with no realistic understanding of the occasional need to resort to violence, just a fanatical and unreasoning abhorrence. Not to mention the leftists are pushing an idealistic and unrealistic pacifism and downplaying the importance of authority and the realities of power.
But this is so far out from the EuroIdealist canon that I'm not sure you'd even bother to try to understand it.
...they are providing parents with a tool that will help us to raise our children as we see fit.
But you see, that's the point. "They" (by whom I mean the Liberal freethinkers, many of whom troll these forums) don't want YOU to decide what you want YOUR child to see. Because, you must understand, that you are simply validating an archiac, patriarchal homophobic system.
Kids should be exposed to sex as early as possible (I mean, they are going to do it anyway, right?), be allowed to make up their own minds freely when it comes to drugs (we all use them here in Hollywood, and we're just fine! (aside from the serial divorce, suicide, crime, and depression rates)), and pretty much do whatever they want because, well, we are pursuing this lifestyle ourselves and you condemning this is practically like you condemning us. You're not allowed to do that because we're obviously so much prettier and richer than you.
So many Hollywood movies are gratuitously sprinkled with unnecessary swear words or the obligatory topless chick shot, just to get the R (or at least PG-13) rating. There are LOTS of movies that older kids could watch that aren't mind-numbingly vapid like "Veggie Tales", but Hollywood insists that anything with a merely G or PG rating must be empty of content as well.
Ironically, we're back to the pre-VCR days when we are desperately watching for movies we like to come on network television - then we know at least (some of) that is filtered out.
I agree with the parent poster here. Taking the swearing and violence out of Pulp Fiction is artistic butchery, but to filter out the nudity in Whole Nine Yards or Short Cuts is hardly "abusing artistic integrity".
As a visitor to Europe, I am flabbergasted by how crass the TV output is. Apparantly it's okay to show graphic sex acts but guns and violence are out. Even the crazy channels like RTL put out sex-packed junk like Wa(h)re Liebe.
Not to interrupt your rant, but to declare that Mohammed, Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama, et.al. were simply charlatans and mountebanks with a 'persuasive con' because you don't happen to "get it" is a bit of a stretch.
Personally, if I were on a planet where there are 6.4 billion people and roughly 70%+ of them are religious (and this is totally disregarding Confucianism as more like a philosophy than a religion - IMO), I'd be a little more humble before railing that "they" are all stupid and wrong. But that's just me.
Hey, I'll be the first to say that heinous things have been done in the name of religion, or by highly religious people. But to say that religious people are stupid and non-religious are smart, that rather disproves your own point, doesn't it? I mean, for every brilliant athiest, I'll show you a Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine. For every "stupid" religious person, I'll show you an embittered, cynical areligious person whose blind and strident fixation on hating religion makes them blind to facts that otherwise-reasonable people seem to see right away.
When we don't like someone or something he's doing we ask him politely to stop, we beg him to stop, then we threaten to punish him, then we threaten again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and then maybe he gets arrested, 'rehabilitated', released, and then again arrested, 'rehabilitated', released, followed by another arrest, 'rehabilitation', release, and then we point fingers at each other trying to figure out who is to blame for this poor individual (who is continuing the arrest cycle continuously in the backgroud), and usually salve our consciences by throwing piles and piles of money at him and (as long as he's not white) his ethnic group.
Outside our society, the process is basically the same. We pretty much sit on our hands until he goes and starts beating up a neighbor. Then we step in, and kick his ass until he says "ok I'll stop and be nice". He then proceeds to be everything BUT nice, in which case we ask him to behave according to his promise, then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again until we finally say enough and go kick his ass again.
Frankly, I think the chimp method of "tick me off, I kill you" might uncivilized, but it might also be a lot more conclusive.
...Or, you could just use the thread topic as a reason to go ballistic (cf. "scream therapy") on a not-so-thinly-veiled political rant about the president.
Good luck working out those personal demons.
It's/., you'll be modded "interesting" or "informative" - trust me.
Slashdot Mirror
When an employer decides he needs to fill a programming position, what is going to make him want to fill that position in the U.S. rather than overseas, even before individual candidates are considered?
Simple. Money.
Realize that most IT jobs are outsourceable, and price yourself accordingly. Got your MS certification? So what? So do a million others. Accept the fact that even a $40,000/yr starting salary is a very, very GOOD place to be, and don't bemoan the dot.com years because they were FAKE. The salaries and benefits available then were a balloon. Don't peg your hopes to them.
The fact is that "computer skills" don't really buy you crap in this world, not anymore. Unlike our country's seemingly unending appetite for lawyers, graduating with an IT degree doesn't grant you some special divine exemption from the rules of supply and demand. Face it, there are a PILE of college grads out there with perfectly serviceable degrees that can't find jobs in their fields, or who must accept that they are going to have to 'pay their dues' by working 60+ hour weeks for sub-$20k salaries for several years.
"Computers" as a field, are now also one of those professions.
Maybe the point is to throw the bums out. "...the political might of the auto companies..." what a load. Did they threaten the senator's family? Did they stick a horsehead into the bed of the congresswoman? No (at least I hope not). They waved around fat checks and, like a slobbery golden retriever [although far less interested in your well being, as a rule] congresspeople trotted along the dotted line and voted as ordered.
/impotent rant
Doesn't anyone else find this repulsive? I mean, it's BOTH sides - the Republicans are in bed with big oil, the Dems are in bed with organized labor & trial lawyers (no less corrupt, thank you very much).
This is the part of our political system that I find absolutely repellent. I understand that not every congressperson is a "Mr. Smith", but geez, is it SO impossible to simply do what's right?
Ironically moving them from a medium that (however fragile now) has lasted scores of years to some format that will probably be outdated in 3 years, and stored digitally on optical storage media which, if it's not eaten by that South American fungus, will have a lifespan of a decade tops?
Progress, anyone?
The comparison isn't on process, it's on principle.
"The War on Drugs is a * plan to prevent me from hittin' the bong whenever I want, oppressing me unfairly."
is equated to
"The War on Piracy is a * plan to prevent me from getting free movies whenever I want, oppressing me unfairly."
ergo
"help help, I'm being oppressed!" is the key message. The method and medium is irrelevant.
*= evil, cunning, capitalist, patriarchal, racist, sexist, or whatever your hated-adjective-du-jour might be....
palm, phone, mp3 player, RFID scanner
:)
I have one of the early cellphone/pda's (thankfully about to die now, so will hopefully be replacing soon), and that's clunkier than just about everyone's cell phones now. I get a lot of comments about the bulkiness.
But then I ask them to take out their cell phones. And their palm pilots. And the chargers for both (I travel a lot).
Their pile is bigger than mine - one admittely clunky device, but also ONLY one cord charger/adapter (and only one thing to remember when leaving a hotel room!).
And people with Franklin Planners? Geez, I totally pwn them.
But my point is, if I'm going to be carrying all these devices ANYway, why not accept a little inconvenience (in terms of size) to have them in one "thing". I'm 6'4", 280 lbs. An extra 4 oz of handheld isn't going to kill me.
The problem is, that bar-code scanner thingy (Cuecat) wasn't a one-way data feed, and neither might this be.
With Cuecat, every time you swiped a barcode, it logged what you were doing and passed that information to the parent marketing firm. Personally, I don't really CARE about marketing firms having a pile of data on what interests me (gee, you mean I'm going to have to watch MORE ads aimed at my demographic? Oh no, more chicks in skimpy stuff! Please make it stop!) but it probably will drive the tinfoil hat crowd nuts.
I'd guess the RFID thing might work the same way - use the RFID kit to read retail RFIDs and I wouldn't be surprised if it means there's a log somewhere that'll upload to Nokia/whomever.
That would be a nice saleable resource for Nokia - I mean, people pay $000's for email lists of dubious provenance, what about a swipe-history of your RFID activity?
Now, I'd still consider getting this kit to use my cell phone as an RFID sweeper: buy a shirt, sweep it with the phone *ping* RFID detected.
ME: "Store Manager? If you want me to buy this shirt you're going to have to read and FRY the RFID tag in it before I walk out the door."
Manager: "Oh yes sir." (swipe) "OK, it's dead."
ME, waving cellphone: *ping* "NO it's not. Do it right or I might misunderstand your incompetence as malfeasance, buddy."
Yeah, I can see a good use for such a thing.
New PDA: palm, phone, mp3 player, RFID scanner. I'd pay good money for that, yes.
Green Ronin, for their Mutants and Masterminds game (a superhero d20 game) eliminated hit points in favor of a "Damage Save": if you make the save (like any other save) you take no damage, fail and take damage in various levels.
:(
Actually, I think Harn did it first, and better than M&M. Rather than "counting down" from a starting HP total, it went the other way. IIRC, you'd take damage points and these would be a modifier to the roll against your Con (?), fail the roll to a certain level, and you were unconscious. Fail it too far, you're dead.
I always liked Harn's combat system. Very quick, very realistic. But then again, I preferred realism to high fantasy and my players didn't.
Thereare a few problems with the article. First, the writing:
...The result is a good experience, with beautiful environs and general ease-of-use, and all types of cubism present in Arcanum are missing from TOEE; therefore, any problems are not graphical in TOEE, IMHO.
The problems experienced by TOEE users might be best described as systemic, rules based problems that were not developed by Troika, but by RPG rules publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC), a bastardized version of what TSR used to be in its hey-day, prior to the removal of a very important figure from the company: The Father of RPG, Gary Gygax, first created Dungeons & Dragons with a bunch of people who hung out with him regularly, and it was through this intensive and subjective process that the rules of all future video games were spawned.
Huh? Nice sentence.
Second, his comment about "Meld into Stone" isn't a fundamental flaw in crpg systems using d20, it's nothing more than a bug in prioritization during combat for the AI. BFD.
(And, his experience with P&P RPGs is pretty freakin' sad if the only way his DM would resolve such a use of the spell would be to whack them with a 50d6 lightning bolt; I'd say his P&P weren't all that bug free either...)
He's barely coherent in much of his commentary, such as this paragraph: Right away, TOEE is behind the eight ball in terms of fluidity; the publisher must be held accountable for this, as publishers set the cycles of development in terms of funding and maximum resource allocation into projects. While some would say that developers determine scheduling, I am a firm believer that the market and external factors truly determine development cycle. Atari is an arcade games manufacturer, and therefore they must have thought in terms of the arcade lifecycle, and not what Troika was going for, which was the conversion of PPRPG into CRPG (something that could have worked if enough time and money was devoted).
Again, HUH? WTF are you SAYING?
I gave up reading it about halfway through, frankly. The guy can barely put two words together to convey a thought.
The problems with d20 as a CRPG ruleset are many and varied. The problems with d20 rules THEMSELVES are many and varied.
This article really illuminates nothing, and isn't anything more than a rant about someone who was disappointed with their CRPG purchase. So?
Um, no.
:\
There was D&D - the basic set, in which you could play IIRC a Fighter, a Wizard, a Cleric, and Elf, or a Dwarf.
Then there was ADVANCED D&D which was the ruleset 'all grown up' - hardcover books like the DM's Guide, Player's Handbook, etc - all the canon classes, all the spells. Unearthed Arcana was AFAIK the last 'addon' to AD&D 1st Ed.
*Then* they came out with 2nd Edition, which was a half-assed attempt to codify the mess of rules (which had grown and been modified to the point of self-contradiction through umpteen Dragon articles, etc.) into some sort of homongeneous whole.
The real update and revision came with D&D 3rd edition, (3.0) where they pretty much rewrote the system from the ground up.
D&D 3.5 was like the patch for 3.0.
I'm so proud I know this.
"Pervasive Computing"
Let me see if I understand this:
MIT suggests it: innovative and far-seeing concept for increasing useability, efficiency, and interactivity for humans and their ever-more pervasive electronic devices.
Bill Gates suggests it (ie. implementing Windows everywhere, in everything): greedy, self-interested capitalist bastard trying to oppress all of the Open Source Ewoks of Truth and Light.
Is that pretty much correct?
I personally would like my kids to be as well intellectually and morally prepared if confronted by violence, as you would like yours to be prepared when they are confronted by sex.
Both can destroy a person's life, if they aren't prepared for it.
You're right, I hope neither your nor my kids are confronted by violence either. But they may be. And how they respond to that can be far more quickly catastrophic to their lives than sex ever can be.
By the way, it's only a facet of our veneer of civilization that we're not confronted with it daily, but violence is JUST as inherent to life as is sex. Had a hamburger lately?
Hey, I'll be the first to agree that America has some whacked double-standards and inconsistencies. I'm actually on two committees trying to reduce the gratuitous gore on television in my area, I find it personally abhorrent.
:irony:.
:)
I just have a kneejerk reaction to the constant holier-than-thou moralizing from our friends on the other side of the Atlantic, especially when they are criticizing us for betraying stereotypes of America that THEY got from the crap media we export
If someone's going to lob stones at my glass house, I figure I might as well toss a few back.
Hopefully people like you will die off, too busy killing each other to ever relax and make love.
Let me see if I understand your point: You berate Americans for their bloodthirsy and unending fixation with violence, then you wish for the death of someone who merely disagrees with you on an internet forum.
Nice!
What's the word for HYPOCRITE in your little world?
Or better yet, maybe they will make better movies.
Moderated, -2 implausible.
Actually, I think I've watched all of them. I know we have a ton. Some have amusing moments, but you're right on the money when you identify the singing parts as probably my major problem.
:)
I'd concede that Veggie Tales just jumped to mind, on second thought I'd probably use Pokemon as a much better reference.
Good thing you've got no double standard.
One could argue that violence has been with the human species as long as sex has. You're the one making the normative statement here.
One could also make the argument that with a little more violence and a little less sex, it's not hard to imagine that the world overall would be a happier place. After all, empty slogans aside, violence HAS solved quite a number of problems, and sex has also caused quite a few.
I could just as easily say that Kids in Europe grow up with no realistic understanding of the occasional need to resort to violence, just a fanatical and unreasoning abhorrence. Not to mention the leftists are pushing an idealistic and unrealistic pacifism and downplaying the importance of authority and the realities of power.
But this is so far out from the EuroIdealist canon that I'm not sure you'd even bother to try to understand it.
How dare you suggest that the truth lies somewhere in the middle?!?!?! How dare you! :) Nice points.
...they are providing parents with a tool that will help us to raise our children as we see fit.
But you see, that's the point. "They" (by whom I mean the Liberal freethinkers, many of whom troll these forums) don't want YOU to decide what you want YOUR child to see. Because, you must understand, that you are simply validating an archiac, patriarchal homophobic system.
Kids should be exposed to sex as early as possible (I mean, they are going to do it anyway, right?), be allowed to make up their own minds freely when it comes to drugs (we all use them here in Hollywood, and we're just fine! (aside from the serial divorce, suicide, crime, and depression rates)), and pretty much do whatever they want because, well, we are pursuing this lifestyle ourselves and you condemning this is practically like you condemning us. You're not allowed to do that because we're obviously so much prettier and richer than you.
D'oh!
PRECISELY.
Nice post.
So many Hollywood movies are gratuitously sprinkled with unnecessary swear words or the obligatory topless chick shot, just to get the R (or at least PG-13) rating. There are LOTS of movies that older kids could watch that aren't mind-numbingly vapid like "Veggie Tales", but Hollywood insists that anything with a merely G or PG rating must be empty of content as well.
Ironically, we're back to the pre-VCR days when we are desperately watching for movies we like to come on network television - then we know at least (some of) that is filtered out.
I agree with the parent poster here. Taking the swearing and violence out of Pulp Fiction is artistic butchery, but to filter out the nudity in Whole Nine Yards or Short Cuts is hardly "abusing artistic integrity".
As a visitor to Europe, I am flabbergasted by how crass the TV output is. Apparantly it's okay to show graphic sex acts but guns and violence are out. Even the crazy channels like RTL put out sex-packed junk like Wa(h)re Liebe.
What kind of fucked up system is that?
Not to interrupt your rant, but to declare that Mohammed, Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama, et.al. were simply charlatans and mountebanks with a 'persuasive con' because you don't happen to "get it" is a bit of a stretch.
Personally, if I were on a planet where there are 6.4 billion people and roughly 70%+ of them are religious (and this is totally disregarding Confucianism as more like a philosophy than a religion - IMO), I'd be a little more humble before railing that "they" are all stupid and wrong. But that's just me.
Hey, I'll be the first to say that heinous things have been done in the name of religion, or by highly religious people. But to say that religious people are stupid and non-religious are smart, that rather disproves your own point, doesn't it? I mean, for every brilliant athiest, I'll show you a Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine. For every "stupid" religious person, I'll show you an embittered, cynical areligious person whose blind and strident fixation on hating religion makes them blind to facts that otherwise-reasonable people seem to see right away.
Please, insightful?
I'm not sure what society you live in.
When we don't like someone or something he's doing we ask him politely to stop, we beg him to stop, then we threaten to punish him, then we threaten again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and then maybe he gets arrested, 'rehabilitated', released, and then again arrested, 'rehabilitated', released, followed by another arrest, 'rehabilitation', release, and then we point fingers at each other trying to figure out who is to blame for this poor individual (who is continuing the arrest cycle continuously in the backgroud), and usually salve our consciences by throwing piles and piles of money at him and (as long as he's not white) his ethnic group.
Outside our society, the process is basically the same. We pretty much sit on our hands until he goes and starts beating up a neighbor. Then we step in, and kick his ass until he says "ok I'll stop and be nice". He then proceeds to be everything BUT nice, in which case we ask him to behave according to his promise, then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again until we finally say enough and go kick his ass again.
Frankly, I think the chimp method of "tick me off, I kill you" might uncivilized, but it might also be a lot more conclusive.
...Or, you could just use the thread topic as a reason to go ballistic (cf. "scream therapy") on a not-so-thinly-veiled political rant about the president.
/., you'll be modded "interesting" or "informative" - trust me.
Good luck working out those personal demons.
It's
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(arg!)Styopa (232550)
(arg!)Styopa
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That's ME!
Holy crap! Next they'll be able to get a satellite picture of my house!
Huh?
Oh, I guess it's not that big a deal then.
I'll get right on that change-the-shape-of-all-of-the-roads project right away ...
This has no relevance to the Open-Source movement.
Nothing to see here.
Please move along.